Quotes About Interpretation

I should have known that a man can receive only what his mind has been prepared to receive, that all else is ignored, or interpreted to suit his prior interpretation—that man can only accept change through it being interpreted as no change, or not knowing it is change.

Do you remember what Darwin says about music? He claims that the power of producing and appreciating it existed among the human race long before the power of speech was arrived at. Perhaps that is why we are so subtly influenced by it. There are vague memories in our souls of those misty centuries when the world was in its childhood.' That's a rather broad idea,' I remarked. One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature,' he answered.

Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing. It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different

When once your point of view is changed, the very thing which was so damning becomes a clue to the truth.

Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason, that he has been in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of writing lately, I can deduce nothing else.

Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.

One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature

Watson, you can see everything. You fail, however, to reason from what you see.

Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

I should have more faith. I ought to know by this time that when a fact appears to be opposed to a long train of deductions, it invariably proves to be capable of bearing some other interpretation.

Perhaps when a man has special knowledge and special powers like my own, it rather encourages him to seek a complex explanation when a simpler one is at hand.

The absence of the latter means nothing, though its presence may mean everything

It is not easy to express the inexpressible, he answered with a laugh.

One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature, he answered.

What, indeed? It is art for art's sake, Watson.

Cuando un hecho parece contradecir un largo cortejo de deducciones resulta de una manera invariable capaz de ser interpretado de diferente manera.

One's ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature

fact appears to be opposed to a long train of deductions, it invariably proves to be capable of bearing some other interpretation.

Siempre hay tres partes de un recuerdo, la tuya, la de los demás, y la verdad, que está en algún sitio en medio de las otras dos.

I endeavor to be serious and you will not take me seriously

That alas is the way it goes; Something we must rectify. Paul, not Caro, would interpret the degree of meaning in their respective lots. That had been decided, as he sat speaking intimately of his life to the person most excluded from it - in order to readmit her to the intimacy, though not the life.

I was wondering about my eyes; one of my eyes–-the left–-saw everything golden and yellow and orange, and the other eye saw shades of blue and grey and green; perhaps one eye was for daylight and the other was for night. If everyone in the world saw different colors from different eyes there might be a great many new colors still to be invented.

When Jim Donell thought of something to say he said it as often and in as many ways as possible, perhaps because he had very few ideas and had to wring each one dry.

Now I want to say something about words artificially weighted; you can, and frequently must, make a word carry several meanings or messages in your story if you use the word right. This is a kind of shorthand.