“I suddenly stopped and looked out at the sea and thought, my God, how beautiful this is … for 26 years I had never really looked at it before.”

— Alfred Jules Ayer

On his greater appreciation of the scenery of the world, after his near-death experience, as quoted in "Did atheist philosopher see God when he 'died'?" by William Cash, in National Post (3 March 2001).

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Alfred Jules Ayer 18

English philosopher 1910–1989

Susan Beth Pfeffer book Life As We Knew It

Source: Life As We Knew It

“All women are aware of that moment when suddenly the boys don’t look at you. It’s a fairly common thing, when suddenly you no longer attract that instant male attention because of the way you look. I never really knew how to enjoy beauty, but it took the form of a subconscious arrogance, expecting things, all muddled up with celebrity.”

Julie Christie (1940) British actress and activist

As quoted in "A Role About Winter for Julie Christie, a Star in Eternal Spring http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/movies/18chri.html?_r=0" by Alan Riding in The New York Times (18 April 2007)]

“I wonder how many people I have looked at all my life and never really seen.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Variant: I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen.
Source: East of Eden

“I thought how strange it had never occurred to me before that I was only purely happy until I was nine years old.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 7

“I was supposed to wear this really great costume [on Il Brigante], beautiful white flannel trousers, a captain's cap, it looked marvellous, but right before shooting they had it changed and they told me to wear my own stuff instead. I felt rotten because it looked so cheap.”

Donald O'Brien (actor) (1930–2003) Italian film and TV actor

Euro Trash Cinema magazine interview (March 1996)

“I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea;
Yet know I how the heather looks,
And what a wave must be.
I never spoke with God,
Nor visited in heaven;
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the chart were given.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Time and Eternity, p. 188
Collected Poems (1993)

“Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. … [T]rust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.”

Mary Schmich (1953) American columnist

"Wear Sunscreen" (1997)

“I find a lot of gratitude in my first years on this planet because having to identify - or having to not rely on how I look like to seduce or to get by in life really meant that I had to cultivate other aspects of myself - my personality, my character - and get a sense of self-worth from something other than people complimenting what I look like. And now, after that, I relish in the compliment. But I do know that external beauty will fade. And hopefully, I have cultivated and I continue to cultivate enough internal beauty to sustain me through the years when I am not such a hot pick.”

Lupita Nyong'o (1983) Mexican-Kenyan actress and film director

On how she focused on inner beauty in “Lupita Nyong'o On 'Sulwe'” https://www.npr.org/2019/10/17/770848643/lupita-nyongo-on-sulwe in NPR (2019 Oct 17)

“Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

"Who says words with my mouth?" in Ch. 1 : The Tavern, p. 2
The Essential Rumi (1995)
Context: Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.
Whoever brought me here, will have to take me home.

“But when you look at this tremendous sea of love — I call it a "sea of love" — it's really something special.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Trump describing a framed photograph of his inauguration crowd during an interview with David Muir https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDvoBoxv028, ABC (25 January 2017)
2010s, 2017, January

“I suddenly stopped and looked out at the sea and thought, my God, how beautiful this is … for 26 years I had never really looked at it before.”

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Alfred Jules Ayer 18

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