Illusion is whatever is fixed or definable, and reality is best understood as its negation…

Northrop Frye
About This Quote

In the 19th Century, the French philosopher Ernest Renan wrote that “the most profound truths are those that no longer need to be said.” In the 20th Century, the English psychologist William James wrote that “if a man has a fact impressed on him which he cannot get rid of in his sleep, he will dream about it.” In the 21st Century, in a world of ever-increasing complexity and a world of ever-shrinking attention span, we have come to understand all the more deeply what Renan meant by his statement.

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More Quotes By Northrop Frye
  1. The poet, however, uses these two crude, primitive, archaic forms of thought (simile and metaphor) in the most uninhibited way, because his job is not to describe nature, but to show you a world completely absorbed and possessed by the human mind.
  2. For the Bible there is nothing numinous, no holy or divine presence, within nature itself. Nature is a fellow creature of man.
  3. (U)derneath all the complexity of human life that uneasy stare at an alien nature is still haunting us, and the problem of surmounting it is still with us.
  4. Illusion is whatever is fixed or definable, and reality is best understood as its negation…
  5. So, you may ask, what is the use of studying the world of imagination where anything is possible and anything can be assumed, where there are no rights or wrongs and all arguments are equally good? One of the most obvious uses, I think, is...
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