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Edgar Allan Poe's 23 Best Famous Phrases

Edgar Allan Poe's 23 Best Famous Phrases

April 6, 2024

Edgar Allan Poe (1809 - 1849) was an impressive writer, poet and journalist born in Boston, United States. He is considered one of the best authors in the genre of the short story and the Gothic novel.

His tales of terror and his incursion into science fiction led him to have a great posthumous recognition, but lived between hardships and miseries during his short but exceptional life. Near his death, he wanted to found his own newspaper, called "The Stylus", although he failed in the attempt.

  • Related article: "55 phrases about death and the hereafter"

Amazing Phrases by Edgar Allan Poe

Representative of surrealism, Poe influenced different genres of prose throughout the planet. To get closer to his work and his unparalleled mysticism, we have proposed to pay tribute to this genius of literature through the 25 best sentences of Edgar Allan Poe .


Are you accompanying us on this journey into darkness?

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1. Whatever their kinship, beauty, in its supreme development, inevitably induces tears to sensitive souls.

A phrase that could well be the description of Stendhal Syndrome.

2. In the disinterested love of an animal, in the sacrifice of itself, there is something that goes directly to the heart of the one who has often had occasion to verify the petty friendship and the fragile fidelity of the natural Man.

The purity of the animal against the cruelty of the human being.

3. When a madman seems completely sensible, it is time to put the straitjacket on him.

Ironic phrase that can be interpreted in different ways.


4. Taste corruption is part of the dollar industry and matches it.

About the chrematistic and its influence in our lives.

5. Men of genius abound much more than is supposed. In fact, in order to fully appreciate the work of what we call genius it is necessary to possess all the genius it needed to produce the work.

On the unlimited creativity of the mind of the geniuses.

6. That man who fears and seems, and to be, when he adjusts, cowardly is not truly brave.

Cowardice is the worst defect that can be possessed.

7. Science has not taught us yet whether madness is or is not the most sublime of intelligence.

One of those phrases of madness that leaves no one indifferent.

8. Music is perhaps where the soul is closer to the great end for which it struggles when it feels inspired by the poetic feeling: the creation of supernatural beauty.

Great phrase about music and its unique aesthetic power.


9. In criticism I will be brave, severe and absolutely fair with friends and enemies. Nothing will change this purpose.

The justice of one's opinion must be unbreakable.

10. All works of art should start at the end.

Curious reflection of Edgar Allan Poe.

11. If I were asked to define the term art in a few words, I would call it the reproduction of what the senses perceive in nature through the veil of the soul.

In one of his most famous phrases, Edgar Allan Poe tells us his opinion about what art is.

12. Everything we see or look like is only a dream within a dream.

Could existence be a mere concatenation of dreams? Perhaps.

13. I have no faith in human perfection. Man is now more active, not happier, or more intelligent, than he was 6000 years ago.

In spite of the technical advances, the human existence continues being stained by the same laziness, vanity and inaction.

14. It is doubtful that the human race manages to create an enigma that human ingenuity can not solve.

At that crossroads is human thought.

15. Death is taken with courage and then invited to a drink.

With chivalry and kindness.

16. I went crazy, with long intervals of horrible sanity.

One of the phrases of Edgar Allan Poe most remembered for his brilliance.

17. I have great faith in fools, self-confidence they call my friends.

For an inveterate pessimist like Poe, any hint of grandiloquence was a real nonsense.

18. Create only half of what you see and nothing you hear.

On credulity.

19. The only way to preserve man's freedom is to always be willing to die for it.

The passion for life is a sine qua non condition for not taking away one's freedom.

20. Perhaps it is the very simplicity of the matter that leads us to error.

Occasionally, Ockhan's razor just does not work.

21. The death of a beautiful woman is undoubtedly the most poetic subject in the world.

As Poe proposes, it is a fact that brings together several elements of special poetic and aesthetic significance.

22Every movement, whatever its cause, is creative.

Creative forces, always dynamic.

23. Do we not have in us a perpetual inclination, in spite of the excellence of our judgment, to violate what the Law is, simply because we understand that it is the Law?

On the human propensity to skip imposed norms.

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