In efforts to soar above our nature, we invariably fall below it.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the struggle of trying to elevate oneself beyond inherent human qualities, often leading to failure.
Edgar Allan Poe's quote suggests that in our attempts to transcend our natural instincts and limitations, we often end up betraying those very qualities in a way that brings us down. This reflects the idea that our ambitions to rise above our human nature may sometimes lead us to failure or a loss of identity, indicating that there are fundamental aspects of our humanity that are inescapable.
In practice
In a speech about personal growth, one might say, 'As Edgar Allan Poe reminds us, in efforts to soar above our nature, we must tread carefully to avoid falling below it.'
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.
One can say that the city itself is the collective memory of its people, and like memory it is associated with objects and places. The city is the locus of the collective memory.
Any system which says, This is a rotten world, wait for the next, give up, do nothing, succumb--that may be the basic Lie and if we participate in believing it and acting (or rather not acting) on it we involve ourselves in the Lie and suffer dreadfully... which only reinforces that particular Lie.
Filling the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic of Western theosophy, but not the confrontation with the Shadow and the world of darkness. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.
In the midst of death life persists, in the midst of untruth, truth persists, in the midst of darkness light persists.
X, n. In our alphabet being a needless letter has an added invincibility to the attacks of the spelling reformers, and like them, will doubtless last as long as the language.
I ceased using words like optimism and pessimism a long time ago.
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