A signal is comprehended if it serves to make us notice the object or situation it bespeaks. A symbol is understood when we conceive the idea it presents. Susanne Katherina Langer More Quotes by Susanne Katherina Langer More Quotes From Susanne Katherina Langer Art is the creation of forms symbolic of human feeling. Susanne Katherina Langer creation feelings art What is artistically good is whatever articulates and presents feeling to our understanding. Susanne Katherina Langer understanding feelings value exists only where there is consciousness. Where nothing ever is felt, nothing matters. Susanne Katherina Langer felt consciousness matter Artistic form is congruent with the dynamic forms of our direct sensuous, mental, and emotional life; works of art are projections of "felt life", as Henry James called it, into spatial, temporal, and poetic structures. Susanne Katherina Langer poetic emotional art Nature, as man has always known it, he knows no more. Since he has learned to esteem signs above symbols, to suppress his emotional reactions in favor of practical ones and make use of nature instead of holding so much of it sacred, he has altered the face, if not the heart, of reality. Susanne Katherina Langer heart men reality The faith of scientists in the power and truth of mathematics is so implicit that their work has gradually become less and less observation, and more and more calculation.... But the facts which are accepted by virtue of these tests are not actually observed at all. Susanne Katherina Langer virtue tests facts The historian does not locate known facts in a hypothetical, general pattern of processes; his aim is to link fact to fact, one unique knowable event to another individual one that begot it. Susanne Katherina Langer events unique doe The power of understanding symbols, i.e. of regarding everything about a sense-datum as irrelevant except a certain form that it embodies, is the most characteristic mental trait of mankind. It issues in an unconscious, spontaneous process of abstraction, which goes on all the time in the human mind: a process of recognizing the concept in any configuration given to experience, and forming a conception accordingly. That is the real sense of Aristotle's definition of Man as "the rational animal". Susanne Katherina Langer real animal men The limits of thought are not so much set from outside, by the fullness or poverty of experiences that meet the mind, as from within, by the power of conception, the wealth of formulative notions with which the mind meets experiences. Susanne Katherina Langer poverty limits mind In human life, art may arise from almost any activity, and once it does so, it is launched on a long road of exploration, invention, freedom to the limits of extravagance, interference to the point of frustration, finally discipline, controlling constant change and growth. Susanne Katherina Langer frustration change art Feeling, in the broad sense of whatever is felt in any way, as sensory stimulus or inward tension, pain, emotion or intent, is the mark of mentality. Susanne Katherina Langer inward pain feelings The continual pursuit of meanings-wider, clearer, more negotiable, more articulate meanings- is philosophy. Susanne Katherina Langer philosopher pursuit philosophy The dancer, or dancers, must transform the stage for the audience as well as for themselves into an autonomous, complete, virtual realm, and all motions into a play of visible forces in unbroken, virtual time...Both space and time, as perceptible factors, disappear almost entirely in the dance illusion. Susanne Katherina Langer space dance play If we would have new knowledge, we must get a whole world of new questions. Susanne Katherina Langer creativity world knowledge Magic, then, is not a method, but a language; it is part and parcel of that greater phenomenon, ritual, which is the language of religion. Ritual is a symbolic transformation of experiences that no other medium can adequately express. Susanne Katherina Langer transformation magic language Language is, without a doubt, the most momentous and at the same time the most mysterious product of the human mind. Susanne Katherina Langer mysterious doubt mind Music is our myth of the inner life. Susanne Katherina Langer myth music-is music Religion, even the most primitive and superstitious, is inevitably a beginning of culture. It is not possible without some kind of symbolic expression ... and begets dramatic gesture, dance, and chant. Susanne Katherina Langer expression culture religion It is significant that people who refuse to tell their children fairytales do not fear that the children will believe in princes and princesses, but that they will believe in witches and bogeys. Susanne Katherina Langer princess believe children Ritual is the most primitive reflection of serious thought, a slow deposit, as it were, of people's imaginative insight into life. Susanne Katherina Langer serious reflection people
