Quotes About Interpretation

The object of true art is to charm the imagintion...

I want to reach that condensation of sensations that constitutes a picture.

Artists talk to themselves on canvas, mumbling scattered colors of emotion.

My inspiration is art... because without art, we would just be stuck with reality.

Art is art, even when unsuccessful.

Art is never didactic, does not take kindly to facts, is helpless to grapple with theories, and is killed outright by a sermon.

...the Man in the Zodiac has his clue in the man of flesh and blood.

Nothing is more unfair to an author than to read or "dip into" his book before seeing what he has to say about it in his Preface.

One man's crappy software is another man's full time job.

...after having read for twelve months what these critics say I meant to say in the poem, it seems to me that I may be allowed to express my own opinion...

Reviewers are forever telling authors, they can't understand them. The author might often reply: Is that my fault?

I don't mind adverse criticism. It doesn't matter if I'm misinterpreted because not everyone will understand what I'm trying to say.

One man's daydreaming is another man's day.

Emily Dickinson is a good example of the visionary who sets down her little glimpses of truth or beauty in the condensed forms in which they flashed into her mind, without effort to expand and interpret, probably without the ability to do so. Her poems will never be enjoyed by a multitude of readers because she never sought to reach the many. The few who enjoy will do so by reason of the fact that they are themselves supplying all of the expansion and interpretation.

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.

History ain't what it is. It's what some writer wanted it to be.

History is a riddle, to be solved by inference... We see the puppets dance, but the springs which move them are invisible, and must be conjectured.

The real history does not get written, because it is not in people's brains but in their nerves and vitals.

Then, Sir, you would reduce all history to no better than an almanack, a mere chronological series of remarkable events.

An historian is an unsuccessful novelist.

You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician wrong—to his own satisfaction.

He's trying to speak, I do believe, Beth announced. At this moment speech came to White Fang, rushing up in a great burst of barking. Something has happened to Weedon, His wife said decisively.

mas o branco fala verdade de formas diferentes. Hoje fala verdade, amanhã fala verdade de outra maneira e não há como compreendê-lo nem se entende o seu modo de ser.

Dogs asleep in the sun often whined and barked, but they were unable to tell what they saw that made them whine and bark. He had often wondered what it was. And that was all he was, a dog asleep in the sun.