Quotes About Interpretation

The poet advises: 'Read me. Read me again.' He does not always come away unscathed from his page, but like the poor, he knows how to make use of an olive's eternity.

I am convinced that we have entered an era when anthropology will become a more relevant tool than political science. We will have to radically change our interpretation of events, stop thinking as products of the Enlightenment, and finally envisage the radical nature of violence; this will produce a quite different kind of rationality as required by events.

The world's myths do not reveal a way to interpret the Gospels, but exactly the reverse: the Gospels reveal to us the way to interpret myth.

Myths are the retrospective transfiguration of sacrificial crises, the reinterpretation of those crises in light of the cultural order that has arisen from them.

Being made up of distinctions, language finds it almost impossible to express undifferentiation.

it's a bad idea to condemn Holy Scripture hastily. When we feel like dismissing Scripture, we should watch out. Perhaps we are not, at that moment, up to what our task requires.

Resorting to a psychological explanation is less innocent than it appears. In refusing the mimetic interpretation, in looking for the failure of Peter in purely individual causes, we attempt to demonstrate, unconsciously of course, that in Peter's place we would have responded differently; we would not have denied Jesus. Jesus reproaches the Pharisees for an older version of the same ploy when he sees them build tombs for the prophets that their fathers killed.

for there are things for which a symbolical mode of expression properly so called is the only one possible, and which will consequently never be understood by those for whom symbolism is a dead letter.

Les Apsarâs sont les Nymphes célestes, qui symbolisent aussi ces possibilités informelles ; elles correspondent aux Hûris du Paradis islamique (El-Jannah), qui, sauf dans les transpositions dont il est susceptible au point de vue ésotérique et qui lui confèrent des significations d'ordre plus élevé, est proprement l'équivalent du Swarga hindou.

Dans la numération chinoise, la croix représente le nombre 10 (le chiffre romain X n'est d'ailleurs, lui aussi, que la croix autrement disposée)

If the dream is a translation of waking life, waking life is also a translation of the dream.

Between words and objects one can create new relations and specify characteristics of language and objects generally ignored in everyday life.

If one looks at a thing with the intention of trying to discover what it means, one ends up no longer seeing the thing itself, but of thinking of the question that is raised.

Choosing to interpret all of your experiences from a place of love will allow you to strengthen and empower yourself while moving closer to the divine light.

The truth is not in the touch of a stone, but in what the stone tells you.

Are the stories we tell ourselves true or based on what we dream them to be?

This is not a pipe.

It is not my intention to make anything comprehensible. I am of the opinion that there are sufficient paintings which one understands after a shorter or longer delay, and that therefore some incomprehensible painting would now be welcome. I am at pains to deliver such, as far as possible.

Hayden] white argues instead for histories that avoid narrative closure and that highlight the contingency of the past ... He points especially to chronicle - a form marked by a lack of closure - as a useful alternative to the narrative. In a chronicle, historians offer an interpretation of the past but simply end the account when they reach the present.

At a recognizable point in the research process, looking at more sources does not provide more insight. When we have consulted enough material to identify patterns and developments, then … we have the mastery necessary to offer an interpretation of the past

Far better to give your readers some hints and then allow them to fill in the blanks for themselves. This

Describing your action too precisely can be as condescending as describing your characters' emotions. Far better to give your readers some hints and then allow them to fill in the blanks for themselves. This

Nothing is obvious in itself. Obviousness is subjective.

It would take an extremely unattractive person to think of that." --Nero Wolfe, on the plot of "Cordially Invited to Meet Death" by Rex Stout, p. 159 of 192