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.
It is an absurdity to believe that the Deity has human passions, and one of the lowest of human passions, a restless appetite for applause
People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
People can have the Model T in any color β so long as itβs black.
Every one must act according to the dictates of his own reason, and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.
Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side.
The danger of psychedelic drugs, the danger of mind-opening, the danger of consciousness expansion, the danger of inner discovery is a danger to the establishment.
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