In one case out of a hundred a point is excessively discussed because it is obscure; in the ninety-nine remaining it is obscure because it is excessively discussed.
Interpretation
The quote highlights how excessive discussion can obscure understanding rather than clarify it.
Edgar Allan Poe's quote reflects the paradox of discourse, where a single point may seem overly complicated and thus receives undue attention, while the vast majority of topics are misunderstood due to excessive debate. This suggests that sometimes the act of discussing something too much can cloud its clarity, illustrating the idea that less is often more when it comes to understanding complex ideas.
In practice
This quote can be used in a classroom setting to discuss the importance of concise communication.
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.
Language failed me very often, but then, the substitute for me was silence, but not violence.
People talk to people who perceive nothing, who have open eyes and see nothing; they shall talk to them and receive no answer; they shall adore those who have ears and hear nothing; they shall burn lamps for those who do not see.
More-radical scholars insist that an inherent clash exists between science and our long-held conceptions about consciousness and moral agency: if you accept that our brains are a myriad of smaller components, you must reject such notions as character, praise, blame, and free will.
Arms, like laws, discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe and preserve order.
Human beings are not things needing to be motivated and controlled; they are four dimensional - body, mind, heart, and spirit.
I sat at the foot of a huge tree, a statue of the night, and tried to make an inventory of all I had seen, heard, smelled, and felt: dizziness, horror, stupor, astonishment, joy, enthusiasm, nausea, inescapable attraction. What had attracted me? It was difficult to say: Human kind cannot bear much reality.
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