Focussed Poe Quotes

Good evening," said the barman. "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" "Because Poe wrote on both? ~ Jasper Fforde

O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave? ~ Edgar Allan Poe

What is certain in the rational realm is by no means certain in the kingdom of swoon. ~ Mary Oliver

Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

These were the days when my heart was volcanic. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

That motley drama - oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Detective fiction could not have existed without Edgar Allan Poe. ~ Giles Foden

If any ambitious man have a fancy to revolutionize, at one effort, the universal world of human thought, human opinion, and human sentiment ... ~ Edgar Allan Poe

I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a flat contradiction in terms. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

I am no king, and I am no lord,
And I am no soldier at-arms," said he.
"I'm none but a harper, and a very poor harper,
That am come hither to wed with ye."
"If you were a lord, you should be my lord,
And the same if you were a thief," said she.
"And if you are a harper, you shall be my harper,
For it makes no matter to me, to me,
For it makes no matter to me."
"But what if it prove that I am no harper?
That I lied for your love most monstrously?"
"Why, then I'll teach you to play and sing,
For I dearly love a good harp," said she. ~ Peter S. Beagle

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

The raven of Edgar Allan Poe has a halo that he extinguishes from time to time

("Spanish Generosity") ~ Max Jacob

I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

If Mr. Vincent Price were to be co-starred with Miss Bette Davis in a story by Mr. Edgar Allan Poe directed by Mr. Roger Corman, it could not fully express the pent-up violence and depravity of a single day in the life of the average family. ~ Quentin Crisp

The mass of the people regard as profound only him who suggests pungent contradictions of the general idea. In ratiocination, not less than in literature, it is the epigram which is the most immediately and the most universally appreciated. In both, it is of the lowest order of merit. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea; But we loved with a love that was more than love- I and my Annabel Lee; With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

When, indeed, men speak of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect - they refer, in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of soul - not of intellect, or of heart. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

The mountainous surges suggest the idea of innumerable dumb gigantic fiends struggling in impotent agony. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Poe was a student of many things, and among those things he read and referred to in his work was the Bible. ~ John Astin

If Baudelaire, in hieroglyphics of the soul, had deciphered the return of the age of the sentiment and ideas, Poe, in the field of morbid psychology had more especially investigated the domain of the soul. ~ Joris-Karl Huysmans

It may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma ... which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

If I venture to displace ... the microscopical speck of dust ... on the point of my finger, ... I have done a deed which shakes the Moon in her path, which causes the Sun to be no longer the Sun, and which alters forever the destiny of multitudinous myriads of stars. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

-ev'n with us the breath Of Science dims the mirror of our joy ... ~ Edgar Allan Poe

In death - no! even in the grave all is not lost. Else there is no immortality for man. Arousing from the most profound slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream. Yet in a second afterward, (so frail may that web have been) we remember not that we have dreamed. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

And thus thy memory is to me
Like some enchanted far-off isle
In some tumultuous sea
Some ocean throbbing far and free
With storms - but where meanwhile
Serenest skies continually
Just o'er that one bright island smile. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

The goodness of the true pun is in the direct ratio of its intolerability. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

O craving heart, for the lost flowers/ And sunshine of my summer hours!/ The undying voice of that dead time,/ With its interminable chime,/ Rings in the spirit of a spell, / Upon thy emptiness
a knell. / I have not always been as now: ~ Edgar Allan Poe

I'm compared to Kerouac, I suppose, because he traveled and rejected middle-class values, but the similarities end there. ~ Poe Ballantine

Bright beings that ponder,
With half-closing eyes,
On the stars which your wonder,
Hath drawn from the skies ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Art was, for Poe, the only method by which one could penetrate the shapeless empirical world in the search for order, and ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Don't pe in te urry - don't. Will you pe take de odder pottle, or ave you pe got zober yet and come to your zenzes? ~ Edgar Allan Poe

We loved with a love that was more than love. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

And, though my faith be broken,
And, though my heart be broken,
Here is a ring, as token
That I am happy now! ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Boston: Their hotels are bad. Their pumpkin pies are delicious. Their poetry is not so good. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

And rays of truth you cannot see
Are flashing thro' Eternity
~ Edgar Allan Poe

All around were horror, and thick gloom, and a black sweltering desert of ebony. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

The convex surface of any segment of a sphere is, to the entire surface of the sphere itself, as the versed sine of the segment to the diameter of the sphere. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Sing a song of suspense in which the players die.
Four and twenty ravens in an Edgar Allan Pie.
When the pie was broken, the ravens couldn't sing.
Their throats had been sliced open by Stephen, the new King.
The King was in his writing house, stifling a laugh
While his queen was in a tizzy of her bloody Lovecraft.
When the dead maid got the garden for her rank as royal whore,
King's shovel made it double and he married nevermore. ~ Jessica McHugh

And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

They're on Lee and Indy Sex Watch."
"Come again?"
"They want to know when we've done it."
Silence. I went on.
"If we don't do it soon, they might force us to at gunpoint."
"Christ."
"I know. No pressure though. I told them we're taking is slow."
"You have to report in?"
"I kind of feel obliged."
"How's that?"
I didn't want to tell him I'd recruited them both for Lee Maneuvres in the past, so I said, "Never mind."
"If something doesn't happen soon, it's gonna be bad. I can't keep focussed, all I can think of is what's on your Victoria's Secret credit statement.
"You need to keep focused," I told him, "bad guys are after me."
"Tell me about it. ~ Kristen Ashley

I tend to look way back for my inspiration: H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe. ~ Drew Daywalt