Quotes About Interpretation

Occasionally she glanced at him, asking with her glance, 'Is this what I think?' "I understand,' she said, blushing. "What is this word?' he said, pointing to the "n' that signified the word "never." .... She wrote: t, I, c,g,n,o,a.

He spoke with such complete self-confidence that no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid. He

I'm not a goose, you're the gooses for crying over nothing

Pierre was for the first time at this meeting impressed by the endless multiplicity of men's minds, which leads to no truth being ever seen by two persons alike...What Pierre chiefly desired was always to transmit his thought to another exactly as he conceived it himself.

He talked to her as people commonly do talk in society—all sorts of nonsense, but nonsense to which he could not help attaching a special meaning in her case.

You see a thing may be looked at tragically and turned to a torment, or looked at quite simply, and even gaily. Perhaps you are inclined to take things too tragically.

All that people sincerely believe in must be true; it may be differently expressed but it cannot be a lie, and therefore if it presents itself to me as a lie, that only means that I have not understood it.

music transports me immediately into the condition of soul in which he who wrote the music found himself at that time. I become confounded with his soul, and with him I pass from one condition to another. But why that? I know nothing about it? But he who wrote Beethoven's 'Kreutzer Sonata' knew well why he found himself in a certain condition.

I don't understand," he said, understanding her.

Anna took a knife and fork in her beautiful, white, ring-adorned hands and began to demonstrate. She obviously could see that her explanation could not make anything understood, but, knowing that her speech was pleasant and her hands were beautiful, she went on explaining.

It seemed to each of them that the life he led himself was the only real life, and the life led by his friend was a mere phantasm.

Even Karenin, who might well have turned out to be a flat caricature with his stick-out ears and cracking knuckles, is endowed with a complex personality as the other characters see him differently on different occasions: when Anna sees him at the Petersburg station, when he is at his government desk, when his son recoils from his embrace, when he is at the interview with his divorce lawyer, when

And the botanist who finds that the apple falls because the cellular tissue degenerates, and so on, will be as right and as wrong as the child who stands underneath and says that the apple fell because he wanted to eat it and prayed for it.

At the meeting he was struck for the first time by the endless variety of men's minds, which prevents a truth from ever presenting itself identically to two persons. Even those members who seemed to be on his side understood him in their own way with limitations and alterations he could not agree to, as what he always wanted most was to convey his thought to others just as he himself understood it.

At that meeting he was struck for the first time by the endless variety of men's minds, which prevents a truth from ever presenting itself identically to two persons. Even those members who seemed to be on his side understood him in their own way with limitations and alterations he could not agree to, as what he always wanted most was to convey his thought to others just as he himself understood it.

To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then, by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling—this is the activity of art.

Cualquier acto de un loco, de un borracho o de un hombre excitado se presenta, ante los ojos de quien conoce el estado de ánimo del autor del hecho, como menos libre y más sujeto a las leyes de la necesidad, y más libre y menos sometido a la necesidad a juicio de quien no lo conoce.

A causa della presunzione con la quale parlava nessuno comprese se ciò che aveva detto fosse molto intelligente oppure molto stupido.

You're fool enough at all times, and when you start explaining things in Italian you're a fool three times as foolish,

no difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions,

Meditations or discussions about art are the most useless pastimes known. Those who really know art know that art can speak well with its own language, and that to speak about art with words is useless. Most people who speak about art do not understand or feel real art.

Jamais le Christ n'aurait prononcé ces paroles s'il avait su le mauvais usage qu'on en ferait ; c'est tout ce qu'on a retenu de l'Évangile.

Am I mad because I see what others do not, or are they mad that do these things that I see?

the most experienced and skilful painter-technician would be unable, for all his mechanical ability, to paint anything unless the boundaries of the content were first revealed to him.