Quotes About Interpretation

one does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood.

Whoever thought that he had understood something of me had merely construed something out of me, after his own image.

Thus the man who is responsive to artistic stimuli reacts to the reality of dreams as does the philosopher to the reality of existence; he observes closely, and he enjoys his observation: for it is out of these images that he interprets life, out of these processes that he trains himself for life.

Those who hear not the music think the dancers mad.

We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.

Ultimately no one can hear in things?books included?more than he already knows. If you have no access to something from experience, you will have no ear for it.

No one can draw more out of things, books included, than he already knows. A man has no ears for that to which experience has given him no access.

Dostoevsky,the only psychologist from whom I've anything to learn.

The images of myth must be the daemonic guardians, omnipresent and unnoticed, which protect the growth of the young mind, and guide man's interpretation of his life and struggles.

The tension of the soul in unhappiness, which cultivates its strength; its horror at the sight of the great destruction; its inventiveness and bravery in bearing, enduring, interpreting, exploiting unhappiness, and whatever in the way of depth, mystery, mask, spirit, cleverness, greatness the heart has been granted - has it not been granted them through suffering, through the discipline of great suffering?

I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to be than a good dancer.

There are many kinds of eyes. Even the sphinx has eyes - and consequently there are many kinds of 'truths,' and consequently there is no truth

Every culture that has lost myth has lost, by the same token, its natural healthy creativity. Only a horizon ringed about with myths can unify a culture. The forces of imagination and the Apollonian dream are saved only by myth from indiscriminate rambling. The images of myth must be the daemonic guardians, ubiquitous but unnoticed, presiding over the growth of the child's mind and interpreting to the mature man his life and struggles.

He who knows the reader, does nothing for the reader.

Is the world really beautified by the fact that man thinks it beautiful? He has humanized it, that is all.

In truth, nothing could be more opposed to the purely aesthetic interpretation and justification of the world which are taught in this book than the Christian teaching, which is, and wants to be, only moral and which relegates art, every art, to the realm of lies ; with its absolute standards, beginning with the truthfulness of God, it negates, judges, and damns art.

Twofold misjudgement. - The misfortune suffered by clear-minded and easily understood writers is that they are taken for shallow and thus little effort is expended on reading them: and the good fortune that attends the obscure is that the reader toils at them and ascribes to them the pleasure he has in fact gained from his own zeal.

Interpreting myself, I always read Myself into my books. I clearly need Some help. But all who climb on their own way Carry my image, too, into the breaking day.

It is good to express a matter in two ways simultaneously so as to give it both a right foot and a left. Truth can stand on one leg, to be sure; but with two it can walk and get about.

Ah, I cast indeed my net into their sea, and meant to catch good fish; but always did I draw up the head of some ancient God.

There is only a perspective seeing, only a perspective knowing; and the more affects we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes, we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our concept of this thing, our objectivity, be.

There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.

Must one first batter their ears, that they may learn to hear with their eyes? Must one clatter like kettledrums and penitential preachers? Or do they only believe the stammerer?

Beethoven's music is music about music.