Quotes from The Complete Stories and Poems

“Years of love have been forgot, In the hatred of a minute.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“A Dream Within A Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“It is a happiness to wonder; -- it is a happiness to dream.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths!”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“Eldorado

Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old—
This knight so bold—
And o’er his heart a shadow—
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow—
‘Shadow,’ said he,
‘Where can it be—
This land of Eldorado?’

‘Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,’
The shade replied,—
‘If you seek for Eldorado!”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“We have a task before us which must be speedily performed. We know that it will be ruinous to make delay. The most important crisis of our life calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and action. We glow, we are consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with the anticipation of whose glorious result our whole souls are on fire. It must, it shall be undertaken to-day, and yet we put it off until to-morrow; and why? There is no answer, except that we feel perverse, using the word with no comprehension of the principle. To-morrow arrives, and with it a more impatient anxiety to do our duty, but with this very increase of anxiety arrives, also, a nameless, a positively fearful, because unfathomable, craving for delay. This craving gathers strength as the moments fly. The last hour for action is at hand. We tremble with the violence of the conflict within us, — of the definite with the indefinite — of the substance with the shadow. But, if the contest have proceeded thus far, it is the shadow which prevails, — we struggle in vain. The clock strikes, and is the knell of our welfare. At the same time, it is the chanticleer-note to the ghost that has so long overawed us. It flies — it disappears — we are free. The old energy returns. We will labor now. Alas, it is too late!”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“Philosophers have often held dispute
As to the seat of thought in man and brute
For that the power of thought attends the latter
My friend, thy beau, hath made a settled matter,
And spite of dogmas current in all ages,
One settled fact is better than ten sages. (O,Tempora! O,Mores!)”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“He knew that Hop-Frog was not fond of wine; for it excited the poor cripple almost to madness; and madness is no comfortable feeling.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“And if I died, at least I died
For thee! for thee”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“And, when the friendly sunshine smil'd, / And she would mark the opening skies, / I saw no Heaven--but in her eyes.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“There was a discordant hum of human voices! There was a loud blast as of many trumpets! There was a harsh grating as of a thousand thunders! The fiery walls rushed back! An outstretched arm caught my own as I fell, fainting, into the abyss. It was that of General Lasalle. The French army had entered Toledo. The Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“Dreams! in their vivid coloring of life,
As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife
Of semblance with reality, which brings
To the delirious eye, more lovely things
Of Paradise and Love- and all our own!
Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“I believed, and still do believe, that truth, is frequently of its own essence, superficial, and that, in many cases, the depth lies more in the abysses where we seek her, than in the actual situations wherein she may be found.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“For passion must, with youth, expire.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“It was well said of a certain German book that ‘er lasst sich nicht lesen”—it does not permit itself to be read.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“LO! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“In the internal decoration, if not in the external architecture of their residences, the English are supreme. The Italians have but little sentiment beyond marbles and colors. In France, meliora probant, deteriora sequuntur -- the people are too much a race of gadabouts to maintain those household proprieties of which, indeed, they have a delicate appreciation, or at least the elements of a proper sense. The Chinese and most of the Eastern races have a warm but inappropriate fancy. The Scotch are poor decorists. The Dutch have, perhaps, an indeterminate idea that a curtain is not a cabbage. In Spain, they are all curtains -- a nation of hangmen. The Russians do not furnish. The Hottentots and Kickapoos are very well in their way. The Yankees alone are preposterous.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; — vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“Yet, the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows;
Yet, the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
"On! on!" — but o'er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“The moaning and groaning, The sighing and sobbing, Are quieted now, With that horrible throbbing At heart:—ah, that horrible, Horrible throbbing! The sickness—the nausea— The pitiless pain— Have ceased, with the fever That maddened my brain— With the fever called "Living" That burned in my brain.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,  Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,  While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,  As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.  "'Tis some visiter," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door—                           Only this, and nothing more.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“It was many and many a year ago,          In a kingdom by the sea,      That a maiden lived whom you may know          By the name of ANNABEL LEE;—”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“if passion it can properly be called, was of the most thoroughly romantic, shadowy, and imaginative character. It was born of the hour, and of the youthful necessity to love. It had no peculiar regard to the person, or to the character, or to the reciprocating affection... Any maiden, not immediately and positively repulsive,”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“Mimes in the form of God on high mutter and mumble low and hither and tither fly, mere puppets they who come and go.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“We will say, then, that I am mad. I grant, at least, that there are two distinct conditions of my mental existence—the condition of a lucid reason, not to be disputed, and belonging to the memory of events forming the first epoch of my life—and”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

“No woman could have inflicted the blows with any weapon.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems

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