We not only interpret the character of events... we may also interpret our interpretations. — Kenneth Burke
The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax — Thomas Paine
Read for yourself to understand concepts. — Naval Ravikant
It is difficult to maintain the illusion that we are interpreting a Constitution, rather than inventing one. — Antonin Scalia
What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you'd like it to mean? — Antonin Scalia
You largely constructed your depression. It wasn't given to you. Therefore, you can deconstruct it. — Albert Ellis
Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted... but to weigh and consider. — Francis Bacon
A concept is a brick. It can be used to build a courthouse of reason. Or it can be thrown through the window. — Gilles Deleuze
If it is true that there is always more than one way of construing a text, it is not true that all interpretations are equal. — Paul Ricoeur
[quoting someone else] the American constitution is a document designed by geniuses to be eventually interpreted by idiots — Joseph J. Ellis
All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth. — Friedrich Nietzsche
Short Construe Quotes
In forgiving an injury be somewhat ceremonious, lest your magnanimity be construed as indifference. — Ambrose Bierce
We know of no behavior in ants or any other social insects that can be construed as play. — Bert Holldobler
What people do with food is an act that reveals how they construe the world. — Marcella Hazan
But men may construe things after their fashion, Clean from the purpose of the things themselves. — William Shakespeare
Happiness when sustained too long in print can rightly be construed as sappiness. — Millard Kaufman
Constellation Quotes
Your wide eyes are the only light I know from extinguished constellations. — Pablo Neruda
I’d cut my soul into a million different pieces just to form a constellation to light your way home. I’d write love poems to the parts of yourself you can’t stand. I’d stand in the shadows of your heart and tell you I’m not afraid of your dark. — Andrea Gibson
Don't wait for the stars to align, reach up and rearrange them the way you want...create your own constellation — Pharrell Williams
In space there are countless constellations, suns and planets; we see only the suns because they give light; the planets remain invisible, for they are small and dark. There are also numberless earths circling around their suns. — Giordano Bruno
No design can exist in isolation. It is always related, sometimes in very complex ways, to an entire constellation of influencing situations and attitudes. What we call a good design is one which achieves integrity – that is, unity or wholeness – in balanced relation to its environment. — George Nelson
Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of person under protection of habeas corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected, these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. — Thomas Jefferson
The sad and solemn night hath yet her multitude of cheerful fires;
The glorious host of light walk the dark hemisphere till she retires;
All through her silent watches, gliding slow,
Her constellations come, and climb the heavens, and go. — William C. Bryant
Once upon a perfect night, unclouded and still, there came the face of a pale and beautiful lady. The tresses of her hair reached out to make the constellations, and the dewy vapours of her gown fell soft upon the land. — Kit Williams
A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding. — William Gibson
Being nice should never be perceived as being weak. It's not a sign of weakness, it's a sign of courtesy, manners, grace, a woman's ability to make everyone...feel at home, and it should never be construed as weakness. — Benazir Bhutto
Anyone who attempts to construe a personal view of God which conflicts with church dogma must be burned without pity. — Pope Innocent III
The Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms. — Samuel Adams
What I refuse to face within myself will meet me in the exterior world through you, not as you are, but as I have so construed you. — James Hollis
Almost everything can be construed as sexual harassment depending upon the way it is said. One general rule of thumb is to think of your female co-workers as you would your sister. Yes, she is a woman. No, she is not a sexual object. Yes, your parents probably like her more than they like you. — Linda Sunshine
The powers contained in a constitution...ought to be construed liberally in advancement of the public good. — Alexander Hamilton
We have not sought this conflict; we have sought too long to avoid it; our forbearance has been construed into weakness, our magnanimity into fear, until the vindication of our manhood, as well as the defence of our rights, is required at our hands. — Robert Toombs
[T]here is not a syllable in the plan under consideration which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution. — Alexander Hamilton
That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience. — John Adams
The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone. — Thomas Jefferson
On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the people rise in rebellion or their silence be construed into a surrender of that power to them? If so, how many rebellions should we have had already? — Thomas Jefferson
The good life is best construed as a matrix that includes happiness, occasional sadness, a sense of purpose, playfulness, and psychological flexibility, as well autonomy, mastery, and belonging. — Robert Biswas-Diener
[T]here is a methodological bias in favor of taking natural discourse literally, other things being equal. For example, unless there are clear reasons for construing discourse as ambiguous, elliptical, or involving special idioms, we should not so construe it. — Tyler Burge
It can be difficult to be an introvert in church, especially if you happen to be the pastor. Liking to be alone can be interpreted as a judgment on other people's company. Liking to be quiet can be construed as aloofness. There is so much emphasis on community in most congregations that anyone who does not participate risks being labeled a loner. — Barbara Brown Taylor
Psychologically experienced consciousness is therefore no longer pure consciousness; construed Objectively in this way, consciousness itself becomes something transcendent, becomes an event in that spatial world which appears, by virtue of consciousness, to be transcendent. — Edmund Husserl
Man's unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite. — Thomas Carlyle
Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure. — Thomas Jefferson
It may not be impossible, but that our Faculties may be so construed, as always to deceive us in the things we judge most certain and assured. — Joseph Glanvill
