Edgar Allan Poe

I have a horror of life, but I cling to it.

The soul of a poem, its very essence, is its rhythm.

There is a strong disposition in mankind to believe in the marvellous.

The highest intellect is but a shadow of the lowest intuition.

The truth is, I am heartily sick of this life & of the nineteenth century in general. (I am convinced that every thing is going wrong).

Art is to look at not to criticize.

I have... for the metaphysical poets [William Wordsworth, etc.], as poets, the most sovereign contempt. That they have followers proves nothing.

The Tale originated in a bet that I could produce nothing effective on a subject so singular, provided I treated it seriously.

The most remarkable feature in this production is the bad paper on which it is printed, and the typographical ingenuity with which matter barely enough for one volume has been spread over the pages of two...

If a poem hasn't ripped apart your soul, you haven't experienced poetry.

To elevate the soul poetry is necessary.

I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.

If a man deceives me once, shame on him; if he deceives me twice, shame on me.

Why is a chain like the feline race? Because it's a catenation. — a catty nation.

Why is his last new novel sleep itself? Because it's so poor. — sopor.

Why does a lady in tight corsets never need comfort? Because she's already so laced. — solaced.

Why ought the author of the 'Grotesque and Arabesque' to be a good writer of verses? Because he's a poet to a t. Add t to Poe makes it Poet.

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

I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him.

The women, too, it appears, were oddly deformed by a natural protuberance of the region just below the small of the back—although, most unaccountably, this deformity was looked on altogether in the light of a beauty. One or two pictures of these singular women have, in fact, been miraculously preserved. They look very odd, very—like something between a turkey-cock and a dromedary.