Quotessence
Home / Topics / Eye Quotes

Eye Quotes

Browse 14899 quotes about Eye.

Related topics

IfsLooksPeopleWorldMenThinkingHis EyesKnowsHeartWaySaidMindHandsWantFacesHer EyesEarsLightFeelsLittlesMayGivingSoulFirstsTryingStillsNeedsWellsI CanShouldTearsMadeMomentsChildrenHumansSeeingBeautifulPersonsMeanTwoBodyDoeLongBelieveKindSometimesSawsNightArtDreamLyingBlueTurnsYearsWholeBlindDifferentMightDarkGirlSeemsVisionHairMatterHardEnoughRememberBlackRealEndsBookVoiceMinesHeavenFeetMovingHas BeensFeelingsUseLastsLipsShowsWritingMouthsStarsEarthFallSunSleepBehindsMotherBrainPublic EyeDoneRealitySightHappensHelpingThrough The EyesLifemore

Eye Quotes

“We accepted a definition of ourselves which confined the self to the source and to the limitations of conscious attention. This definition is miserably insufficient, for in fact we know how to grow brains and eyes, ears and fingers, hearts and bones, in just the same way that we know how to walk and breathe, talk and think - only we can't put it into words. Words are too slow and too clumsy for describing such things, and conscious attention is too narrow for keeping track of all their details.”

ThinkingKnowsWayHeartSelfFactsEyeGrowsWalksAttentionBrainKnow HowSourceConsciousEarsFingersTrackDefinitionsDetailsBonesBreatheAcceptedLimitationConfinedDescribingClumsyInsufficient
Author:Alan Watts
Create image

“How truly language must be regarded as a hindrance to thought, though the necessary instrument of it, we shall clearly perceive on remembering the comparative force with which simple ideas are communicated by signs. To say, "Leave the room," is less expressive than to point to the door. Place a finger on the lips is more forcible than whispering, "Do not speak." A beck of the hand is better than, "Come here." No phrase can convey the idea of surprise so vividly as opening the eyes and raising the eyebrows. A shrug of the shoulders would lose much by translation into words.”

IdeasHandsEyeRememberSpeakLanguageForceLosesSimpleRoomsDoorsInstrumentsSurpriseFingersLipsShouldersOpeningPerceivePhrasesTranslationsEyebrowsWhisperingExpressiveHindranceSimple Ideas
Book:Essays: Moral, Political and Aesthetic
Create image

“In the Seventies, women runners, developing amenorrhea and calcium-related shin splints, were the first to realize that nature is hovering over us, ready to shut down our systems if our fetus-feeding fat reserve drops below a certain percentage of body weight. In other words, in nature's eyes we are nothing but milk sacs and fat deposits.”

IfsFirstsBodyEyeCertainRealizingReadyWeightFatsDevelopingRelatedMilkReservesRunnersFeedingSeventiesPercentagesDepositsFetusHoveringCalciumBody Weight
Book:Vamps & Tramps: New Essays
Create image

“Those who are successfully to lead their fellow-men, should have once possessed the nobler feelings. We have all known individuals whose magnanimity was not likely to be troublesome on any occasion; but then they betrayed their own interests by unwisely omitting the consideration, that such feelings might exist in the breasts of those whom they had to guide and govern: for they themselves cannot even remember the time when in their eyes justice appeared preferable to expediency, the happiness of others to self-interest, or the welfare of a State to the advancement of a party.”

MenShouldSelfStatesFeelingsMightEyeRememberIndividualInterestLeadershipJusticePartyKnownShould HaveFellowsGuidesOccasionsWelfareBreastsConsiderationPossessedBetrayedFellow ManAdvancementSelf InterestTroublesomeExpediencyMagnanimityOmitting
Book:Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
Create image

“On woman Nature did bestow two eyes, Like Hemian's bright lamps, in matchless beauty shining, Whose beams do soonest captivate the wise And wary heads, made rare by art's refining.”

