The best chess-player in Christendom may be little more than the best player of chess; but proficiency in whist implies capacity for success in all those more important undertakings where mind struggles with mind.
Interpretation
Being skilled in complex games reflects one's capability in other important intellectual challenges.
Edgar Allan Poe suggests that while being a great chess player is admirable, true proficiency in the game of whist indicates a deeper intellectual capacity that can translate to success in various significant and challenging endeavors. This comparison underscores the value of skills that require not only strategy but also an understanding of human interaction and competition.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech to emphasize the importance of diverse skills.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate!) And round about his home the glory That blushed and bloomed, Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed.
Most writers - poets in especial - prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy - an ecstatic intuition - and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes.
...the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long and final scream of despair.
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest.
I could have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. "Death," I said, "any death but that of the pit!" Fool! might I have not known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me?
In our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember.
Know how to keep anticipation alive: always strive to feed it, by letting the much promise more, and the one achievement be the announcement only of a greater. Put not all your reserves into the first throw; the great trick is to dole out strength, and to dole out mind, in such a fashion as to bring forward increasingly the fulfillment of what was expected of you.
The imagination is literally the workshop wherein are fashioned all plans created by man.
He who lives without folly isn't so wise as he thinks.
Like a tongue on frozen steel, like flesh in flame —
My best advice for writers is: Have your adventures, make your mistakes, and choose your friends poorly - all these make for great stories.
I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wants.
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