Quotes About Interpretation

In the course of history it has often happened that one or other of the imperfect religions has been taken too seriously and regarded as good and true in itself, instead of as a means to the ultimate end of all religion. The effects of such mistakes are often disastrous.

Things somehow seem more real and vivid when one can apply somebody else's ready-made phrase about them.

When we see a rose, we immediately say, rose. We do not say, I see a roundish mass of delicately shaded reds and pinks. We immediately pass from the actual experience to the concept.

Poate p?rea ciudat, dar cele mai apropiate de realitate sunt întotdeauna operele literare considerate a fi cel mai puÅ£in adev?rate. S-ar putea ca realitatea în totalitatea ei s? fie întotdeauna mult prea puÅ£in demn? de a fi înregistrat?, prea lipsit? de sens sau prea oribil? pentru a r?mâne neliteraturizat?.

If only good intentions were enough to make good poetry!

In the contexts of religion and politics, words are not regarded as standing, rather inadequately, for things and events; on the contrary, things and events are regarded as particular illustrations of words.

We float in language like icebergs – four-fifths under the surface and only one-fifth of us projecting into the open air of immediate, non-linguistic experience.

We must learn how to handle words effectively; but at the same time we must preserve and, if necessary, intensify our ability to look at the world directly and not through that half opaque medium of concepts, which distorts every given fact into the all too familiar likeness of some generic label or explanatory abstraction.

Music 'says' things about the world, but in specifically musical terms. Any attempt to reproduce these musical statements 'in our own words' is necessarily doomed to failure.

For Monet, on this occasion, water lilies were the measure of water lilies; and so he painted them.

It was all extremely symbolic; but then, if you choose to think so, nothing in this world is not symbolical.

Mary looked at the picture for some time without saying anything. Indeed, she didn't know what to say; she was taken aback, she was at a loss. She had expected a cubist masterpiece, and here was a picture of a man and a horse, not only recognisable as such, but even aggressively in drawing.

Simboliai ir be spalv? atlieka savo darb?

our perceptions of the external world are habitually clouded by the verbal notions in terms of which we do our thinking. We are for ever attempting to convert things into signs for the more intelligible abstractions of our own invention. But in doing so, we rob these things of a great deal of their native thinghood.

In the human fugue there are eighteen hundred million parts. The resultant noise means something perhaps to the statistician, nothing to the artist. It is only by considering one or two parts at a time that the artist can understand anything.

Did he? Jenny lowered her voice. Shall I tell you what I think of that man? I think he's slightly sinister. Having made this pronouncement, she entered the ivory tower of her deafness and closed the door. Denis could not induce her to say anything more, could not induce her even to listen. She just smiled at him, smiled and occasionally nodded.

W]ords are not the same as things and [...] a knowledge of words about facts is in no sense equivalent to a direct and immediate apprehension of the facts themselves.

Whatever one says on the air is bound to be misunderstood; for people take from the heard or printed discourse that which they are predisposed to hear or read, not what is there- all that TV can do is to increase the number of misunderstanders by many thousandfold – and at the same time to increase the range of misunderstanding by providing no objective text to which the voluntarily ignorant can be made to refer.

Threequarters of the time one's never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.

There are many thoughts and feelings, but only a few gestures; and the mask has only half a dozen grimaces to express a thousand meanings

We are forever attempting to convert things into signs for the more intelligible abstractions of our own invention. But in doing so, we rob these things of a great deal of their native thinghood.

In the same way, the reader of a book who happens to be out of tune with the author's prevailing mood will be bored to death by the things that were written with the greatest enthusiasm. Or else, like the far-away correspondent, he may seize on something which for you was not essential, to make it of the core and kernel of the book.

Then you think there is no God?" "No, I think there quite probably is one." "Then why? …" Mustapha Mond checked him. "But he manifests himself in different ways to different men. In premodern times he manifested himself as the being that's described in these books. Now …" "How does he manifest himself now?" asked the Savage. "Well, he manifests himself as an absence; as though he weren't there at all.

But to understand English is one thing; to understand an Englishman who talks is another.