Quotes About Interpretation

Sherlock : You do yourself an injustice. The features are given to man as the means by which he shall express his emotions, and yours are faithful servants. Watson : Do you mean to say that you read my train of thoughts from my features? Sherlock : Your features, and especially your eyes. Perhaps you cannot yourself recall how you reverie commenced?

That one word, my dear Watson, should have told me the whole story had I been the ideal reasoner which you are so fond of depicting. It was evidently a term of reproach.

I can see nothing," said I, handing it back to my friend. "On the contrary, Watson, you can see everything. You fail, however, to reason from what you see. You are too timid in drawing your inferences.

Nuestras ideas deben ser tan amplias como la naturaleza si aspiran a interpretarla.

Well," said I, "you call that love, Mr. Carruthers, but I should call it selfishness." "Maybe the two things go together.

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

Still, it is an error to argue in front of your data. You find yourself insensibly twisting them round to fit your theories.

By a man's finger-nails, by his coat-sleeve, by his boots, by his trouser-knees, by the callosities of his forefinger and thumb, by his expression, by his shirt-cuff — By each of these things a man's calling is plainly revealed. That all united should fail to enlighten the competent inquirer in any case is almost inconceivable.

a sign doesn't mean anything unless you know how to interpret it.

I told my mother I thought someone had poked a hole in her eyes and all the ink had drained out

If Nature abhors the void, the mind abhors what is meaningless. Show a person an ink-blot, and he will start at once to organise it into a hierarchy of shapes, tentacles, wheels, masks, a dance of figures.

When he reads Kierkegaard, he is not moved by what he reads, he is moved by himself reading Kierkegaard–but he is blissfully unaware of it.

Without the hard little bits of marble which are called 'facts' or 'data' one cannot compose a mosaic; what matters, however, are not so much of the individual bits, but the successive patterns into which you arrange them, then break them up and rearrange them.

The HAHA reaction signals the collision of bisociated contexts, the AHA reaction signals their fusion, the AH reaction their juxtaposition.

material is the source for everything seen or said or done on the stage.

I understand, and not knowing how to express myself without pagan words, I'd rather remain silent

the world is my idea

Reading is thinking with someone else's head instead of ones own.

The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.

For where did Dante get the material for his Hell, if not from this actual world of ours?

Therefore the man of genius requires imagination, in order to see in things not what nature has actually formed, but what she endeavoured to form, yet did not bring about, because of the conflict of her forms with one another

Bei gleicher Umgebung lebt doch jeder in einer anderen Welt.

reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with ones own

When we read, another person thinks for us: we merely repeat his mental process.