Quotes About Interpretation

Nothing could bother me more than the way a thing goes dead once it has been said.

We should know what our convictions are, and stand for them. Upon one's own philosophy, conscious or unconscious, depends one's ultimate interpretation of facts. Therefore it is wise to be as clear as possible about one's subjective principles. As the man is, so will be his ultimate truth.

You will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with you.

If no thought your mind does visit make your speech not too explicit.

Speech is the small change of silence.

Speak after the manner of men.

A grandfather was walking through his yard when he heard his granddaughter repeating the alphabet in a tone of voice that sounded like a prayer. He asked her what she was doing. The little girl explained: "I'm praying, but I can't think of exactly the right words, so I'm just saying all the letters, and God will put them together for me, because He knows what I'm thinking."

Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.

One man's poison ivy is another man's spinach.

The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.

The artist doesn't see things as they are, but as he is.

Belief in form, but disbelief in content - that's what makes an aphorism charming.

The ideal woman which is in every man's mind is evoked by a word or phrase or the shape of her wrist, her hand. The most beautiful description of a woman is by understatement. Remember, all Tolstoy ever said to describe Anna Karenina was that she was beautiful and could see in the dark like a cat. Every man has a different idea of what's beautiful, and it's best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree.

We should have a great many fewer disputes in the world if words were taken for what they are, the signs of our ideas only, and not for things themselves.

A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket.

If you were to make little fishes talk, they would talk like whales.

The art of translation lies less in knowing the other language than in knowing your own.

The medium is the message.

Since the concepts people live by are derived only from perceptions and from language and since the perceptions are received and interpreted only in light of earlier concepts, man comes pretty close to living in a house that language built.

'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.' 'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.' 'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'

The word is half his that speaks, and half his that hears it.

There is only one way to degrade mankind permanently and that is to destroy language.

Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.

Everyone hears only what he understands.