In efforts to soar above our nature, we invariably fall below it.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the struggle of trying to elevate oneself beyond inherent human qualities, often leading to failure.
Edgar Allan Poe's quote suggests that in our attempts to transcend our natural instincts and limitations, we often end up betraying those very qualities in a way that brings us down. This reflects the idea that our ambitions to rise above our human nature may sometimes lead us to failure or a loss of identity, indicating that there are fundamental aspects of our humanity that are inescapable.
In practice
In a speech about personal growth, one might say, 'As Edgar Allan Poe reminds us, in efforts to soar above our nature, we must tread carefully to avoid falling below it.'
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.
Whatever extra there is in me at any given moment isn't fully formed. I am hardly aware of it; it awaits the next book. It will - with luck - come to me during the actual writing, and it will take me by surprise
What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.[What is a sorrow? A feeling whose benefits have not yet been discovered]
was it a vision or a waking dream? Fled is that music--do I wake or sleep?
Personally, I always wondered about authors and celebrities who loudly declared there was no God. It was usually when they were healthy and popular and being listened to by crowds. What happens, I wondered, in the quiet moments before death? By then, they have lost the stage, the world has moved on. If suddenly, in their last gasping moments, through fear, a vision, a late enlightenment, they change their minds about God, who would know?
Filling the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic of Western theosophy, but not the confrontation with the Shadow and the world of darkness. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.
This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays.
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