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.
To Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love All pray in their distress, And to these virtues of delight Return their thankfulness.
Realism; fatalism; phlegm. To live in the Fens is to receive strong doses of reality. The great flat monotony of reality; the wide empty space of reality. Melancholia and self-murder are not unknown in the Fens. Heavy drinking, madness and sudden acts of violence are not uncommon. How do you surmount reality, children? How do you acquire, in a flat country, the tonic of elevated feelings?
God doesnβt need to punish us. He just grants us a long enough life to punish ourselves.
Human freedom involves our capacity to pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight.
We cannot forever hide the truth about ourselves from ourselves.
Four years ago in speaking of a Jewish nation one ran the risk of being regarded ridiculous. Today he makes himself ridiculous who denies the existence of a Jewish nation.
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