Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.
Interpretation
Truth often comes from unexpected or overlooked sources.
This quote by Edgar Allan Poe suggests that many truths and insights arise not from traditional or expected sources of knowledge, but instead from what may seem irrelevant at first glance. It emphasizes the importance of being open to unconventional ideas and the value of exploring areas that may initially appear unrelated to the matter at hand.
In practice
During a lecture on critical thinking, this quote can illustrate the importance of questioning assumptions.
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.
No," said a voice, "the only thing wrong on a night like that is that there is a world and you must come back to it.
Victory has a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan.
We always try to interpret things in accordance with what we want and not as they are.
"God does not give us more than we can handle," I am told but I wonder if God doesn't overestimate me just a little. Or perhaps, and this is likely, I underestimate God.
Each man's life represents a road toward himself.
Violence comes from the belief that other people cause our pain and therefore deserve punishment.
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