Variant: How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.
Source: Sister Carrie
“How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean.”
—
Theodore Dreiser
,
book
Sister Carrie
Source: Sister Carrie
Last update June 3, 2021.
History
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Do you have more details about the quote "How true it is that words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean." by Theodore Dreiser?
Theodore Dreiser 20
Novelist, journalist 1871–1945Related quotes
“I mean, sure, like all prophecy the wording is vague.”
Lawrence M. Schoen
(1959) American writer and klingonist
Source: Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard (2015), Chapter 2, “Possibilities and Myths” (p. 27)
Bertrand Russell
(1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
1910s, The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918)
Reaper's Gale (2007)
Context: For Hood's sake,' the foreigner muttered. 'What's wrong with words?'
'With words,' said Redmask, turning away, 'meanings change.'
'Well,' Anaster Toc said, following as Redmask made his way back to his army's camp, 'that is precisely the point. That's their value — their ability to adapt -'
'Grow corrupt, you mean. The Letheri are masters at corrupting words, their meanings. They call war peace, they call tyranny liberty. On which side of the shadow you stand decides a word's meaning. Words are the weapons used by those who see others with contempt. A contempt which only deepens when they see how those others are deceived and made into fools because they choose to believe. Because in their naivety they thought the meaning of a word was fixed, immune to abuse.
Viktor E. Frankl
(1905–1997) Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor
Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning (1997)
Context: It is true, Logotherapy, deals with the Logos; it deals with Meaning. Specifically I see Logotherapy in helping others to see meaning in life. But we cannot “give” meaning to the life of others. And if this is true of meaning per se, how much does it hold for Ultimate Meaning?
If some one speaks of a spiritual fact as "indefinable" we promptly picture something misty, a cloud with indeterminate edges. But this is an error even in commonplace logic. The thing that cannot be defined is the first thing; the primary fact. It is our arms and legs, our pots and pans, that are indefinable. The indefinable is the indisputable. The man next door is indefinable, because he is too actual to be defined. And there are some to whom spiritual things have the same fierce and practical proximity; some to whom God is too actual to be defined.
Ch 1 : "The Dickens Period"
Charles Dickens (1906)
“Here is the shadow of truth, for only the shadow is true.”
Robert Penn Warren
(1905–1989) American poet, novelist, and literary critic
"A Way to Love God", New and Selected Poems 1923–1985 (1985)
“I know how to give the meaning of a word but not how to give the intention of a word.”
Stanley Cavell
(1926–2018) American philosopher
The Division of Talent (1985)