Quotations do not teach us new things about the world, but rather evoke or awaken understandings that are based on our previous experiences and insights. For example, after reading a creative quotation we rarely find ourselves saying, “Wow, I never knew that before.” However, we often do find ourselves saying something like, “Ain’t that the truth.”
Quotations give us the words, relatively few and compactly arranged, for recognizing, expressing and referring to themes that make sense to us in terms of our past experiences, intuitions, and insights. It is these past experiences, intuitions and insights that are given a creative form by the words in the quotation. Quotations give a creative verbal form to our intuitive understandings, that we already had within us, but that we may not have paid attention to, focused on or articulated in the special and concise way that has been done by the quotation.
Getting Personal
Do you agree with the following quote by Robertson Davies, “The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend”? Explain.
“It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.” (Walter Lippmann, American writer, journalist)
“I cannot teach you, only help you to explore yourself, nothing more.” (Bruce Lee, martial artist and philosopher)
“We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit by it.” (Francois de La Rochefoucauld)
