Everyone gets a little gloomy from time to time. Occasionally, life has the unique ability to get you down and make you feel like the light is gone forever. But sometimes, leaning into the darkness is exactly what you need to find out that life is indeed worth living.
Whether you are simply the Halloween type who enjoys some good old horror stories, or you’re feeling like exploring a new side of yourself and the kind of literature you like, reading some Edgar Allan Poe quotes might be just what you need.
Edgar Allan Poe was a 19th-century American poet and short story writer. Known for his love for the occult and the often mysterious and wicked imagery in his works, Poe was the one who laid the groundwork for the genres of mystery and horror which are nowadays more popular than ever.
So, read on if you want to explore some of the darkest and innermost parts of the human psyche through the 31 best Edgar Allan Poe Quotes about dreams, love, madness, and death.
The 31 Best Edgar Allan Poe Quotes to Make You Fall In Love With His Writing
Best Edgar Allan Poe Quotes About Love
#1. “We loved with a love that was more than love… With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven coveted her and me.” — Annabel Lee
#2. “The most natural, and, consequently, the truest and most intense of the human affections are those which arise in the heart as if by electric sympathy.” — The Spectacles
#3. “Love like mine can never be gotten over.” — Letter to Maria Clemm
#4. “And so being young and dipped in folly, I fell in love with melancholy.” — Romance
#5. “I was never really insane but upon occasions where my heart was touched.” — Letter to Maria Clemm
#6. “There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.” — The Black Cat
Best Edgar Allan Poe Quotes About Madness
#7. “That which you mistake for madness is but an over acuteness of the senses.” — The Tell-Tale Heart
#8. “Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence — whether much that is glorious — whether all that is profound — does not spring from disease of thought — from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.” — Eleanora
#9. “I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.” — Letter to George W. Eveleth
#10. “I remained too much inside my head and then ended up losing my mind.”
Best Edgar Allan Poe Quotes About Death
#11. “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?” — The Premature Burial
#12. “To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths!” — The Assignation
#13. “Thank Heaven! the crisis — the danger is past, And the lingering illness, Is over at last — And the fever called “Living,” Is conquered at last.” — For Annie
#14. “Sleep, those little slices of death — how I loathe them.” — Attributed, Survival
#15. “Deep in earth my love is lying, so I must weep alone.” — A couplet
#16. “In death – no! even in the grave all is not lost. Else there is no immortality for man.” — The Pit and the Pendulum
#17. “The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.” — The Philosophy of Composition
#18. “Come! let the burial rite be read – the funeral song be sung! — An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young — A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.” — Lenore
Best Edgar Allan Poe Quotes About Dreams
#19. “Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.” — Eleanora
#20. “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.” — Marginalia
#21. “Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.” — The Raven
#22. “All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream.” — A Dream Within a Dream
#23. “Arousing from the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream. Yet in a second afterward, (so frail may that web have been) we remember not that we have dreamed.” — The Pit and the Pendulum
General Edgar Allan Poe Quotes
#24. “If you wish to forget anything on the spot, then make a note that this thing is to be remembered.” — Marginalia
#25. “Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.” — The Philosophy of Composition
#26. “The true genius shudders at incompleteness – imperfection – and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything that should be said.” — Marginalia
#27. “To observe attentively is to remember distinctly.” — The Murders in the Rue Morgue
#28. “I have great faith in fools — self-confidence my friends will call it.” — Marginalia
#29. “Convinced myself that I seek not to convince.” — Berenice
#30. “The customs of the world are so many conventional follies.” — The Spectacles
#31. “There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.”
In Conclusion
No one has ever been able to dig as deep inside the human consciousness as well as Edgar Allan Poe. His words, as eerie and mysterious as they are, show humanity in all its glory and gore, which is what makes him so beloved and relevant even today.
The Edgar Allan Poe quotes above show that even the most macabre of subjects can be approached in an artistic as well as beautiful way and that no part of you, no matter how dark, should be hidden. That is the true weight of his talent, unparalleled even today.
Image source: Edgar Allan Poe photo from poetryfoundation.org
