"In our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember."
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Edgar Allan Poe quotes (page 8 of 20)
387 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors, and looking them piteously in the eyes - die with despair of heart and convulsion of throat, on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer themselves to be revealed. Now and then, alas, the conscience of man takes up a burden so heavy in horror that it can be thrown down only into the grave. And thus the essence of all crime is undivulged."
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"I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a flat contradiction in terms."
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"Most writers - poets in especial - prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy - an ecstatic intuition - and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes."
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"Happiness is not to be found in knowledge, but in the acquisition of knowledge"
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"I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago."
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"It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but, once conceived, it haunted me day and night."
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"The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be."
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"The pioneers and missionaries of religion have been the real cause of more trouble and war than all other classes of mankind."
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"A poem in my opinion, is opposed to a work of science by having for its immediate object, pleasure, not truth."
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"All works of art should begin... at the end."
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"When a madman appears thoroughly sane, indeed, it is high time to put him in a straight jacket."
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"Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest."
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"It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream."
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"Books, indeed, were his sole luxuries"
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"Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore - Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore! Quoth the raven, `Nevermore."
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"One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree; — hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart; — hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence; — hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin — a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it — if such a thing were possible — even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God."
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"Children are never too tender to be whipped. Like tough beefsteaks, the more you beat them, the more tender they become."
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"There are two bodies - the rudimental and the complete; corresponding with the two conditions of the worm and the butterfly. What we call "death," is but the painful metamorphosis. Our present incarnation is progressive, preparatory, temporary. Our future is perfected, ultimate, immortal. The ultimate life is the full design."
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"I have no words alas! to tell the loveliness of loving well"
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