Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that even those who take life and death lightly have serious matters that warrant respect.
Edgar Allan Poe's quote reflects on the nature of seriousness in life, highlighting that, despite the humorous or lighthearted attitudes some may adopt towards life's most profound aspects, there are certain matters—often of deep moral or ethical significance—that require reverence and cannot be treated as mere jokes. It underscores a philosophical perspective on life's gravity that transcends the frivolity some may choose to embody.
In practice
In a philosophical discussion about the meaning of life and death, this quote can emphasize the importance of recognizing serious issues.
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.
According to the law of nature, wherever there is an awakening of a new and stronger life, there it tries to conquer and take the place of the old and the decaying. Nature favours the dying out of the unfit and the survival of the fittest. The final result of such conflict between the priestly and the other classes has been mentioned already.
I don't want to be labeled as either a pansy or a heterosexual. Labeling is so self-limiting. We are what we do - not what we say we are.
There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
Men judge by the complexion of the sky The state and inclination of the day.
Being in the moment means not being distracted by the melodrama and hysteria around you. Present-moment awareness allows solutions to emerge.
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
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