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Tragedy dramatizes human life as potentiality and fulfillment. Its virtual future, or Destiny, is therefore quite different from that created in comedy. Comic Destiny is Fortune—what the world will bring, and the man will take or miss, encounter or escape; tragic Destiny is what the man brings, and the world will demand of him. That is his Fate.

— Susanne Langer Feeling and Form (1953)

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More quotes by Susanne Langer

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

Philosophy in a New Key (1942)

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

Mind: An Essay on Human Feeling (1967)

Art is the creation of forms symbolic of human feeling.

Feeling and Form (1953)

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

Philosophical Sketches (1962)

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

Philosophy in a New Key (1942)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Susanne Langer (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.