A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the out bringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no words written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction. The idea of the tale has been presented unblemished because undisturbed: and this is an end unattainable by the novel. Undue brevity is just as exceptionable here as in the poem; but undue length is yet more to be avoided.

— Edgar Allan Poe

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

— Edgar Allan Poe

At midnight, in the month of June, I stand beneath the mystic moon.

— Edgar Allan Poe

A wrong is unrepressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unrepressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.

— Edgar Allan Poe

Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.

— Edgar Allan Poe

Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.

— Edgar Allan Poe

Be nothing which thou art not

— Edgar Allan Poe

Blood was its Avatar and its seal.

— Edgar Allan Poe

But, for myself, the Earth’s records had taught me to look for widest ruin as the price of highest civilization.

— Edgar Allan Poe

By a route obscure and lonely Haunted by ill angels only, Where an eidolon, named NIGHT, On a black throne reigns upright, I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule --From a wild, weird clime that laity, sublime, Out of SPACE, out of TIME.

— Edgar Allan Poe