ArtMadeTwoEyeWiseShiningLampsBeamRefining
Book:Alphonsus, king of Arragon. James the Fourth. George-a-Greene, the pinner of Wakefield. Specimen of the History of George-a-Greene. Ballad of the Jolly Pinder of Wakefield. Poems
Create image

“The question so often asked of modern painting, "What is it?", contains more than the dull skepticism of the man who is not going to have the wool pulled over his eyes. It speaks of a fundamental placement in relation to the work, that of a voyager in the world coming upon a strange object. The reader reconstitutes the work by his active participation, by approaching the object, tapping it, shaking it, holding it to his ear to hear the roaring within. It is characteristic of the object that it does not declare itself all at once, in a rush of pleasant naïveté.”

MenWorldDoeEyeSpeakModernObjectsStrangeHe ManPaintingReaderEarsRelationFundamentalsActiveCharacteristicsPleasantHis EyesDullSkepticismParticipationShakingRoaringTappingWoolVetsPlacementActive ParticipationShaking It
Author:Donald Barthelme
Create image

“Virtually the entire inflow was therefore Asiatic, and all but three or four thousand of that inflow originated from the Indian subcontinent... It is by 'black Power' that the headlines are caught, and under the shape of the negro that the consequences for Britain of immigration and what is miscalled 'race' are popularly depicted. Yet it is more truly when he looks into the eyes of Asia that the Englishman comes face to face with those who will dispute with him the possession of his native land.”

LooksEyeFacesThreeBlackRaceFourLandThousandShapesConsequenceCaughtPossessionImmigrationIndianBritainNativeAsiaDisputesEnglishmenFace To FaceHeadlinesNative LandBlack Power
Author:Enoch Powell
Create image

“For it is not the bare Words, but the Scope of the writer that giveth true light, by which any writing is to bee interpreted; and they that insist upon single Texts, without considering the main Designe, can derive no thing from them clearly; but rather by casting atomes of Scripture, as dust before mens eyes, make everything more obscure than it is; an ordinary artifice of those who seek not the truth, but their own advantage.”

WritingLightEyeOrdinaryAdvantageScriptureDustBeesConsideringObscureCastingScopeArtifice
Author:Thomas Hobbes
Create image

“In railway halls, on pavements near the traffic, They beg, their eyes made big by empty staring And only measuring Time , like the blank clock. No, I shall weave no tracery of pen-ornament To make them birds upon my singing tree: Time merely drives these lives which do not live As tides push rotten stuff along the shore.”

MadeBigsEyeStuffTreeSingingBirdEmptyClockStaringHallsPensShoreTidesBlankTrafficRottenOrnamentsMeasuringPavementRailway
Book:New Collected Poems of Stephen Spender
Create image

“To break out of the chaos of my darkness Into a lucid day is all my will. My words like eyes in night, stare to reach A centre for their light: and my acts thrown To distant places by impatient violence Yet lock together to mould a path of stone Out of my darkness into a lucid day.”

LightEyeTogetherNightBreakDarknessPathViolenceStonesChaosStaringThrownLocksCentreImpatientBreak OutMould
Book:World Within World: The Autobiography of Stephen Spender
Create image

“All the lessons learned, unlearned; The young, who learned to read, now blind, Their eyes with an archaic film; The peasant relapses to a stumbling tune, Following the donkey's bray; These only remember to forget. But somewhere some word presses, On the high door of a skull and in some corner, Of an irrefrangible eye, Some old man memory jumps to a child - Spark from the days of energy. And the child hoards it like a bitter toy.”

MenChildrenEyeRememberFilmYoungEnergyMemoriesForgetDoorsLessonsBlindPressesFollowingCornersBitterTunesOld ManSparksToysPeasantsSkullsStumblingDonkeyLesson LearnedRelapse
Author:Stephen Spender
Create image

“The people of America are red, white, black, yellow, and all the shades in between. Their eyes are blue, black, and brown, and all the shades in between. Their hair is straight, curly, kinky, and most of it in between. They are tall and short, slim and fat, athletic and anaemic, and most of them in between. They are the different peoples of the world becoming more and more the "in between." They are a people creating a new bridge of mankind in between the past of narrow nationalistic chauvinism and the horizon of a new mankind--a people of the world. Their face is the face of the future.”

