QuoteProject
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As if some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--Only this and nothing more.
Edgar Allan Poe
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote encapsulates an atmosphere of mystery and curiosity during a moment of introspection.

In this passage, Edgar Allan Poe sets a melancholic and eerie scene as the narrator reflects on forgotten knowledge while feeling tired and vulnerable. The midnight hour enhances the sense of suspense as he hears a tapping at his door, representing the intrusion of the unknown and perhaps the inevitability of confronting one's thoughts and fears.

Themes

MysteryIntrospectionForgotten KnowledgeCuriosityNight

In practice

Example use cases

This quote could be used in a discussion about the creative process in literature.

More from Edgar Allan Poe

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.
Edgar Allan PoeRead
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.
Edgar Allan PoeRead
...the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long and final scream of despair.
Edgar Allan PoeRead
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest.
Edgar Allan PoeRead
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?
Edgar Allan PoeRead
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.
Edgar Allan PoeRead

Similar quotes

Folklore is the perfect second skin. From under its hide, we can see all the shimmering, shadowy uncertainties of the world.
Jane YolenRead
Styles come and go. Good design is a language, not a style.
Massimo VignelliRead
"Music, for me, has always been a place where anything is possible--a refuge, a magical world where anyone can go, where all kinds of people can come together, and anything can happen. We are limited only by our imaginations.
Bill FrisellRead
The sound of the rain needs no translation. In music one doesn't make the end of the composition the point of the composition... Same way in dancing, you don't aim at one particular spot in the room... The whole point of dancing is the dance.
Alan WattsRead
To tell of disappointment and misery, to thicken the darkness of futurity, and perplex the labyrinth of uncertainty, has been always a delicious employment of the poets
Samuel JohnsonRead
It's weird that, in a way, by writing about video games, I get to develop them, too.
Ernest ClineRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.