“Nothing is yet in its true form.”

— Clive Staples Lewis

Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold (1956)

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Clive Staples Lewis 272

Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist 1898–1963

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“If religion is only human, and its form is man’s form, it follows that everything in religion is true.”

Alain (1868–1951) French philosopher

Introduction
The Gods (1934)

“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.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

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

“Under whatever name or form we worship It, It leads us on to knowledge of the nameless, formless Absolute. Yet, to see one's true Self in the Absolute, to subside into It and be one with It, this is the true Knowledge of the Truth.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Reality in Fourty Verses

“The true Mathematical and Mechanical Form of all manner of Arches for building with the true butment necessary to each of them, a Problem which no Architectonick Writer hath ever yet attempted, much less perform'd.”

Robert Hooke (1635–1703) English natural philosopher, architect and polymath

...Ut pendet continaum flexile, sic stabit contiguum rigidum, which is the Linea Catenaria.
Tr: As hangs the flexible line, so but inverted will stand the rigid arch.
Cypher at the end of his A Description of Helioscopes, and Some Other Instruments https://books.google.com/books?id=KQtPAAAAcAAJ (1676) p. 31, as quoted in "The Life of Dr. Robert Hooke," The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke https://books.google.com/books?id=6xVTAAAAcAAJ, Richard Waller (1705) English translation in Ted Ruddock, Arch Bridges and Their Builders 1735-1835 (1979) p. 46 https://books.google.com/books?id=amQ9AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA46

“Socialism gains its true form only through a total fighting brotherhood with the forward-striving energies of a newly awakened nationalism. Without nationalism it is nothing, a phantom, a mere theory, a castle in the sky, a book. With it it is everything, the future, freedom, the fatherland!”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

1930s, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)

“That's what I consider true generosity. You give your all, and yet you always feel as if it costs you nothing.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

[C]'est la vraie générosité ; vous donnez tout et rien ne semble jamais vous coûter.
All Men are Mortal (1946)

“All [knowledge] comes from experience, it is true, but experience is nothing if it does not form collections of similar facts. Now, to make collections is to count.”

Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis (1787–1872) French physician

Letter to Jean Cruveilhier (1837), as quoted by William Coleman, Death is a Social Disease: Public Health and Political Economy in Early Industrial France (1982)

“It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union…. Men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

“All tales may come true; and yet, at the last, redeemed, they may be as like and unlike the forms that we give them as Man, finally redeemed, will be like and unlike the fallen that we know.”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien book On Fairy-Stories

On Fairy-Stories (1939)
Context: The Evangelium has not abrogated legends; it has hallowed them, especially the "happy ending." The Christian has still to work, with mind as well as body, to suffer, hope, and die; but he may now perceive that all his bents and faculties have a purpose, which can be redeemed. So great is the bounty with which he has been treated that he may now, perhaps, fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation. All tales may come true; and yet, at the last, redeemed, they may be as like and unlike the forms that we give them as Man, finally redeemed, will be like and unlike the fallen that we know.

“For nothing worthy proving can be proven,
Nor yet disproven: wherefore thou be wise,
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt,
And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith!”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate

From The Ancient Sage (1885), lines 66-69

“Nothing is yet in its true form.”

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Clive Staples Lewis 272

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