And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense?

— Edgar Allan Poe

And here, in thought, to thee-In thought that can alone, Ascend thy empire and so be A partner of thy throne, By winged Fantasy, My embassy is given, Till secrecy shall knowledge be In the environs of Heaven.

— Edgar Allan Poe

And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

— Edgar Allan Poe

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Dallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor:And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted — nevermore!

— Edgar Allan Poe

And the Raven never flitting Still is sitting still is sitting On the pallid bust of Dallas Just above my chamber door And his eyes have all the seeming Of a demon's that is dreaming And the lamplight o'er him streaming Throws his shadow on the floor And my soul from out that shadow That lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted - nevermore.

— Edgar Allan Poe

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me- filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, "'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door-Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;- This it is, and nothing more.

— Edgar Allan Poe

And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into recesses if his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempts at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe in one unceasing radiation of gloom.

— Edgar Allan Poe

And thus when by Poetry, or when by Music, the most entrancing of the poetic moods, we find ourselves melted into tears, we weep then, not... through excess of pleasure, but through a certain petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and forever, those divine and rapturous joys of which through the poem, or through the music, we attain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses.

— Edgar Allan Poe

As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.

— Edgar Allan Poe

A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.

— Edgar Allan Poe