“It is a mistake to interpret too literally and sweepingly the poet's admonition that things are not what they seem. Sometimes they are, and it is often essential to survival to know when they are and when they are not.”

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), Principles

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It is a mistake to interpret too literally and sweepingly the poet's admonition that things are not what they seem. Som…" by Dean Acheson?
Dean Acheson photo
Dean Acheson 49
Statesman and lawyer 1893–1971

Related quotes

E. M. S. Namboodiripad photo

“When we own up our mistakes some people interpret it as if we are wrong. They too commit mistakes.”

E. M. S. Namboodiripad (1909–1998) Indian politician

Quoted in Quotations by 60 Greatest Indians, Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology http://resourcecentre.daiict.ac.in/eresources/iresources/quotations.html,

Samuel R. Delany photo
Richelle Mead photo
Stephen King photo
Augusten Burroughs photo
Sigmund Freud photo

“It often seems that the poet's derisive comment is not unjustified when he says of the philosopher: "With his nightcaps and the tatters of his dressing-gown he patches the gaps in the structure of the universe."”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

1930s, "New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis" https://books.google.com/books/about/New_Introductory_Lectures_on_Psycho_anal.html?id=hIqaep1qKRYC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false (1933)

Sidney Lee photo

“a purely literal interpretation of the impassioned protestations of affection for a "lovely boy", which course through the sonnets, casts a slur on the dignity of the poet's name which scarcely bears discussion”

Sidney Lee (1859–1926) English biographer and critic

Shakespeare's Sonnets, Facsimile of the First Edition 1609, ed. S. Lee, 1905

Charles Bukowski photo

Related topics