Shadows

Famous quotes containing the word shadows:

    Resignedly beneath the sky
    The melancholy waters lie.
    So blend the turrets and shadows there
    That all seem pendulous in air,
    While from a proud tower in the town
    Death looks gigantically down.
    Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)

    What difference is there, do you think, between those in Plato’s cave who can only marvel at the shadows and images of various objects, provided they are content and don’t know what they miss, and the philosopher who has emerged from the cave and sees the real things?
    Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)

    ‘A thing is called by a certain name because it instantiates a certain universal’ is obviously circular when particularized, but it looks imposing when left in this general form. And it looks imposing in this general form largely because of the inveterate philosophical habit of treating the shadows cast by words and sentences as if they were separately identifiable. Universals, like facts and propositions, are such shadows.
    David Pears (b. 1921)