Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Susanne Katherina Langer
Culture
Gestures
Without
Primitive
Even
Dramatic
Chant
Kind
Dance
Superstitious
Beginning
Gesture
Expression
Begets
Possible
Symbolic
Religion
Inevitably

More quotes by Susanne Katherina Langer

Image
Speech is the mark of humanity. It is the normal terminus of thought.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
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
Image
Most new discoveries are suddenly-seen things that were always there.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
It is the historical mind, rather than the scientific (in the physicist's sense), that destroyed the mythical orientation of European culture the historian, not the mathematician, introduced the higher criticism, the standard of actual fact. It is he who is the real apostle of the realistic age.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
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.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
The power of magic has no known limits. A person knows, in a fair way, his own physical capacities, the weight of the blows he can deal, the furthest range of his arrows, the strength of his voice, the speed and endurance of his running but the reaches of his mind are indefinite and, to his feeling, infinite.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
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
Image
Philosophizing is a process of making sense out of experience.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
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
Image
As comedy presents the vital rhythm of self-preservation, tragedy exhibits that of self-consummation.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
The intellectual treatment of any datum, any experience, any subject, is determined by the nature of our questions, and only carried out in the answers.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
the wide discrepancy between reason and feeling may be unreal it is not improbable that intellect is a high form of feeling - a specialized, intensive feeling about intuitions.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
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
Image
Is it conceivable that mysticism is a mark of inadequate art?
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
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.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
Most new discoveries are suddenly-seen things that were always there. A new idea is a light that illuminates presences which simply had no form before the light fell on them.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
If a work of art is a projection of feeling, its kinship with organic nature will emerge, no matter through how many transformations, logically and inevitably.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
A philosophy is characterized more by the formulation of its problem than by its solution of them.
Susanne Katherina Langer
Image
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
Image
The fairytale is irresponsible it is frankly imaginary, and its purpose is to gratify wishes, as a dream doth flatter.
Susanne Katherina Langer