Susanne Katherina Langer

the wide discrepancy between reason and feeling may be unreal; it is not improbable that intellect is a high form of feeling…

— Susanne Katherina Langer

Music is our myth of the inner life.

— Susanne Katherina Langer

Magic, then, is not a method, but a language; it is part and parcel of that greater phenomenon, ritual, which is the…

— Susanne Katherina Langer

Most new discoveries are suddenly-seen things that were always there. A new idea is a light that illuminates presences which simply had…

— Susanne Katherina Langer

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

— Susanne Katherina Langer

Music is 'significant form,' and its significance is that of a symbol, a highly articulated, sensuous object, which by virtue of its…

— Susanne Katherina Langer

The historian does not locate known facts in a hypothetical, general pattern of processes; his aim is to link fact to fact,…

— Susanne Katherina Langer

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

— Susanne Katherina Langer

We have no physical model of this endless rhythm of individuation and involvement, we do have its image in the world of…

— Susanne Katherina Langer

The intellectual treatment of any datum, any experience, any subject, is determined by the nature of our questions, and only carried out…

— Susanne Katherina Langer

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

— Susanne Katherina Langer

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

— Susanne Katherina Langer

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

— Susanne Katherina Langer

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

— Susanne Katherina Langer

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

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

— Susanne Katherina Langer

Philosophizing is a process of making sense out of experience.

— Susanne Katherina Langer

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

— Susanne Katherina Langer

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

— Susanne Katherina Langer

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

— Susanne Katherina Langer

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

— Susanne Katherina Langer

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

— Susanne Katherina Langer

It is significant that people who refuse to tell their children fairytales do not fear that the children will believe in princes…

— Susanne Katherina Langer

The power of understanding symbols, i.e. of regarding everything about a sense-datum as irrelevant except a certain form that it embodies, is…

— Susanne Katherina Langer

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

— Susanne Katherina Langer