“What is truly seen by the poet's eyes that no one else sees? How were these beautiful words written from nothing, and how were they then able to move and touch feelings?”

—  Titon Rahmawan

Last update Nov. 30, 2023. History

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José Saramago photo

“There is relationship between sight and touch, something about eyes being able to see through the fingers touching the clay, about fingers being able to feel what the eyes are seeing without the fingers actually touching it.”

José Saramago book The Cave

Source: The Cave (2000), p. 20 (Vintage 2003)

“Scholars, theologians, and even poets have yet to be able to truly describe and touch upon the beauty, romance, and magic of a relationship built on 100% authenticity.”

Steve Maraboli (1975)

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 110

Umberto Eco photo

“Show not what has been done, but what can be. How beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths.”

Umberto Eco book The Name of the Rose

Source: The Name of the Rose

Ernest Hemingway photo

“The faces that were young once were old as mine but everyone remembered how we were. The eyes had not changed and nobody was fat. No mouths were bitter no matter what the eyes had seen. Bitter lines around the mouth are the first sign of defeat. Nobody was defeated.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

It is July 1959 and Hemingway is in Marceliano's bar in Pamplona, where he has not been since before the Spanish Civil War. In the following paragraph Hemingway mentions for contrast an unpleasant American journalist in his early twenties whose 'handsome young face already showed the traced lines of bitterness around the upper lips.'
Source: The Dangerous Summer (1985), Ch. 9

“How much less able to fathom the meaning of his words and deeds were the ecclesiastical leaders.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Source: Jesus or Christianity: A Study in Contrasts (1929), p. 23-24
Context: Those persons who were responsible for his tragic death had only the faintest understanding of what he was seeking to accomplish. Even his own disciples so completely misinterpreted his teaching that at the very end they argued among themselves as to who should have the chief places.... they still visualized twelve thrones of solid gold and quarreled among themselves over the seats of honor on the right and left of the king. How much less able to fathom the meaning of his words and deeds were the ecclesiastical leaders.

Colette Dowling photo

“If girls could do nothing else in this world, they were supposed to be able to keep their blood from showing.”

Colette Dowling (1938)

Source: The Frailty Myth: Women Approaching Physical Equality (2000), p. 40

“How can a poet express his feelings in a string of words that can make the rain fall, the seeds grow, the flowers bloom, the stars move, the sun dim and the sea roar?”

Titon Rahmawan
Adolf Loos photo

“If nothing were left of an extinct race but a single button, I would be able to infer, form the shape of that button, how these people dressed, built their houses, how they lived, what was their religion, their art, their mentality.”

Adolf Loos (1870–1933) Austrian/Czech architect

Quoted in Berel Lang, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Summer, 1978), pp. 715-739; see http://www.jstor.org/pss/1342952.

“He sang his last song. And the words of that have never been written down. But it was sweet and of great beauty, and those that heard it were changed utterly.
Some say it was the song that moves the stars.”

Catherine Fisher book Sapphique

Source: Sapphique

John Ruskin photo

“And thus, in full, there are four classes: the men who feel nothing, and therefore see truly; the men who feel strongly, think weakly, and see untruly (second order of poets); the men who feel strongly, think strongly, and see truly (first order of poets); and the men who, strong as human creatures can be, are yet submitted to influences stronger than they, and see in a sort untruly, because what they see is inconceivably above them. This last is the usual condition of prophetic inspiration.”

John Ruskin book Modern Painters

Volume III, part IV, chapter XII (1856).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)

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