The Reason for the Darkness of the Night Quotes

“The result was an unforgettable image of a haunted man staring into grim destiny, struggling to maintain self-possession.”
― John Tresch, The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science

“The United States was presented as “a nation of the most powerful magicians” who send their voice from one end of the earth to the other (the telegraph), direct the sun to make a picture (the daguerreotype), and tame "a huge horse whose bones were iron and whose blood was boiling water" (the stream train).”
― John Tresch, The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science

“Some researchers worried that the institute was more concerned with publicizing science rather than doing it; according to Bache, Americans “have half a hundred persons engaged in diffusing science for one who is occupied by research.”
― John Tresch, The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science

“Laying the cornerstone in 1833, Biddle extolled the need for public instruction in the United States; in other countries it may be “a private misfortune” to be “uneducated and ignorant,” but in America “it is a public wrong,” because the “general equality of power would be dangerous, if it enabled an ignorant mass to triumph by numerical force over the superior intelligence which it envied.”
― John Tresch, The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science

“I am not altogether pleased with the appearance of my costume,” he wrote to Harriet after visiting Philadelphia, “and must endeavor for the sake of appearances to improve it.”
― John Tresch, The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science

“I stand amid the roar Of a surf-tormented shore, And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand— … While I weep—while I weep! O God! can I not grasp Them with a tighter clasp? O God! can I not save One from the pitiless wave? Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?”
― John Tresch, The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science

“One of the searing ironies of Poe’s life was that during this rise to fame, as he developed an ideal of the quasi-omniscient author in total control of the creative process, his life was falling apart—his career, his relationships, and his very mind—a victim of bad luck, alcohol, and self-sabotage. He elaborated his theory of rational artistic mastery in the very months in which his life grew most chaotic and his sanity was most thrown into doubt.”
― John Tresch, The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science

“Poe would later write “Diddling Considered as One of the Exact Sciences,” a satirical manual of methods for “diddles,” petty scams, and deceptions.”
― John Tresch, The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science

“Locke’s “Discoveries in the Moon” suggested that both scientists and hoaxers drew from the same tool kit to persuade their audiences and forge conviction. Truth and belief were, at least in part, questions of style. They were effects achieved by a controlled unfolding of information, the language of facts and observation, vivid imagery, a wide distribution network, favorable publicity, word of mouth, good timing, and good luck.”
― John Tresch, The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science

“As we will see, for Benjamin Franklin’s great-grandson Alexander Dallas Bache and his close allies the physicist Joseph Henry and the mathematician-astronomer Benjamin Peirce, fostering science was fundamental to building America as a unified nation. They strove to establish well-organized, federally supported institutions for training and research. They saw these as crucial supports for state power, industrial development, and territorial conquest. Woven through the era’s conflicts, science was just beginning to coalesce into the powerful (if at times threatened) institution we recognize today.”
― John Tresch, The Reason for the Darkness of the Night: Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science