Susanne Katherina Langer Quotes

Music is the tonal analogue of emotive life.

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

The first impression of a work of art is its otherness from reality.

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

We have no physical model of this endless rhythm of individuation and involvement, we do have its image in the world of art, most purely in dance.

Art is the creation of forms symbolic of human feeling.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Cinema is like dream.

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

A philosophy is characterized more by the formulation of its problem than by its solution of them.

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

Only a creature that can think symbolically about life can conceive of its own death. Our knowledge of death is part of our knowledge of life.

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

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

Music is our myth of the inner life ...

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

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

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

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

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

One can bear anything of which one is able to conceive.

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

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

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

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

Pioneering is the work of individuals ...

The function of art is to acquaint the beholder with something he has not known before.

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