PeopleWorldDifferentEyeAmericaPastFacesBlackWhiteMankindHairBecomingCreatingRedBlueFatsBridgesBrownTallHorizonShadeYellowAthleticDifferent PeoplesBecoming MoreSlimKinkyChauvinismNationalistic
Book:Reveille for Radicals
Create image

“What is it in man that for a long while lies unknown and unseen only one day to emerge and push him into a new land of the eye, a new region of the mind, a place he has never dreamed of? Maybe it's like the force in spores lying quietly under asphalt until the day they push a soft, bulbous mushroom head right through the pavement. There's nothing you can do to stop it.”

MenMindLongEyeLyingForceCan DoLandOne DayRegionsUnseenMushroomsPavementAsphalt
Author:William Least Heat-Moon
Create image

“The phrase, the world wants to be deceived, has become truer than had ever been intended. People are not only, as the saying goes, falling for the swindle; if it guarantees them even the most fleeting gratification they desire a deception which is nonetheless transparent to them. They force their eyes shut and voice approval, in a kind of self-loathing, for what is meted out to them, knowing fully the purpose for which it is manufactured. Without admitting it they sense that their lives would be completely intolerable as soon as they no longer clung to satisfactions which are none at all.”

PeopleIfsWorldWantKindSelfWould BeEyeDesirePurposeFallForceVoiceKnowingSatisfactionDeceptionPhrasesGuaranteesApprovalFleetingDeceivedTransparentGratificationLoathingAdmittingSelf Loathing
Book:The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture
Create image

“No longer can we consider what the artist does to be a self-contained activity, mysteriously inspired from above, unrelated and unrelatable to other human activities. Instead, we recognize the exalted kind of seeing that leads to the creation of great art as an outgrowth of the humbler and more common activity of the eyes in everyday life. Just as the prosaic search for information is "artistic" because it involves giving and finding shape and meaning, so the artist's conceiving is an instrument of life, a refined way of understanding who and where we are.”

WayGivingHumansKindDoeArtSelfEyeArtistUnderstandingCommonSeeingInformationCreationActivityShapesFindingsInstrumentsInspiredEverydayArtisticEveryday LifeGreat ArtRefinedExaltedHuman ActivitySelf ContainedConceiving
Book:Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye
Create image

“I have likewise made many 'skies' and effects - for I wish it could be said of me as Fuselli says of Rembrandt, 'he followed nature in her calmest abodes and could pluck a flower on every hedge - yet he was born to cast a steadfast eye on the bolder phenomena of nature'... We have had noble clouds & effects of light & dark & color.”

MadeSaidLightEyeWishBornDarkSkyEffectsColorFlowerCloudsCastsNobleSteadfastPluckAbodeLight DarkDark Colors
Book:John Constable's Correspondence
Create image

“In every art we are always obliged to return to the accepted means of expression, the conventional language of the art. What is a black-and-white drawing but a convention to which the beholder has become so accustomed that with his mind's eye he sees a complete equivalent in the translation from nature?”

MindMeanArtEyeLanguageBlackWhiteExpressionReturnDrawingAcceptedConventionsBlack And WhiteConventionalAccustomedTranslationsObligedBeholder
Author:Eugene Delacroix
Create image

“People seen by the mind are exactly different to things seen by the eye. They grow smaller and smaller as you come nearer down to them, whereas things become bigger.”

PeopleMindDifferentEyeGrowsBigger
Book:Anthony Trollope: The Chronicles of Barsetshire & The Palliser Novels: The Warden + The Barchester Towers + Doctor Thorne + Framley Parsonage + The Small House at Allington + The Last Chronicle of Barset + Can You Forgive Her? + The Prime Minister + Eustace Diamonds…
Create image

“The purest evil that human efforts could attain, in other words, was probably achieved by those men who made their wills the same and who made their eyes see the world in the same way, men who went against the pattern of life's diversity, men whose spirits shattered the natural wall of the individual body, making nothing of this barrier, set up to guard against mutual corrosion, men whose spirit accomplished what flesh could never accomplish.”

MenWorldWayHumansMadeBodyEyeSpiritEvilIndividualNaturalEffortWallDiversityPatternsAccomplishFleshAccomplishedBarriersMutualShattered
Author:Yukio Mishima
Create image