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Edgar Allan Poe

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Famous Edgar Allan Poe Quotes

“The tribe of clerks was an obvious one...the junior clerks of flash houses--young gentlemen with tight coats, bright boots, well-oiled hair, and supercilious lips. Setting aside a certain dapperness of carriage, which may be termed [i]deskism[/i] for want of a better word, the manner of these persons seemed to be an exact fac-simile of what had been the perfection of [i]bon ton[/i] about twelve or eighteen months before.”

The More Things Change
Book:The Man of the Crowd - an Edgar Allan Poe Short Story
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“To look at a star by glances - to view it in a side-long way, by turning toward it the exterior portions of the retina (more susceptible of feeble impressions of light than the interior), is to behold the star distinctly - is to have the best appreciation of its lustre - a lustre which grows dim just in proportion as we turn our vision fully upon it.”

The Murders In The Rue Morgue
Book:Tales & Sketches - Volume 1: 1831-1842
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“The mental features discoursed of as the analytical, are, in themselves, but little susceptible of analysis. We appreciate them only in their effects. We know of them, among other things, that they are always to their possessor, when inordinately possessed, a source of the liveliest enjoyment. As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as call his muscles into action, so glories the analyst in that moral activity which disentangles. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial occupations bringing his talents into play. He is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, of hieroglyphics; exhibiting in his solutions of each a degree of acumen which appears to the ordinary apprehension preternatural. His results, brought about by the very soul and essence of method, have, in truth, the whole air of intuition.”

AnalysisEdgar Allan PoeThe Murders In The Rue Morgue
Book:The Murders in the Rue Morgue
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“Моето нетърпение я накара да се усмихне. Припомни ми старата максима за приличието - кошмарът, който прегражда пътя към щастието на толкова много хора, докато най-сетне изчезне и последната възможност да постигнат това щастие.”

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Author:Edgar Allan Poe
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“I looked; and the unseen figure, which still grasped me by the wrist, bad caused to be thrown open the graves of all mankind; and from each issued the faint phosphoric radiance of decay; so that I could see the innermost recesses, and there view the shrouded bodies in their dead and solemn slumber with the worm. But alas! the real sleepers were fewer, by many millions, than those who slumbered not at all; and there was a feebly struggling; and there was a general and sad unrest; and from out of the depths of the countless pits there came a melancholy rustling from the garments of the buried.”

SleepDeadDecayRadianceGrave
Book:The Premature Burial
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“Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you"— here I opened wide the door; — Darkness there, and nothing more.Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you"— here I opened wide the door; — Darkness there, and nothing more.”

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Book:The Raven
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“Hear the sledges with the bells, Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night, While the stars that oversprinkle All the Heavens seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight: Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells-- From the jingling and the tingling of the bells.”

WorldWellsSeemsNightHeavenStarsAirDelightSilverMelodyBellsRhymeIcyMerrimentBells RingingSilver Bells
Author:Edgar Allan Poe
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“I am excessively slothful, and wonderfully industrious-by fits. There are epochs when any kind of mental exercise is torture, and when nothing yields me pleasure but the solitary communion with the 'mountains & the woods'-the 'altars' of Byron. I have thus rambled and dreamed away whole months, and awake, at last, to a sort of mania for composition. Then I scribble all day, and read all night, so long as the disease endures.”

KindLongWholeLastsNightPleasureMonthsFitExerciseMountainDiseaseDepressionEndureWoodsAwakeTortureYieldSolitaryCompositionCommunionAll NightAltarsIndustriousManiaByronScribbles
Book:The Portable Edgar Allan Poe
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“By the grey woods, by the swamp, where the toad and newt encamp, by the dismal tarns and pools, where dwell the Gouls. By each spot the most unholy, by each nook most melancholy, there the traveller meets, aghast, sheeted memories of the Past. Shrouded forms that start and sigh, as they pass the wanderer by. White-robed forms of friends long given; In agony, to the Earth - and Heaven.”

LongEarthPastFormGivenHeavenMemoriesWhiteTreeWoodsSpotsMelancholyPoolAgonyGreySighTravellerSwampsWanderersToadsNewtsPast MemoriesAghast
Book:The best known works of Edgar Allan Poe: poems, tales, essays, criticisms
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“It was night, and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood.”

NightFallBloodRainFallenGothic
Book:The Tell-Tale Heart: And Other Stories - Purloined Letter, Descent into the Maelström, Von Kempelen and His Discovery, Mesmeric Revelation, Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, Black Cat, Fall of the House of Usher, Masque of the Red Death and Many More
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“Few persons can be made to believe that it is not quite an easy thing to invent a method of secret writing that shall baffle investigation. Yet it may be roundly asserted that human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve.”

WritingBelieveHumansMayPersonsMadeEasySecretDiscoveryMethodResolveInvestigationIngenuityEpiphanyEasy ThingsCiphers
Book:Complete Works Of Edgar Allan Poe: The New Raven Edition
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“It is clear that a poem may be improperly brief. Undue brevity degenerates into mere epigrammatism. A very short poem, while now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produces a profound or enduring, effect. There must be the steady pressing down of the stamp upon the wax.”

MayPoetryClearEffectsProduceMereProfoundEndureBrilliantSteadyNow And ThenStampsVividDegeneratesBrevity
Book:Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Essays, Literary Studies, Criticism, Cryptography & Autography, Translations, Letters and Other Non-Fiction Works: The Philosophy of Composition, The Rationale of Verse, The Poetic Principle, Old English Poetry, Maelzel's Chess Player, Eureka, The Literati of New York, Fifty Suggestions, Exordium, Marginalia…
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“There is then no analogy whatever between the operations of the Chess-Player, and those of the calculating machine of Mr. Babbage , and if we choose to call the former a pure machine we must be prepared to admit that it is, beyond all comparison, the most wonderful of the inventions of mankind.”

IfsPlayerWonderfulMankindPureMachinesPreparedChessInventionFormerOperationsComparisonBe PreparedAnalogiesCalculatingChess Players
Book:The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
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“The Romans worshipped their standard; and the Roman standard happened to be an eagle. Our standard is only one tenth of an eagle,--a dollar, but we make all even by adoring it with tenfold devotion.”

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Book:The literati: some honest opinions about autorial merits and demerits, with occasional works of personality. Together with marginalia, suggestions, and essays
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“There is not a more disgusting spectacle under the sun than our subserviency to British criticism. It is disgusting, first, because it is truckling, servile, pusillanimous--secondly, because of its gross irrationality. We know the British to bear us little but ill will--we know that, in no case do they utter unbiased opinions of American books . . . we know all this, and yet, day after day, submit our necks to the degrading yoke of the crudest opinion that emanates from the fatherland.”

KnowsFirstsLittlesBookOpinionCasesSunBearsCriticismIllBritishNecksSubmitDisgustingGrossYokeDegradingIrrationalityEmanateIll WillFatherlandUnbiased
Book:Complete Works Of Edgar Allan Poe: The New Raven Edition
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