Quotes About Interpretation

How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean.

With the brush we merely tint, while the imagination alone produces colour.

The President and the Congress are all very well in their way. They can say what they think they think, but it rests with the Supreme Court to decide what they have really thought.

Nothing we come upon in the world can any longer speak to us in its own rights … [They] have been deprived of the voice with which they once declared their mystery to men.

Obscenity is not a quality inherent in a book or picture, but is solely and exclusively a contribution of the reading mind, and hence cannot be defined in terms of the qualities of a book or picture.

I peered at his writing, but I could make nothing of it. Then I saw why, and my soul chilled like marble. His writing was running left to right. Not the words in reverse order, but the letter themselves. All of it. It was mirror writing- to be read by the Devil.

Sometimes people do what they think is for the best, and their intentions are misinterpreted.

Nigel You know, just simple lines intertwining, you know, very much like - I'm really influenced by Mozart and Bach, and it's sort of in between those, really. It's like a Mach piece, really. It's sort of - Marty What do you call this Nigel Well, this piece is called Lick My Love Pump.

My old teacher's definition of poetry is an attempt to understand.

I hold it to be impracticable"4 to try to define it or any right narrowly in a Bill of Rights.

All Scripture ought to be read in the spirit in which it was written.

All Bibles are man-made.

Whatever is received is received according to the nature of the recipient.

Whatever is received into something is received according to the condition of the receiver

No man ought to despise or in any way injure another man without urgent cause: and, consequently, unless we have evident indications of a person's wickedness, we ought to deem him good, by interpreting for the best whatever is doubtful about him.

He who interprets doubtful matters for the best, may happen to be deceived more often than not; yet it is better to err frequently through thinking well of a wicked man, than to err less frequently through having an evil opinion of a good man, because in the latter case an injury is inflicted, but not in the former.

I answer that, On this question Augustine differs from other expositors. His opinion is that all the days that are called seven, are one day represented in a sevenfold aspect (Gen. ad lit. iv, 22; De Civ. Dei xi, 9; Ad Orosium xxvi);

Objection 6: Further, evening and morning do not sufficiently divide the day, since the day has many parts. Therefore the words, "The evening and morning were the second day" or, "the third day," are not suitable. Objection 7: Further, "first," not "one," corresponds to "second" and "third." It should therefore have been said that, "The evening and the morning were the first day," rather than "one day.

We next consider all the seven days in common: and there are three points of inquiry: (1) As to the sufficiency of these days; (2) Whether they are all one day, or more than one? (3) As to certain modes of speaking which Scripture uses in narrating the works of the six days.

Reply to Objection 1: Cherubim is interpreted "fulness of knowledge," while "Seraphim" means "those who are on fire," or "who set on fire.

In the significance of names, that from which the name is derived is different sometimes from what it is intended to signify, as for instance, this name "stone" [lapis] is imposed from the fact that it hurts the foot [loedit pedem], but it is not imposed to signify that which hurts the foot, but rather to signify a certain kind of body; otherwise everything that hurts the foot would be a stone [*This refers to the Latin etymology of the word "lapis" which has no place in English].

History begins in novel and ends in essay.

A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the whole be false.

It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day. Perhaps I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and the signature (which I guessed at).