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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

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Susanne Katherina Langer
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More quotes by Susanne Katherina Langer

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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.
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Ritual is the most primitive reflection of serious thought, a slow deposit, as it were, of people's imaginative insight into life.
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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.
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A mind that is very selective to forms... is apt to use its images metaphorically, to exploit their possible significance for the conception of remote or intangible ideas.
Susanne Katherina Langer
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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
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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
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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.
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Every artistic form reflects the dynamism that is constantly building up the life of feeling.
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As comedy presents the vital rhythm of self-preservation, tragedy exhibits that of self-consummation.
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The continual pursuit of meanings-wider, clearer, more negotiable, more articulate meanings- is philosophy.
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Philosophizing is a process of making sense out of experience.
Susanne Katherina Langer
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Music is the tonal analogue of emotive life.
Susanne Katherina Langer
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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.
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Susanne Katherina Langer
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Most new discoveries are suddenly-seen things that were always there.
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Art is the objectification of feeling, and the subjectification of nature.
Susanne Katherina Langer
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Is it conceivable that mysticism is a mark of inadequate art?
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Common-sense knowledge is prompt, categorical, and inexact.
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The fairytale is irresponsible it is frankly imaginary, and its purpose is to gratify wishes, as a dream doth flatter.
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