Samuel Johnson Quotes

A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers.

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

For me, until I know that the audience really gets what I'm trying to communicate I'm not done.

I don't think you really can send an exact message, because any two viewers are so disparate, in terms of their backgrounds, their point of view, their histories, that there's no telling what that message might be.

Everything I wrote about wasn't about me, but about the people listening.

All our knowledge falls with the bounds of experience.

All possibility of understanding is rooted in the ability to say no.

Before any of it could make sense, it had to be heard.

The singer alone does not make a song, there has to be someone who hears. -Broken Song

You have to think not about what you mean but about what people hear.

You don't want to be so far off the planet that you come out with something that doesn't make sense to anybody.

What is not intelligible to me is not necessarily unintelligent

Wouldn't he know without being asked?' said Polly. 'I've no doubt he would,' said the Horse (still with his mouth full). 'But I've a sort of an idea he likes to be asked.

There is a limit to how much a seer wishes to see.

I don't talk things, sir. I talk the meaning of things.

To negotiate is not to do as one likes.

A sign is always less than the thing it points to, and a symbol is always more than we can understand at first sight. Therefore we stop at the sign but go on to the goal it indicates; but we remain with the symbol because it promises more than it reveals.

That's why I tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge the people toward receptive insight. In their present state they can stare till doomsday and not see it, listen till they're blue in the face and not get it.

Words are like eyeglasses they blur everything that they do not make clear.

You don't need to be told some things. You can sometimes tell more by a man's silence and the set of his head than by what he says.

We know more from nature than we can at will communicate.

Vague expression permits the hearer to imagine whatever suits him and what he already thinks in any case.

It's only when I say that everything is incomprehensible that I come as close as possible to understanding the only thing it is given to us to understand.

It is not a thing that you can imagine. It only is. After that, there can be no imagining.