Edgar Allan Poe · 38 pages
Rating: (18.8K votes)
“It will be found, in fact, that the ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative never otherwise than analytic.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Murders in the Rue Morgue
“There are few persons who have not, at some period of their lives, amused themselves in retracing the steps by which particular conclusions of their own minds have been attained. The occupation is often full of interest and he who attempts it for the first time is astonished by the apparently illimitable distance and incoherence between the starting-point and the goal.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Murders in the Rue Morgue
“Coincidences, in general, are great stumbling-blocks in the way of that class of thinkers who have been educated to know nothing of the theory of probabilities---that theory to which the most glorious objects of human research are indebted for the most glorious of illustration.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Murders in the Rue Morgue
“I was deeply interested in the little family history which he detailed to me with all that candor which a Frenchman indulges whenever mere self is the theme.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Murders in the Rue Morgue
“He impaired his vision by holding the object too close. He might see, perhaps, one or two points with unusual clearness, but in so doing he, necessarily, lost sight of the matter as a whole. Thus there is such a thing as being too profound. Truth is not always in a well. In fact, as regards the more important knowledge, I do believe that she is invariably superficial. The depth lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops where she is found.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Murders in the Rue Morgue
“To look at a star by glances—to view it in a side-long way, by turning toward it the exterior portions of the retina (more susceptible of feeble impressions of light than the interior), is to behold the star distinctly—is to have the best appreciation of its lustre—a lustre which grows dim just in proportion as we turn our vision fully upon it. A greater number of rays actually fall upon the eye in the latter case, but in the former, there is the more refined capacity for comprehension. By undue profundity we perplex and enfeeble thought; and it is possible to make even Venus herself vanish from the firmament by a scrutiny too sustained, too concentrated, or too direct.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Murders in the Rue Morgue
“In the American Civil War it was a matter of principle that a good officer rode his horse as little as possible. There were sound reasons for this. If you are riding and your soldiers are marching, how can you judge how tired they are, how thirsty, how heavy their packs weigh on their shoulders? I applied the same philosophy in Vietnam, where every battalion commander had his own command-and-control helicopter. Some commanders used their helicopter as their personal mount. I never believed in that. You had to get on the ground with your troops to see and hear what was happening. You have to soak up firsthand information for your instincts to operate accurately. Besides, it’s too easy to be crisp, cool, and detached at 1, 500 feet; too easy to demand the impossible of your troops; too easy to make mistakes that are fatal only to those souls far below in the mud, the blood, and the confusion.”
― Harold G. Moore, quote from We Were Soldiers Once... and Young: Ia Drang - The Battle that Changed the War in Vietnam
“Chace shook his head, not at odds with how he felt about Tatum Jackson and Tyrell Walker, two of the biggest badasses he knew, demonstrating signs they were pussy whipped and didn’t give a shit.”
― Kristen Ashley, quote from Breathe
“One man's faith is another man's delusion. . . .”
― Jon Krakauer, quote from Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
“One result of turning a blind eye to the horrors of the world, because you can stand only so much, is that you end up forgetting that each individual who is subjected to heinous suffering is your fellow, your equal, and that you could have been in their shoes, and that he or she could one day have become your friend.”
― Malika Oufkir, quote from Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail
“And failure, if you want to know, Dakota, is just another opportunity to try again.”
― Kate Jacobs, quote from The Friday Night Knitting Club
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