49 Quotes by Susanne Katherina Langer

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

Music is ‘significant form,’ and its significance is that of a symbol, a highly articulated, sensuous object, which by virtue of its dynamic structure can express the forms of vital experience which language is peculiarly unfit to convey. Feeling, life, motion and emotion constitute its import.

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

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.

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.

A signal is comprehended if it serves to make us notice the object or situation it bespeaks. A symbol is understood when we conceive the idea it presents.

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.

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

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