Quotes About Interpretation

The inevitable effect of a biographer's hindsight is to belittle the subject's foresight.

Philosophers are divided on the question of whether the narrative therein unfolded [the Crossman Diaries] is grippingly boring or boringly gripping.

Communist interpretation is never wrong. Logicians will object in vain that a theory which exempts itself from all refutations escapes from the order of truth. —RAYMOND ARON, L'OPIUM

He has always held to the principle (which was also favoured by Stefan Zweig) that great artists are disqualified from being objective critics, because they are always thinking of how they would have done it.

Tom Stoppard has said that the trouble with bad art is that the artist knows exactly what he's doing.)

in those days I construed absence of explicit opposition as a whole-hearted endorsement.

more typical essay is the one on Karl Kraus, of which Kraus confessed that the only thing he understood was that it was about him.

Liberals and humanists are always saying that art is the soul of truth.

Riled by pedantic reviewers in search of a solecism, Proust said that there was no correctness this side of originality.

Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous

Do not think, as you read this, that I am painting my own portrait. Be patient, it is only my model.

summed up so well that it came to far more    Than the

He'd no time for reports. He suspected that about 95% of the written word was never read by anyone anyway.

Although the Word is common to all, many live as if they had a private understanding of their own

En aquello que los hombres toman por misterios sagrados se inician impíamente

The very fact of its finding itself in agreement with other minds perturbs it, so that it hunts for points of divergence, feeling the urgent need to make it clear that at least it reached the same conclusions by a different route.

The historian is never more himself than when he is searching his mind for a general statement that shall in itself give the hint of its own underlying complexity.

It is well to remember that a Martian observing his first baseball game would be quite correct in concluding that the last two words of the National Anthem are: PLAY BALL!

In metaphor we say what we mean, but we don't mean what we say. In analogy we mean what we say, but we don't know what we mean.

if the thing denied is the possibility of reducing Sociology to the form of an exact science; then the rejoinder is that the thing denied is a thing which no one has affirmed. . . But so far as there can be generalization, and so far as there can be interpretation based on it, so far there can be science.

Both sides can make very strong cases for their positions, but sadly both sides have become arrogant and much too certain of their positions. Probably most of you who read this chapter will look at the verses on the other side (of your position) and say, "I can answer those verses easily." No, you can't! You are imposing the grid of your system on those passages that challenge you so that you won't have to be challenged. Let me give an example.

If there is no infallible Scripture "there can exist only a subjective and purely individual notion of what belongs to Christian faith." All ways are good, if they but lead to faith – not to what is contained in faith, for this differs endlessly.

Critici zijn beroepshalve verkeerd-lezers. Het begint er al mee dat lezen natuurlijk nooit een beroep mag worden; je bent ook geen beroepseter of beroepswandelaar. Het is onethisch. Lezen doe je voor je plezier.

A smile is the chosen vehicle for all ambiguities.