“To say that a thing "wholly pertains" to something else, or "does not pertain to it in any way," and that something "is predicated in a universal way" of something else, or "is completely alien to it" amount to the same thing. Nevertheless, while one form of expression is [now] in frequent use, the other has become practically obsolete, except so far as it may occasionally be admitted through mutual agreement. In Aristotle's day it was perhaps customary to use both of these forms of expression, but now one has replaced the other [simply] because usage has so decreed. p. 168”

The Metalogicon of John of Salisbury (1159)

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John of Salisbury 8
English philosopher and theologian

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Context: Philosophy has been called the search for the Permanent amid the changing. With this account of philosophy there is no need to quarrel. But having accepted it, a distinction remains to be observed, a distinction of capital importance, which we are in constant danger of forgetting. It is one thing to find the Permanent; it is another thing to find a form of words in which the Permanent shall stand permanently expressed. It is one thing to experience something fixed and changeless; it is another thing to fix this something by a changeless definition. The first may be possible, while the second remains impossible for ever.

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“Life must be considered sui generis; it is not a form of energy, nor can it be expressed in terms of something else.”

Oliver Lodge (1851–1940) British physicist

Raymond, p. 290 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=loc.ark:/13960/t80k3mq4s;view=1up;seq=332
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“It is never literally true that any form is meaningless and "says nothing." Every form in the world says something. But its message often fails to reach us, and even if it does, full understanding is often withheld from us. ] and, properly speaking, FORM IS THE OUTWARD EXPRESSION OF THIS INNER MEANING.”

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Part II. About painting : VI. The language of Form and Colour : Footnote
Similar quote in another translation:
There is no form, there is nothing in the world which says nothing. Often - it is true - the message does not reach our soul, either because it has no meaning in and for itself, or - as is more likely – because it has not been conveyed to the right place.. .Every serious work rings inwardly, like the calm and dignified words: 'Here I am!'
Partly cited in: Raymond Firth (2011) Symbols: Public and Private, p. 43
1910 - 1915, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1911

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“The work of art that says something confronts us itself. That is, it expresses something in such a way that what is said is like a discovery, a disclosure of something previously concealed.”

Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002) German philosopher

Source: Aesthetics and Hermeneutics (1964), p. 101 http://books.google.com/books?id=7RP-TggufEEC&pg=PA101 (quotation is from Goethe)
Context: The work of art that says something confronts us itself. That is, it expresses something in such a way that what is said is like a discovery, a disclosure of something previously concealed. The element of surprise is based on this. "So true, so filled with being" [So wahr, so seiend] is not something one knows any other way. Everything familiar is eclipsed. To understand what the work of art says to us is therefore a self-encounter.

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