Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.
Interpretation
Truth often comes from unexpected or overlooked sources.
This quote by Edgar Allan Poe suggests that many truths and insights arise not from traditional or expected sources of knowledge, but instead from what may seem irrelevant at first glance. It emphasizes the importance of being open to unconventional ideas and the value of exploring areas that may initially appear unrelated to the matter at hand.
In practice
During a lecture on critical thinking, this quote can illustrate the importance of questioning assumptions.
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.
For tyme ylost may nought recovered be.
Flaubert was right when he said that our use of language is like a cracked kettle on which we bang out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we need to move the very stars to pity.
When you stand up in the morning, you look in the mirror and say, 'I'm black.' No. You wake up and you see yourself as a human being in the world, but you raise discussion and raise aggression, the anger that you confront every day of your life, whether you want to or not.
The spirit of man is more important than mere physical strength, and the spiritual fiber of a nation than its wealth.
We have built a thousand temples to Fortune and not one to Reason
I firmly believe a great many prayers are not answered because we are not willing to forgive someone.
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