Quotes about Interpretation

It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.

A funny little literary article in the hand is worth at least three Critiques of Pure Reason in the bush.

Things somehow seem more real and vivid when one can apply somebody else's ready-made phrase about them (...) you bring them out triumphantly, and feel you've clinched the argument with the mere magical sound of them. That's what comes of the higher education.

And it's what you never will write, said the Controller. Because, if it were really like Othello nobody could understand it, however new it might be. And if were new, it couldn't possibly be like Othello.

We float in language like icebergs — four-fifths under the surface and only one-fifth of us projecting into the open air of immediate, non-linguistic experience.

Mary looked at the picture for some time without saying anything. Indeed, she didn't know what to say; she was taken aback, she was at a loss. She had expected a cubist masterpiece, and here was a picture of a man and a horse, not only recognisable as such, but even aggressively in drawing.

Whatever one says on the air is bound to be misunderstood; for people take from the heard or printed discourse that which they are predisposed to hear or read, not what is there- all that TV can do is to increase the number of misunderstanders by many thousandfold — and at the same time to increase the range of misunderstanding by providing no objective text to which the voluntarily ignorant can be made to refer.

Threequarters of the time one's never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.

The text of the Bible means what God inspired it to mean, not "what it means to

How you feel is not the result of what is happening in your life-it is your interpretation of what is happening.

Are we to paint what's on the face, what's inside the face, or what's behind it?

I believe there is complete equality between men and women. And I believe those passages in the New Testament, not by Jesus, but by Paul, that say women should not adorn themselves, they should always wear hats or color their hair in church - things like that - I think they are signs of the times and should not apply to modern-day life.