A Quote by Sylvia Plath

The abstract kills, the concrete saves. — © Sylvia Plath
The abstract kills, the concrete saves.
Man's destructive hand spares nothing that lives; he kills to feed himself, he kills to clothe himself, he kills to adorn himself, he kills to attack, he kills to defend himself, he kills to instruct himself, he kills to amuse himself, he kills for the sake of killing.
We speak of concrete and not abstract painting because nothing is more concrete, more real than a line, a color, a surface.
This little hobbit saves the world. The wizard kills the dragon and saves the town. So many people connect to that character; it doesn't matter if it's an elf or a hobbit or a dwarf. It doesn't matter. They're human in their heart and soul.
When needs and means become abstract in quality, abstraction is also a character of the reciprocal relation of individuals to oneanother. This abstract character, universality, is the character of being recognized and is the moment which makes concrete, i.e. social, the isolated and abstract needs and their ways and means of satisfaction.
I like using concrete imagery, but I don't feel that's what it's about. It's a combination of concrete and abstract to take the listener somewhere they know better than you. That's true for music, seeing a painting, watching a movie... it's all some kind of an escape.
To me, a story can be both concrete and abstract, or a concrete story can hold abstractions. And abstractions are things that really can't be said so well with words.
Compared with men, it is probable that brutes neither attend to abstract characters, nor have associations by similarity. Their thoughts probably pass from one concrete object to its habitual concrete successor far more uniformly than is the case with us. In other words, their associations of ideas are almost exclusively by contiguity. So far, however, as any brute might think by abstract characters instead of by association of con cretes, he would have to be admitted to be a reasoner in the true human sense. How far this may take place is quite uncertain.
I try to make concrete that which is abstract.
Whitman was Emerson translated from the abstract into the concrete.
There is plenty of courage among us for the abstract, but not for the concrete.
In the abstract conception of universal wrong, all concrete responsibility vanishes.
Every concrete object has abstract value, is timeless in the dream parallel.
Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.
The frost which kills the harvest of a year saves the harvest of a century, by destroying the weevil or the locust.
Being design-led means designers take ideas from the abstract to the concrete, from potential to real value.
Psychologically, the teaching of abstractions first is wrong. Indeed, a thorough understanding of the concrete must precede the abstract.
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