Odors have an altogether peculiar force, in affecting us through association; a force differing essentially from that of objects addressing the touch, the taste, the sight or the hearing.
Interpretation
Odors have a unique ability to influence our emotions and memories, distinct from other senses.
In this quote, Edgar Allan Poe highlights the significant impact that smells can have on our psychological and emotional experiences. Unlike other senses, odors can evoke vivid memories and feelings due to their strong associations, demonstrating the profound connection between scent and our personal histories.
In practice
A speaker might use this quote to illustrate the power of memory during a psychology lecture.
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.
Where two principles really do meet which cannot be reconciled with one another, then each man declares the other a fool and a heretic
Because there is no cosmic point to the life that each of us perceives on this distant bit of dust at galaxy's edge, all the more reason for us to maintain in proper balance what we have here. Because there is nothing else. Nothing. This is it. And quite enough, all in all.
I found that things became a lot easier when I no longer expected to win. You abandon your masterpiece and sink into the real masterpiece.
It is the destiny of the weak to be devoured by the strong.
It is not by great acts but by small failures that freedom dies. . . . Justice and liberty die quietly, because men first learn to ignore injustice and then no longer recognize it.
All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.
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