Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.
Interpretation
Words can only convey their true impact when they reflect the harsh realities they describe.
Edgar Allan Poe's quote highlights the idea that language has a profound effect on our minds, but this effect is intensified by the stark and often unsettling truths that the words represent. In essence, while words alone can captivate, it is their connection to reality, especially when that reality is bleak or horrifying, that makes them powerful and memorable.
In practice
In a speech about the impact of literature, you could introduce Poe's quote to illustrate the power of words.
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.
I divide my time as follows: half the time I sleep, the other half I dream. I never dream when I sleep, for that would be a pity, for sleeping is the highest accomplishment of genius.
The worst thing to call somebody is crazy. It's dismissive. "I don't understand this person. So they're crazy." That's bullshit. These people are not crazy. They strong people. Maybe their environment is a little sick.
Man is so intelligent that he feels impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations. So that when he acts on his theories, he behaves very often like a lunatic.
A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas...
Masonry is identical with the Ancient Mysteries
Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there's a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.
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