“Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.”
“Those who are concerned with the arts are often asked questions, not always sympathetic ones, about the use or value of what they are doing. It is probably impossible to answer such questions directly, or at any rate to answer the people who ask them.”
"Quotes", Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (1957), Polemical Introduction
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Northrop Frye 137
Canadian literary critic and literary theorist 1912–1991Related quotes
“Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question.”
Translated by C. J. Lyall, quoted in Arabian Poetry, p. 42 https://archive.org/details/arabianpoetryfo00clougoog/page/n127/mode/2up
Couplets
“How, then, shall I respond to him who asks, “What was God doing before he made heaven and earth?” I do not answer, as a certain one is reported to have done facetiously (shrugging off the force of the question). “He was preparing hell,” he said, “for those who pry too deep.” It is one thing to see the answer; it is another to laugh at the questioner--and for myself I do not answer these things thus. More willingly would I have answered, “I do not know what I do not know,” than cause one who asked a deep question to be ridiculed--and by such tactics gain praise for a worthless answer.”
Ecce respondeo dicenti, 'quid faciebat deus antequam faceret caelum et terram?' respondeo non illud quod quidam respondisse perhibetur, ioculariter eludens quaestionis violentiam: 'alta,' inquit, 'scrutantibus gehennas parabat.' aliud est videre, aliud ridere: haec non respondeo. libentius enim responderim, 'nescio quod nescio' quam illud unde inridetur qui alta interrogavit et laudatur qui falsa respondit.
Ecce respondeo dicenti, 'quid faciebat deus antequam faceret caelum et terram?' respondeo non illud quod quidam respondisse perhibetur, ioculariter eludens quaestionis violentiam: 'alta,' inquit, 'scrutantibus gehennas parabat.'
aliud est videre, aliud ridere: haec non respondeo. libentius enim responderim, 'nescio quod nescio' quam illud unde inridetur qui alta interrogavit et laudatur qui falsa respondit.
Book XI, Chapter XII; translation by E.B. Pusey
Confessions (c. 397)
“The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he's one who asks the right questions.”
As quoted in The Writer's Quotation Book : A Literary Companion (1980) by James Charlton, p. 44
“Suppose no one asked a question, what would be the answer.”
"Near East or Chicago A Description"
Useful Knowledge (1928)
47 : The Question and its Answer, p. 78.
The Everything and the Nothing (1963)