Quotes About Interpretation

That our words are, as a general rule, filled by the people to whom we address them with a meaning which those people desire from their own substance, a meaning widely different from that which we had put into the same words when we uttered them, is a fact which is perpetually demonstrated in daily life.

for each of us sees clarity only in those ideas which have the same degree of confusion as his own.

it would even be inexact to say that I thought of those who read it as readers of my book. Because they were not, as I saw it, my readers. More exactly they were readers of themselves, my book being a sort of magnifying glass … by which I could give them the means to read within themselves.

It's far more difficult to disfigure a great work of art than to create one.

People who learn some correct detail about another person's life at once draw conclusions from it which are not accurate, and see in the newly discovered fact an explanation of things that have no connexion with it whatsoever.

Une œuvre où il y a des théories est comme un objet sur lequel on laisse la marque du prix.

myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book: a church, a quartet, the rivalry between François I and Charles V

Les plats se lisent et les livres se mangent.

And so we ought not to fear in love, as in everyday life, the future alone, but even the past, which often comes to life for us only when the future has come and gone - and not only the past which we discover after the event but the past which we have long kept stored within ourselves and suddenly learn how to interpret.

the objects which we admire have no absolute value in themselves...

A work in which there are theories is like an object upon which the price is marked.

Assim trocamos palavras mentirosas. Mas uma verdade mais profunda do que a que diríamos se fôssemos sinceros pode às vezes ser expressa e anunciada por outro meio que não o da sinceridade.

Ogni lettore, quando legge, legge sé stesso. L'opera dello scrittore è soltanto una specie di strumento ottico che è offerto al lettore per permettergli di discernere quello che, senza libro, non avrebbe forse visto in sé stesso.

It was true that Odette played vilely, but often the most memorable impression of a piece of music is one that has arisen out of a jumble of wrong notes struck by unskilful fingers upon a tuneless piano.

We guess as we read, we create; everything starts from an initial error; those that follow (and this applies not only to the reading of letters and telegrams, not only to all reading), extraordinary as they may appear to a person who has not begun at the same place, are all quite natural. A large part of what we believe to be true (and this applies even to our final conclusions) with an obstinacy equalled only by our good faith, springs from an original mistake in our premises.

often the fairest impression that remains in our minds of a favourite air is one which has arisen out of a jumble of wrong notes struck by unskillful fingers upon a tuneless piano.

In reality every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self.

So difficult is it for us to know, with the dead as with the living, whether a thing would cause them joy or sorrow!

Well, well, what I always say is, one should never argue about plays or novels. Everyone has his own way of looking at things, and what may be horrible to you is, perhaps, just what I like best.

this style also her letter on bleeding, on lemons and so forth, supposing it to be typical of the letters of Madame de Sévigné. But my grandmother who had approached that lady from within, attracted to her by her own love of kinsfolk and of nature, had taught me to enjoy the real beauties of her correspondence, which are altogether different

We are very slow to recognise in the peculiar physiognomy of a new writer the model which is labelled "great talent" in our museum of general ideas.

In the end they come to fill out so completely the curve of his cheeks, to follow so exactly the line of his nose, they blend so harmoniously in the sound of his voice that these seem to be no more than a transparent envelope, so that each time we see the face or hear the voice it is our own ideas of him which we recognise and to which we listen. And

To see how pretty an old woman once was, it is not enough just to look at each feature; they must be translated.

Cada lector es, cuando lee, el propio lector de sí mismo. La obra del escritor no es más que una especie de instrumento óptico ofrecido al lector para permitirle discernir lo que, sin ese libro, no hubiera podido ver en sí mismo.