“What seems natural to us is probably just something familiar in a long tradition that has forgotten the unfamiliar source from which it arose. And yet this unfamiliar source once struck man as strange and caused him to think and to wonder.”

— Martin Heidegger

Last update June 30, 2025. History

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Martin Heidegger 69

German philosopher 1889–1976

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) American pianist and writer on music

Source: The Frontiers of Meaning: Three Informal Lectures on Music (1994), Ch. 1 : The Frontiers of Nonsense

“The romantics were prompted to seek exotic subjects and to travel to far off places. They failed to realize that, though the transcendental must involve the strange and unfamiliar, not everything strange or unfamiliar is transcendental. The unfriendliness of society to his activity is difficult for the artists to accept. Yet this very hostility can act as a lever for true liberation... Both the sense of community and of security depend on the familiar. Free of them, transcendental experiences become possible.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

Source: after 1970, posthumous, Abstract Expressionism, Creators and Critics', 1990, p. 167

“Daybreak comes quickly nowadays
The scent of wind has changed
It seems familiar yet unfamiliar
It makes my heartbeat quicker
It's sweet and sad
We ran along the road to the sea
Screaming with laughter innocently
In the far-away summer days”

Ayumi Hamasaki (1978) Japanese recording artist, lyricist, model, and actress

Fairyland
Lyrics, (Miss)Understood

“There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar: it keeps the mind nimble, it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

“How strange too and unfamiliar to think that one had been loved, that one's presence had once had the power to make a difference between happiness and dullness in another's day.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Source: The End of the Affair

“Do you see that out there? The strange, unfamiliar light? It's called the sun. Let's go get us a little.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: The Hollow

“Texas has yet to learn submission to any oppression, come from what source it may.”

Sam Houston (1793–1863) nineteenth-century American statesman, politician, and soldier, namesake of Houston, Texas

As quoted in the Sam Houston Memorial Museum http://www.shsu.edu/~smm_www/History/quotes.shtml.

“There's no such thing as chance;
And what to us seems merest accident
Springs from the deepest source of destiny.”

Friedrich Schiller Wallenstein

Act II, sc. iii
Wallenstein (1798), Part II - Wallensteins Tod (The Death of Wallenstein)

“We have heard that nature can sing some strange and unfamiliar songs. In coming to appreciate these songs, we develop a heightened perception… leavened by an admixture of our own creation…”

Frank Wilczek (1951) physicist

Source: Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987), Ch.32 Hidden Harmonies

“Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.”

William Makepeace Thackeray book The History of Henry Esmond

Bk. I, ch. 7.
The History of Henry Esmond (1852)

“What seems natural to us is probably just something familiar in a long tradition that has forgotten the unfamiliar source from which it arose. And yet this unfamiliar source once struck man as strange and caused him to think and to wonder.”

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Martin Heidegger 69

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