Quotes About Interpretation

What a phrase that is: "that explains everything!" I know better than to think that anything "explains everything" today.

But he was not acting in this performance—they were.

And more than beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I was thinking, when I looked back—up the nighttime mountain—at the wrecked train, lying in the snow.

Lupe's language was incomprehensible—what came out of her mouth didn't even sound like Spanish.

But Americans are not great historians, and so, for years—educated by my neighbor—I thought that sagamore was an Indian word for lake.

WHY SHOULD SOMEONE WHO'S GOT SUCH A WORKED-OUT WAY OF SEEING THE WORLD BORE YOU? WHY SHOULDN'T YOU BE INTERESTED IN SOMEONE WHO'S WORKED OUT A WAY TO SEE THE WORLD? THAT'S WHAT MAKES WRITERS INTERESTING!

She told all the would-be biographers, exactly as he would have, "Read the work. Forget the life.

The destruction of art by sociology and psychoanalysis," he called it.

What shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the chameleon poet.

Ignatius, what's all this trash on the floor? That is my worldview that you see. It still must be incorporated into a whole, so be careful where you step.

Had you 'artists' had a part in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel, it would have ended up looking like a particularly vulgar train terminal," Ignatius snorted.

Every difficult work presents us with a choice of whether to judge the author inept for not being clear, or ourselves stupid for not grasping what is going on. Montaigne encouraged us to blame the author. An incomprehensible prose-style is likely to have resulted more from laziness than cleverness; what reads easily is rarely so written...

This guy was a real Pscyho' Mr. Levy said. 'To you character is a psychosis, integrity is a complex. I've heard it all before.

out of the pecuniary and political pressures and fashions of the time, economics and larger economic and political systems cultivate their own version of the truth. This last has no relation to reality. No one is especially at fault; what is convenient to believe is greatly preferred.

C'é infatti un numero considerevole di persone di cultura convinte che qualsiasi sforzo riuscito per rendere le idee vive, intellegibili e interessanti sia una manifestazione di scarso rigore professionale. E' questa la fortezza dentro la quale regolarmente si rifugiano.

Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.

Reporter lady: What's that color? John: Hm. I'd call this a color!

An artist, when sketching, looks at a landscape and then a sketch pad, repeating the process until an image appears, depicting, but not duplicating, what's there. Landscape and sketch pad guide the artist's hand, but no two artists will sketch the scene in just the same way.

It's no stretch to say, then, that Thucydides coaches all who read him. For as his greatest modern interpreter (himself a sometime coach) has gently reminded us, the Greeks, despite their antiquity, "may have believed things we have either forgotten or never known; and we must keep open the possibility that in some respects, at least, they were wiser than we.

Tolstói rivaliza con él, en mi opinión, a la hora de detectar lo relevante y lo significativo donde, a primera vista, parece que no está.

The issue for historians , then, is not whether we should make moral judgments, but how we can do so responsibly, by which I mean in such a way as to convince both the professionals and non-professionals who'll read our work that what we say makes sense.

In Spanish, the word esposas means both 'wives' and 'handcuffs'.

What is literally the most misused word in the English language? The word 'literally' has been used to mean its opposite for over 200 years.

You should never, ever be understood completely. That's like the kiss of death, isn't it? It's a full stop. I don't ever think you should put full stops on thoughts. They change.