The only sure way of avoiding these evils [vanity and boasting] is never to speak of yourself at all. But when, historically, youare obliged to mention yourself, take care not to drop one single word that can directly or indirectly be construed as fishing for applause. — Lord Chesterfield
Enlightenment is construed as seeing things as they really are rather than as they appear; it is a direct insight into, and discernment of, the nature of reality that is apprehended only by wisdom, which transcends and is prior to the activity of discriminative thought. In this view, delusion is defined as all that is opposed to enlightenment. — Kim Hee-jin
I wondered what one wore to visit a vampire. The chic red sweater set didn't go so well with my darker hair, and I was afraid it might be construed as a flirtatious invitation to color me bloodier. — Karen Marie Moning
I trust, that your readers will not construe my words to mean, that I would not have gone to a 3 o'clock in the morning session, for the sake of defeating the Nebraska bill. — Gerrit Smith
One of the things that's attractive about cyberspace is that it can be construed as no threat. If you see it through the video game keyhole, the amusement keyhole, the entertainment keyhole, it is no threat. If you see it through the LSD keyhole, the consciousness-expanding keyhole, it's like electronic drugs: it is a threat. — Jerry Garcia
One could construe the life of man as a great discourse in which the various people represent different parts of speech (the same might apply to states). — Soren Kierkegaard
The construction applied . . . to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate Congress a power . . . ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument. — Thomas Jefferson
It should go without saying that even the most narrowly construed eminent-domain power would violate individual rights. Either a person owns his legitimately acquired property or he does not. — Sheldon Richman
The Constitution shall never be construed... to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms. — Samuel Adams
The world of physics is essentially the real world construed by mathematical abstractions, and the world of sense is the real world construed by the abstractions which the sense-organs immediately furnish. To suppose that the "material mode" is a primitive and groping attempt at physical conception is a fatal error in epistemology. — Susanne Katherina Langer
I have been in the entertainment business some forty-three years, and I have never said anything detrimental or anything that might be construed as belittling any race or religion. I would be a sucker to do so because you can't insult the customers. — W. C. Fields
We begin life with the world presenting itself to us as it is. Someone - our parents, teachers, analysts - hypnotizes us to see the world and construe it in the right way. These others label the world, attach names and give voices to the beings and events in it, so that thereafter, we cannot read the world in any other language or hear it saying other things to us. The task is to break the hypnotic spell, so that we become undeaf, unblind and multilingual, thereby letting the world speak to us in new voices and write all its possible meanings in the new book of our existence. Be careful in your choice of hypnotists. — Sidney Jourard
Construed as turf, home just seems a provisional claim, a designation you make upon a place, not one it makes on you. A certain set of buildings, a glimpsed, smudged window-view across a schoolyard, a musty aroma sniffed behind a garage when you were a child, all of which come crowding in upon your latter-day senses -- those are pungent things and vivid, even consoling. But to me they are also inert and nostalgic and unlikely to connect you to the real, to that essence art can sometimes achieve, which is permanence. — Richard Ford
Our souls may lose their peace and even disturb other people's, if we are always criticizing trivial actions - which often are not real defects at all, but we construe them wrongly through our ignorance of their motives. — Saint Teresa of Avila
Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is, that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. — George Haven Putnam
Our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all and thought to include all; but now, to aid in making the bondage of the Negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, sneered at, construed, hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it. — Abraham Lincoln
Structurally I don't see a fundamental difference between what we may reasonably expect of police and doctors - though obviously the fact that doctors are generally pursuing life-saving activities and police may be engaged in life-threatening activities may lead to differences in how we construe the moral limits to their roles. — John Kleinig
I think that as a society as well, we need to be smart about what technologies we take up and how construe progress. — Jonathon Keats
Some eminent witnesses of God's truth believe that before the downfall of Antichrist [which virtually all Reformers construed to be Romanism], England must once again bow down her fair neck to his proud usurping yoke and foot. — Roger Williams
I don't think this is a situation where you can say that Congress was avoiding any mention of the tax power. It'd be one thing if Congress explicitly disavowed an exercise of the tax power. But given that it hasn't done so, it seems to me that it's - not only is it fair to read this as an exercise of the tax power, but this court has got an obligation to construe it as an exercise of the tax power if it can be upheld on that basis. — Donald Verrilli Jr.
I think the thing about the Internet is that it has so many characteristics that can be easily construed to be similar or almost identical to print that it can be misleading. — Khoi Vinh
Although much of the media have their antennae out to pick up anything that might be construed as racism against blacks, they resolutely ignore even the most blatant racism by blacks against others. — Thomas Sowell
The states have authority to interpret the Constitution, enforce it, and protect the people from violations of it by the federal government In the first place, there is not a syllable in the plan under consideration which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution, or which gives them any greater latitude in this respect than may be claimed by the courts of every State. — Alexander Hamilton
As in my other works of fiction: All persons living and dead are purely coincidental, and should not be construed. No names have been changed to protect the innocent. Angels protect the innocent as a matter of Heavenly routine. — Kurt Vonnegut
The vices and the virtues are written in a language the world cannot construe; it reads them in a vile translation, and the translators are Failure and Success. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
In Conclusion
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