The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.
Interpretation
The collective imagination of a crowd can be easily influenced.
Edgar Allan Poe suggests that a mob's opinions and feelings are driven by their imagination, rather than rational thought. This idea implies that if a leader can tap into the collective imagination of a crowd, they can guide or manipulate the crowd's behavior with relative ease.
In practice
During a political rally, one might cite this quote to illustrate how leaders can sway public opinion.
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.
I cried over beautiful things, knowing no beautiful thing lasts.
When we have become free, we need not go mad and throw up society and rush off to die in the forest or the cave; we shall remain where we were but we shall understand the whole thing. The same phenomena will remain but with a new meaning.
Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.
In Nicaragua, liberty, equality and the rule of law were the stuff of dreams. But in Paris I discovered the value of those words.
All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies.
A total spiritual direction given to the whole life and the whole nature can alone lift humanity beyond itself. . . It is only the full emergence of the soul, the full descent of the native light and power of the Spirit and the consequent replacement or transformation and uplifting of our insufficient mental and vital nature by a spiritual and supramental Supernature that can effect this evolutionary miracle.
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