Quotes About Interpretation

Like other people, anthropologists may see only what they want to see, even when what they want to see is nothing.

Trying to understand man without recognizing him as imago Dei is like trying to understand a bas-relief without recognizing it as a carving.

Those are just platitudes. Everyone has his own idea of "playing fair." "Does he? Try making up your own idea of what's fair--say, "giving the greatest rewards to the laziest workers"--and see how seriously people take you.

Here again is one grand element of a preacher's success. He must labour by all means to be understood. It was a wise saying of Archbishop Usher, "To make easy things seem hard is every man's work; but to make hard things easy is the work of a great preacher.

It's partly true, too, but it isn't all true. People always think something's all true.

Our language is funny — a fat chance and slim chance are the same thing.

Books are like mirrors: if a fool looks in, you cannot expect a genius to look out.

Understanding is a three edged sword: your side, their side, and the truth.

I have always believed that poems beg to be read aloud, even if the reader is in a world all her own.

Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?

What do you mean? Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good on this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?

The fact that the Constitution is sufficiently open-ended to infuriate all Americans almost equally is part of its enduring genius.

The Framers were no more interested in binding future Americans to a set of divinely inspired commandments than any of us would wish to be bound by them.

History is often made and buttressed by myths and folklore rather than facts.

I can't use words to respond to this communication...I can only answer...as a forward!

You may want to find a way to suggest ironic distance between the poet and speaker.

Popular science tries to define realities, and then finds that the definition can be extended to any number of unrealities.

Good docents often begin by asking the viewer, "What do you see in this work?" The idea that the expert should be allowed to constrain the interpretation of others rightly offends our sensibilities about museums and art. It ought to offend us just as much when applied to Scripture.

I urge not that we assume that love will provide a reliable foundation for knowledge but that we nonetheless keep the requirements of love of neighbor foremost in our interpretations of Scripture. We should consider, for example, love to be a necessary criterion (a minimum) when defending an interpretation of Scripture even if it cannot be a sufficient criterion that will guarantee ethical interpretation.

The best argument is that which seems merely an explanation.

People who shop at Barnes and Noble voted Ulysses the best novel of the last century, and who's to tell them different? There was a point when I would have liked to, but apparently that's just because I'm a bitch.

Maar sy kyk nie meer nuus nie. Sy lees ook nie meer koerant nie. Reg en verkeerd, waarheid en leuen is strome wat deurmekaar geloop het in een rivier, jy kry dit nie meer uitmekaar geskep nie.

There is not a right and a wrong answer to every question.

What I want to give in the theatre is beauty, that's what I want to give.