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
I have often seen an actor laugh off the stage, but I don't remember ever having seen one weep.
Perhaps it is no surprise I became an entertainer because many of my relatives were natural performers. Dad, who had a fine pair of lungs, was master of ceremonies at East Ham working men's club in east London. I felt so proud when I saw him in his white gloves calling out the names of the dances.
I am not immune to the lure of a signed record, flier or set list. The fact that your music heroes potentially had, in their own hands, the record you now have in yours is kind of cool. When the musician has departed, it can give the thing a unique power.
Music was our wife and we loved her. We stayed with her, clothed her and put diamond rings on her hands.
I write about characters that interest me. And I don't think of my books as being forms of entertainment.
People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.
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