Would that we could at once paint with the eyes! In the long way from the eye through the arm to the pencil, how much is lost!
Interpretation
The quote expresses a desire for direct expression of visual imagination without the loss in translation to physical mediums.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing reflects on the frustrations of translating visual sensations and emotions into art. He muses that the intricate process of moving an image from perception through the arm to the pencil inherently results in a loss of the original vision, suggesting that a more immediate way to capture these images would enhance artistic expression.
In practice
An artist could quote this during a gallery opening to express the challenges of their creative process.
Why should not every individual man have existed more than once upon this world? Why should I not come back as often as I am capable of acquiring fresh knowledge? Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the oldest? Because the human understanding, before the sophistries of the schools had dissipated and debilitated it, lighted upon it at once?
The search for truth is more precious than its possession.
A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes
Absolute truth belongs to Thee alone.
Pleasures, riches, honor and joy are sure to have care, disgrace, adversity and affliction in their train. There is no pleasure without pain, no joy without sorrow. O the folly of expecting lasting felicity in a vale of tears, or a paradise in a ruined world.
It is not the truth that a man possesses, or believes that he possesses, but the earnest effort which he puts forward to reach the truth, which constitutes the worth of a man
Media gatekeepers - editors, publishers, film studios and the like - need to begin investing in talent behind the scenes, developing and resourcing marginalized voices to tell their own stories. At the end of the day, it's about the story and what will enable the audience to truly see, understand, and know the life and times of the subject.
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.
I try to represent specific experiences of specific characters, and that's all I want to try to do. I don't ever try to think about representing a culture, because its impossible, and someone will fault you. And it just doesn't interest me.
I write about characters that interest me. And I don't think of my books as being forms of entertainment.
An Actor is an interpreter of other men's words, often a soul which wishes to reveal itself to the world but dare not, a craftsman, a bag of tricks, a vanity bag, a cool observer of mankind, a child and at his best a kind of unfrocked priest who, for an hour or two, can call on heaven and hell to mesmerize a group of innocents.
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems.
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