A Quote by Susan Sontag

Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality, understood as recalcitrant, inaccessible; of making it stand still. One can't possess reality, one can possess (and be possessed by) images — as, according to Proust, most ambitious of voluntary prisoners, one can't possess the present but one can possessthe past.

Susan Sontag

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According Ambitious Images Inaccessible Making Most Past Photographs Possess Possessed Present Prisoners Proust Reality Recalcitrant Stand Still Understood Voluntary Way

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Susan Sontag
American - Author
January 16, 1933 - December 28, 2004

Photographs are a way of imprisoning reality, understood as recalcitrant, inaccessible; of making it stand still. Or they enlarge a reality that is felt to be shrunk, hollowed out, perishable, remote. One can't possess reality, one can possess (and be possessed by) images.

Susan Sontag

Reality is not digital, an on-off state, but analog. Something gradual. In other words, reality is a quality that things possess in the same way that they possess, say, weight. Some people are more real than others, for example. It has been estimated that there are only about five hundred real people on any given planet, which is why they keep unexpectedly running into one another all the time.

Terry Pratchett

In order to possess what you do not possess, you must go by the way of dispossession.

T. S. Eliot

Instead, it appears to be a particular mark of beauty that it is considered with tranquil satisfaction; that it pleases if we also do not possess it and we are still far removed from demanding to possess it.

Moses Mendelssohn

It is disastrous to own more of anything than you can possess, and it is one of the most fundamental laws of human nature that our power actually to possess is limited.

Joseph Wood Krutch

Horses don’t think the same as humans. Something that’s most unique about the horse, that I love, is not what he possesses but what he doesn’t possess. And that is greed, spite, hate, jealousy, envy, prejudice. The horse doesn’t possess any of those things. If you think about people, the least desirable people to be around usually possess some or all of those things. And the way God made the horse, he left that out.

Buck Brannaman

Know who you are and possess that confidence and just tune out the naysayers and the critics in a way where you feel like you possess a certain patience and perspective that many of us in the bubble lack.

Kellyanne Conway

I don't possess these thoughts I have --- they possess me. I don't possess these feelings I have --- They obsess me.

Ashly Lorenzana

Beauty is also a Gift of God, one of the most rare and precious, and we should be thankful if we are happy enough to possess it and thankful, if we are not, that others possess it for our pleasure.

W. Somerset Maugham

[in the]..curious way that my idealism has been mixed with my fatalism, so that I can possess the soul of a dreamer and that of a cynic at the same time......I possess a power of magic...[to] destroy the balance of a well-designed destiny with my diabolical mind.

Anais Nin

Fewer possess virtue, than those who wish us to believe that they possess it.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

If we fear loss enough, in the end the things we possess will come to possess us.

Rachel Naomi Remen

If you possess something but you can't give it away, then you don't possess it... it possesses you.

Frank Sinatra

If you possess happiness you possess everything: to be happy is to be in tune with God.

Paramahansa Yogananda

There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.

Napoleon Hill

What we desire is not to possess a woman, but to be the only one to possess her.

Cesare Pavese

A Quote by Susan Sontag

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