Quotes About Interpretation

How strange painting is, it delights us with representations of objects that are not pleasing in themselves! (15 September 1854)

Even when we look at nature, our imagination constructs the picture. (1 September 1859)

Dans la peinture, il s'établit comme un pont mystérieux entre l'âme des personnages et celle du spectateur.

A mere cast taken from nature will always be more real than the best copy a man can produce, for can anyone conceive that an artist's hand is not guided by his mind…his strange task will not be tinged with the colour of his spirit?...For the word realism to have any meaning all men would need to be of the same mind and to conceive things in the same way. For what is the supreme purpose of every form of art if it be not the effect? (22 February 1860)

Nature is a dictionary; one draws words from it.

If we forget that the newspapers are footnotes to Scripture and not the other way around, we will finally be afraid to get out of bed in the morning. Too many of us spend far too much time with the editorial page and not nearly enough with the prophetic vision. We get our interpretation of politics and economics and morals from journalists when we should be getting only information; the meaning of the world is most accurately given to us by God's Word.

Not that the study is not important. A Jewish rabbi I once studies with would often say, 'For us Jews studying the bible is more important than obeying it because if you don't understand it rightly you will obey it wrongly and your obedience will be disobedience. This is also true.

I do not have more information after reading a poem; I have more experience.

The exact meaning of Jeremiah is not certain: it may mean "the LORD exalts"; it may mean "the LORD hurls." What is certain is that "the LORD," the personal name of God, is in his name.

Pastor, we think we might be on to something. That empty tomb—could that be an echo of the empty mercy seat of the ark? That the two angels in 'dazzling clothes' who gave witness at the empty tomb of Jesus might be an allusion to the two cherubim marking the emptiness that is fullness at the ark?

It's your heart, not the dictionary, that gives meaning to your words.

Why is joy not considered a fit subject for an artist?

Dey's some things I don't got to be told. I kin read them in folks' eyes.

Slowly poetry becomes visual because it paints images, but it is also musical: it unites two arts into one.

In reality art is always for everyone and for no one.

Sometimes he gives a little flourish with his fingers that makes me wonder if all his movements are a quiet performance.

You will be educated, which means that you will be interested where others are bored, that you will notice unities where others experience randomness, and that you will intend meanings where others are just spouting words. For exactly that is supposed to be the result of becoming literate: The world becomes a thick texture of significance that you know how to "access."--Eva Brann

Imaginative. Here used for a way of informing and rectifying the actual world through the imagination, a theme of never-ending charm.

The past depends on the angle from which it is seen and from which it has been lived

uhhfdbfdngrsdjhgj,hv.kugj,fhmtdneg&vad&gnfcigh-lhklulvzbhkn

L]et them be their own Rorschach tests[.]

It's not about the fact of the matter as such, it is about the sentiment beneath. You can apply all the usual fact-checking tools to the literal claim, but the real point is always buried in the subtitles, and no amount of correction will belie that.

illustrates the complex relationship between language and message. Words are intricate enough, but the way they are said adds a while extra dimension to the problem of interpretation.

To behave unconventionally is liable to be misinterpreted.