Edgar Allan Poe

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.

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

I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.

It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial.

A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this - that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made - not to understand - but to feel - as crime.

We loved with a love that was more than love.

Man's real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.

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

The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things that escape those who dream only at night.

To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.

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.

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.

All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.

I have great faith in fools self-confidence my friends call it.

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.

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

The ninety and nine are with dreams, content but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

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