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Literary notes about interpret (AI summary)

In literature, “interpret” takes on a rich and multifaceted role, often serving as a bridge between raw observation and thoughtful comprehension. It is used to reveal hidden meanings or reframe familiar ideas, whether deciphering symbolic clues in a visual or textual partition ([1]) or expanding one’s view of nature and human sentiment ([2]). Authors sometimes employ the term to explain abstract or allegorical phenomena, as when re-evaluating ancient laws or prophecies ([3], [4]) or when characters attempt to grasp the elusive nature of dreams and emotions ([5], [6]). Moreover, “interpret” can imply the act of translating complex feelings into clear communication or recasting old ideas in modern terms ([7], [8]), highlighting its enduring versatility in bridging the gap between surface appearances and deeper insight.
  1. Similarly we may interpret a Red Counter, when placed on the partition which divides the South, or West, or East Half.
    — from Symbolic Logic by Lewis Carroll
  2. “One’s ideas must be as broad as Nature if they are to interpret Nature,” he answered.
    — from A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
  3. The true guardian of the laws ought to know their truth, and should also be able to interpret and execute them?
    — from Laws by Plato
  4. For to Interpret the Laws, is part of the Administration of a present Kingdome; which the Apostles had not.
    — from Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
  5. He felt hunger but he did not know how to interpret the feeling and had no notion of how to satisfy it.
    — from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park
  6. One can interpret one's own dreams as well as those of others.
    — from A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
  7. "Men must appropriate old ideas and interpret them into the terms of modern life and thought, for in the old we find the germ of the new.
    — from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson
  8. The dream was from heaven, and not all the vaunted wisdom of this world could interpret it.
    — from Little Folks (September 1884) by Various

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