quote · Legacy record
This recognition of the truth we get in the artist’s work comes to us as a revelation of new truth. I want to be clear about that. I am not referring to the sort of patronizing recognition we give a writer by nodding our heads and observing, “Yes, yes, very good, very true—that’s just what I’m always saying.” I mean the recognition of a truth that tells us something about ourselves that we had not been always saying, something that puts a new knowledge of ourselves withint our grasp. It is new, startling, and perhaps shattering, and yet it comes to us with a sense of familiarity. We did not know it before, but the moment the poet has shown it to us, we know that, somehow or other, we had always really known it.
This recognition of the truth we get in the artist’s work comes to us as a revelation of new truth. I want to be clear about that. I am not referring to the sort of patronizing recognition we give a writer by nodding our heads and observing, “Yes, yes, very good, very true—that’s just what I’m always saying.” I mean the recognition of a truth that tells us something about ourselves that we had not been always saying, something that puts a new knowledge of ourselves withint our grasp. It is new, startling, and perhaps shattering, and yet it comes to us with a sense of familiarity. We did not know it before, but the moment the poet has shown it to us, we know that, somehow or other, we had always really known it.
Approximate author period: c. 1925 AD · modern
Meaning not yet available
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- Author or tradition
- Dorothy L. Sayers
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin. - Historical period
- Approximate author period: c. 1925 AD · modern
Approximate author-period anchor from life dates 1893 to 1957; Wikidata Q106740, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q106740 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
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- Contributor-provided quotation collection
Supplied reference C; CSV row 40650; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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