Quotes About Interpretation

the whole story of art is not a story of progress in technical proficiency, but a story of changing ideas and requirements.

A painting which represents a familiar subject in an unexpected way is often condemned for no better reason than that it does not seem right.

The term which psychology has coined for our relative imperviousness to the dizzy variations that go on in the world around us is "constancy." The color, shape, and brightness of things remain to us relatively constant, even though we may notice some variation with the change of distance, illumination, angle of vision, and so on.

Porque es una máxima constante que nadie ve lo que son las cosas si no sabe lo que deberían ser.

The artist gives the beholder increasingly 'more to do,' he draws him into the magic circle of creation and allows him to experience something of the thrill of 'making' which had once been the privilege of the artist

A única confissão sincera é aquela que fazemos indirectamente - ao falarmos dos outros.

Also, that men fall into two classes--those who forget views and those who remember them, even in small rooms.

It's not what people do to you, but what they mean, that hurts.

But it struck him that people are not really dead until they are felt to be dead. As long as there is some misunderstanding about them, they possess a sort of immortality.

He had a theory that musicians are incredibly complex, and know far less than other artists what they want and what they are; that they puzzle themselves as well as their friends; that their psychology is a modern development, and has not yet been understood.

Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element - direct observation. Do not learn anything about this subject of mine - the French Revolution. Learn instead what I think that Enicharmon thought Urizen thought Gutch thought Ho-Yung thought Chi-Bo-Sing thought Lafcadio Hearn thought Carlyle thought Mirabeau said about the French Revolution.

And in time there will come a generation that has got beyond facts, beyond impressions, a generation absolutely colourless, a generation seraphically free from taint of personality, which will see the French Revolution not as it happened, nor as they would like it to have happened, but as it would have happened, had it taken place in the days of the Machine.

A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.

But that some sonatas of Beethoven are written tragic no one can gainsay; yet they can triumph or despair as the player decides, and Lucy had decided that they should triumph.

They had nothing in common but the English language, and tried by its help to express what neither of them understood.

Italian in the mouth of Italians is a deep-voiced stream, with unexpected cataracts and boulders to preserve it from monotony. In Mr. Eager's mouth it resembled nothing so much as an acid whistling fountain which played ever higher and higher, and quicker and quicker, and more and more shrilly, till abruptly it was turned off with a click.

In every remark he found a meaning, but not always the true meaning, and his life, though vivid, was largely a dream.

They chose to regard it as a miraculous preservation.

Lucy was slow to follow what people said, but quick enough to detect what they meant. She missed Cecil's epigram, but grasped the feeling that prompted it.

The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists.

Appearing thus late in the story, Cecil must be at once described. He was medieval. Like a Gothic statue.

Lucy was slow to follow what people said, but quick enough to detect what they meant.

Beautiful?" said Miss Bartlett, puzzled at the word. "Are not beauty and delicacy the same?

He felt that the English are a comic institution, and enjoyed being misunderstood by them.