Top 15 Edgar Allan Poe Quotes

The true genius shudders at incompleteness — imperfection — and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said.

The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.

Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.

A Dream Within A Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told.

I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty.

I dread the events of the future, not in themselves but in their results.

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?

That which you mistake for madness is but an overacuteness of the senses.

To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary.

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.

It is a happiness to wonder; — it is a happiness to dream.

Now this is the point. You fancy me a mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded...

"I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down."

[Letter to J. Beauchamp Jones, August 8, 1839]