I have great faith in fools. My friends call it self-confidence.
Edgar Allan Poe
- Life
- 1809-1849
- Occupations
- poet, writer, essayist
- Notable works
- The Black Cat, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Murders in the Rue Morgue
Facts: Wikidata (CC0), as of 2026-07-09
Poe's quotable lines split between the poems ('All that we see or seem / Is but a dream within a dream') and a gothic aphorism industry that regularly hands him things he never wrote. He died at 40 with contested circumstances that flavored his afterlife: his literary executor Rufus Griswold wrote a hostile obituary that shaped -- and darkened -- Poe's popular image for a century.