A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.
Interpretation
Retribution is ineffective if it does not deliver justice or if the avenger is not recognized.
This quote by Edgar Allan Poe suggests that wrongs in society remain unaddressed not only when the punishment fails to occur but also when the person who seeks justice is not acknowledged. It emphasizes the importance of recognition and acknowledgment in the process of avenging wrongs, pointing to a deeper understanding of justice beyond mere retribution.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about social justice to emphasize the importance of recognition in addressing wrongs.
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.
You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office. You are not nameless to me. Do not remain nameless to yourself β it is too sad a way to be. Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of the naΓ―ve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher's ideals are.
homesickness is just a state of mind for me. i'm always missing someone or someplace or something, i'm always trying to get back to some imaginary somewhere. my life has been one long longing.
It is advertising and the logic of consumerism that governs the depiction of reality in the mass media.
Don't seek God in temples. He is close to you. He is within you. Only you should surrender to Him and you will rise above happiness and unhappiness.
You have nice manners for a thief and a liar," said the dragon.
Much of our waking experience is but a dream in the daylight.
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