In order to pronounce a book bad it is not enough to discover that it elicits no good response from ourselves, for that might be our fault.

We degrade God too much, ascribing to him our ideas, in vexation at being unable to understand Him.

Neither Peter in his work to include Gentiles in the church nor the abolitionists in their campaign against slavery argued that their experience should take precedence over Scripture. But they both made the case that...

A very single fact could emerge into many versions of truth,depends on the number of eyewitnesses and interpretations.

The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter – often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter – in the eye.

You definitely can’t forget everything that happened in your past. But you can place some positive interpretations on them, so that they don’t control your present and future emotions and feelings.

The issue is not what you may be facing, rather your interpretation of it. Always think in a positive light to create a better world for yourself and others.

Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticizing. Criticism can never be a science: it is, in the first place,...

Religion is just an interpretation; science is another one.

Shakespeare was not a scholar in the sense we regard the term to-day, yet no man ever lived or probably ever will live that equalled or will equal him in the expression of thought. He...

The idea only true or right “meaning” would be that shared by the largest number of the best readers after repeated and careful readings over several generations, different periods, nationalities, moods, degrees of alertness, private...

A lot of people live miserably not because their lives are worse than others, but because their repeated negative interpretations of their experiences bring greater pain to their minds than their physical problems.

Not taking the Bible (or other texts based on ‘revealed truths’) literally leaves it up to the reader to cherry-pick elements for belief. There exists no guide for such cherry-picking, and zero religious sanction for...

The meaning of a story should go on expanding for the reader the more he thinks about it, but meaning cannot be captured in an interpretation. If teachers are in the habit of approaching a...

Your life can only be as good as your repeatedly interpret it to be.

Life is a series of events and sensations. Everything else is interpretation. Much is lost in transition – and added in assumption / projection

A translator, caught in the space between two tongues. Such people tend to come a little bit unglued from the task of trying to convey meaning from one code to the other. The transfer is...

Nature does not create works of art. It is we, and the faculty of interpretation peculiar to the human mind, that see art.

In order to get over the ethical difficulties presented by the naive naturalism of many parts of those Scriptures, in the divine authority of which he firmly believed, Philo borrowed from the Stoics (who had...

The Bible is a supernatural book and can be understood only by supernatural aid.

He turned, as he spoke, a peculiar look in her direction, a look of hatred unless he has a most perverse set of facial muscles that will not, like those of other people, interpret the...

NOTICEPersons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.BY ORDER...

Wise men have interpreted dreams, and the gods have laughed.

The so-called spiritual inquiry must necessarily address questions of authority and power since both individuals and the organizations that represent them generally seek legitimacy from hegemonic interpretations of truth and reality. The only way to...

Sometimes writers (poets) expect me to think far deeper than I’m willing to dig.

Thus the man who is responsive to artistic stimuli reacts to the reality of dreams as does the philosopher to the reality of existence; he observes closely, and he enjoys his observation: for it is...

It is necessary, first of all, to find a correct logical starting point, one which can lead us to a natural and sound interpretation of the empirical facts.

Without archives many stories of real people would be lost, and along with those stories, vital clues that allow us to reflect and interpret our lives today.

…Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers… for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality… But...

There are good theological reasons to reject making authorial intention the goal of the interpretation of Scripture. First, we must recognize that what has traditionally been considered authoritative for the church is Scripture, not the...

Have you thought about what it means to be a god?” asked the man. He had a beard and a baseball cap. “It means you give up your mortal existence to become a meme: something...

All knowledge that is about human society, and not about the natural world, is historical knowledge, and therefore rests upon judgment and interpretation. This is not to say that facts or data are nonexistent, but...

Your problems are only as big as you frequently interpret them to be.

Never trust the translation or interpretation of something without first trusting its interpreter. One word absent from a sentence can drastically change the true intended meaning of the entire sentence. For instance, if the word...

What is the difference between my view and the classical Christian perspective? I am convinced that there are not multiple comings and multiple returns of Christ, but only one decisive coming at the end of...

Theologians and other clerks, You won’t understand this book, — However bright your wits — If you do not meet it humbly, And in this way, Love and Faith Make you surmount Reason, for They...

The context in which a photograph is seen affects the meaning the viewer draws from it.

When you write it, don’t write it in the manner of a spooky story. Don’t try to give an explanation. Just say that I don’t know what to make of it, just write it like...

What do you see in this work?” The idea that the expert should be allowed to constrain the interpretation of others rightly offends our sensibilities about museums and art. It ought to offend us just...

I have had my say, as he wished. Now the book belongs, as he points out, to the world he claims to speak for.

It’s so hard to communicate because there are so many moving parts. There’s presentation and there’s interpretationand they’re so dependent on each other it makes things very difficult.

I want to say more, but don’t know what the words are supposed to be. I feel such a tenderness for these vulnerable night-time conversations, the way words take a different shape in the air...

There is no growth without risk. There is always something to be gained from any experience. It is up to us to interpret our truth of self.

The question concerning Jesus: do you want to know the real story, or just the allegory?

Words never change. What changes is how one interprets them.

Social and cultural history is often comprised of whatever diaries and letters remain and that is down to chance and wide open to interpretation.

The idea is to spin the wheel of metaphors and images until sparks of associations begin to fly for the reader.

I urge not that we assume that love will provide a reliable foundation for knowledge but that we nonetheless keep the requirements of love of neighbor foremost in our interpretations of Scripture. We should consider,...

When two things occur successively we call them cause and effect if we believe one event made the other one happen. If we think one event is the response to the other, we call it...

I’m a scientist and I know what constitutes proof. But the reason I call myself by my childhood name is to remind myself that a scientist must also be absolutely like a child. If he...