Susanne Langer Short Quotes

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Our world "divides into facts" because we so divide it.

Susanne Langer
Common-sense knowledge is prompt, categorical, and inexact.

Susanne Langer
Is it conceivable that mysticism is a mark of inadequate art?

Susanne Langer
Philosophizing is a process of making sense out of experience.

Susanne Langer
Art is just as comprehensible as science, but in its own terms.

Susanne Langer
Speech is the mark of humanity. It is the normal terminus of thought.

Susanne Langer
Most new discoveries are suddenly-seen things that were always there.

Susanne Langer
Art is the objectification of feeling, and the subjectification of nature.

Susanne Langer
If we would have new knowledge, we must get us a whole world of new questions.

Susanne Langer
The Past, being in the mode of memory, is closed, inalienable, and irreparable.

Susanne Langer
A question is really an ambiguous proposition; the answer is its determination.

Susanne Langer
Common sense is a very tricky instrument; it is as deceptive as it is indispensable.

Susanne Langer
What is artistically good is whatever articulates and presents feeling to our understanding.

Susanne Langer
Value exists only where there is consciousness. Where nothing ever is felt, nothing matters.

Susanne Langer
Every artistic form reflects the dynamism that is constantly building up the life of feeling.

Susanne Langer
The notion of giving something a name is the vastest generative idea that ever was conceived...

Susanne Langer
Observation has become almost entirely indirect; and readings take the place of genuine witness.

Susanne Langer
The seeds of civilization are in every culture, but it is city life that brings them to fruition.

Susanne Langer
A philosophy is characterized more by the formulation of its problems than by its solution of them.

Susanne Langer
As comedy presents the vital rhythm of self-preservation, tragedy exhibits that of self-consummation.

Susanne Langer
Real thinking is possible only in the light of genuine language, no matter how limited, how primitive.

Susanne Langer
The continual pursuit of meanings-wider, clearer, more negotiable, more articulate meanings- is philosophy.

Susanne Langer
Fire is a natural symbol of life and passion, though it is the one element in which nothing can actually live.

Susanne Langer
Language is, without a doubt, the most momentous and at the same time the most mysterious product of the human mind.

Susanne Langer
The way a question is asked limits and disposes the ways in which any answer to it — right or wrong — may be given.

Susanne Langer
The fairytale is irresponsible; it is frankly imaginary, and its purpose is to gratify wishes, as a dream doth flatter.

Susanne Langer
Ritual is the most primitive reflection of serious thought, a slow deposit, as it were, of people's imaginative insight into life.

Susanne Langer
All persistent practices in art have a creative function. They may serve several ends, but the chief one is the shaping of the work.

Susanne Langer
The high intellectual value of images, however, lies in the fact that they usually, and perhaps always, fit more than one actual experience.

Susanne Langer
Mathematicians are rarely practical people, or good observers of events. They are apt to be cloistered souls, like philosophers and theologians.

Susanne Langer