16 quotes
Are not the richest and most significant experiences of man precisely those which are the least patient of verbal reproduction?
The Usurpation Of Language (1910)
How can the Universe tell its own story save by making use of human speech; how convey its meanings to finite minds save by employing a thinker to declare them?
The Usurpation Of Language (1910)
We want philosophers, among other reasons, because the world is full of false philosophy.
The Usurpation Of Language (1910)
Philosophy has been called the search for the Permanent amid the changing.
The Usurpation Of Language (1910)
Philosophy resembles poetry in being an art for enforcing meditation, for driving the mind inwards until it sinks into its Object.
The Usurpation Of Language (1910)
In all great poetry there is a kind of “kenosis” of the understanding, a self-emptying of the tongue. Here language points away from itself to something greater than itself.
The Usurpation Of Language (1910)
The human mind loves the bondage of words and is apt, when freed from one form of their tyranny, to set up another more oppressive than the last.
The Usurpation Of Language (1910)
Of all the media of expression employed by man (and let us never forget that they are many) none are so unstable, none so quick to change their meaning, as words.
The Usurpation Of Language (1910)
Thus exhibited, the object itself becomes the meeting-ground of the ages, a centre where millions of minds can enter together into possession of the common secret.
The Usurpation Of Language (1910)
We are the children of an age which spends the best energies of its life in the discussion of life, in an atmosphere of deferred fulfillment, continually postponing the act of living to the work of mentally preparing to live.
The Usurpation Of Language (1910)
Among the arts of expression one is suited to this purpose, another to that. It is hard to express movement in stone or rest in music. It is harder still to express permanence in speech.
The Usurpation Of Language (1910)
The philosopher bent on the enlargement of experience perceives at once that his work cannot be done, cannot even be commenced, until he has cleared away the heaps of verbal detritus under which the bedrocks of experience lie buried.
The Usurpation Of Language (1910)
Are there not many Arts which, though speechless, express their meanings with perfect adequacy, with satisfaction to the recipient, and serve at the same time as a medium of communication between soul and soul?
The Usurpation Of Language (1910)
Though science makes no use for poetry, poetry is enriched by science. Poetry “takes up” the scientific vision and re-expresses its truths, but always in forms which compel us to look beyond them to the total object which is telling its own story and standing in its own rights.
The Usurpation Of Language (1910)
Speech is insufficient to utter the last things; and this troubles it not, because the last things may be heard speaking for themselves. At last, after long delay the wondering soul gives form to that which is stirring within it and produces its works art and song and mighty deeds.
The Usurpation Of Language (1910)
The highest function of philosophy is to enforce the attitude of meditation and therewithal restrain the excessive volubility of the tongue. To us it seems that the reflective thinker wins his greatest victories when by what he says he compels us to recognise the relative insignificance of anything he can say. His task is not to capture Reality, but to free it from captivity.
The Usurpation Of Language (1910)