Quotes about eye
page 22

Benito Mussolini photo

“The law of socialism is that of the desert: a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye. Socialism is a rude and bitter truth, which was born in the conflict of opposing forces and in violence. Socialism is war, and woe to those who are cowardly in war. They will be defeated.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

As quoted in Il Duce: The Life and Work of Benito Mussolini, L. Kemechey, New York: NY, Richard R. Smith (1930) p. 56. Written just before taking editorship of the Italian Socialist Party newspaper Avanti in 1912.
1910s

Aristarchus of Samos photo
Lord Dunsany photo
Ted Hughes photo
Marianne von Werefkin photo
Euripidés photo

“Silence is an answer in the eyes of the wise.”

Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

Unidentified Plays, Fragment 977
Variant translation: Silence is true wisdom's best reply. (See Discussion page for sourcing information)

Bill Haywood photo

“The bandage will remain on the eyes of Justice as long as the Capitalist has the cut, shuffle, and deal.”

Bill Haywood (1869–1928) Labor organizer

Roughneck, The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983, page 146.

Mani Madhava Chakyar photo

““Eyes, what an eloquent pair he has! He is able to express with them even the slightest difference in the mood”
- L. S Rajagopalan (noted art critic), 1990”

Mani Madhava Chakyar (1899–1990) Indian actor

Source: Abhinaya and Netrābhinaya, L.S Rajagopalan, Mani Madhava Chakyar- A Titan of A Thespian, Sruti- India's premier Music and Dance magazine, August 1990 issue (71), p. 17.

Jani Allan photo

“As remote as the rings of Saturn… A man with his stubby million-rand finger perennially prodding the public's pulse, his eyes constantly roving the horizons of the future, Kerzner has the power of a Prometheus unbound.”

Jani Allan (1952) South African columnist and broadcaster

Description of Sol Kerzner from interview published in the Just Jani column of the Sunday Times, republished in Face Value by Jani Allan.
Sunday Times

Alfred Russel Wallace photo

“I thought of the long ages of the past, during which the successive generations of this little creature had run their course — year by year being born, and living and dying amid these dark and gloomy woods, with no intelligent eye to gaze upon their loveliness; to all appearance such a wanton waste of beauty. Such ideas excite a feeling of melancholy. It seems sad that on the one hand such exquisite creatures should live out their lives and exhibit their charms only in these wild inhospitable regions, doomed for ages yet to come to hopeless barbarism; while, on the other hand, should civilized man ever reach these distant lands, and bring moral, intellectual, and physical light into the recesses of these virgin forests, we may be sure that he will so disturb the nicely-balanced relations of organic and inorganic nature as to cause the disappearance, and finally the extinction, of these very beings whose wonderful structure and beauty he alone is fitted to appreciate and enjoy. This consideration must surely tell us that all living things were not made for man. Many of them have no relation to him. The cycle of their existence has gone on independently of his, and is disturbed or broken by every advance in man’s intellectual development; and their happiness and enjoyments, their loves and hates, their struggles for existence, their vigorous life and early death, would seem to be immediately related to their own well-being and perpetuation alone, limited only by the equal well-being and perpetuation of the numberless other organisms with which each is more or less intimately connected.”

The Malay Archipelago (1869)

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn photo
Milan Kundera photo
George MacDonald photo
Yves Klein photo

“Small wonder that we find them flocking everywhere ahead or with or in the wake of Islamic armies. Sufis of the Chishtîyya silsila in particular excelled in going ahead of these armies and acting as eyes and ears of the Islamic establishment. The Hindus in places where these sufis settled, particularly in the South, failed to understand the true character of these saints till it was too late. The invasions of South India by the armies of Alãu’d-Dîn Khaljî and Muhammad bin Tughlaq can be placed in their proper perspective only when we survey the sufi network in the South. Many sufis were sent in all directions by Nizãmu’d-Dîn Awliyã, the Chistîyya luminary of Delhi; all of them actively participated in jihãds against the local population. Nizãmu’d-Dîn’s leading disciple, Nasîru’d-Dîn Chirãg-i-Dihlî, exhorted the sufis to serve the Islamic state. “The essence of sufism,” he versified, “is not an external garment. Gird up your loins to serve the Sultãn and be a sufi.” Nasîru’d-Dîn’s leading disciple, Syed Muhammad Husainî Banda Nawãz Gesûdarãz (1321-1422 A. D.), went to Gulbarga for helping the contemporary Bahmani sultan in consolidating Islamic power in the Deccan. Shykh Nizãmu’d-Dîn Awliyã’s dargãh in Delhi continued to be and remains till today the most important centre of Islamic fundamentalism in India. (…)”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume I (1990)

Jean Dubuffet photo

“The role of the artist.... and the poet is precisely to blur normal categories, to disrupt them, and by doing so restore to the eyes and the mind ingenuity and freshness.”

Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) sculptor from France

Dubuffet once explained to Jacques Berne; as cited in 'Dubuffet, Lévi-Strauss, and the Idea of Art Brut', Kent Minturn, from RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, No. 46, Polemical Objects (Autumn, 2004), pp. 247-258 http://www.columbia.edu/cu/arthistory/faculty/Minturn/Dubuffet-Levi-Strauss.pdf, p. 256
undated

Colin Wilson photo
Katy Perry photo

“Cause when I'm with him,
I am thinking of you,
Thinking of you.
What you would do if
You were the one
Who was spending the night?
Oh I wish that I
Was looking into your eyes.”

Katy Perry (1984) American singer, songwriter and actress

Thinking of You, written by Katy Perry
Song lyrics, One of the Boys (2008)

Bruce Springsteen photo
Robinson Jeffers photo
Tanith Lee photo

“And now, Uastis, get up. This room is architecturally designed to please the eye, and your present position mars it for me.”

Book Two, Part III “The Dark City”, Chapter 2 (p. 191)
The Birthgrave (1975)

“Without hesitation, she made a fist and hit herself in the right eye, her knuckles making contact with the top of her cheekbone. And then she poured milk into her coffee.”

Lis Wiehl (1961) American legal scholar

Source: Heart of Ice A Triple Threat Novel with April Henry (Thomas Nelson), p. 201

N. K. Jemisin photo

“So, there was a girl.
What I’ve guessed, and what the history books imply, is that she was unlucky enough to have been sired by a cruel man. He beat both wife and daughter and abused them in other ways. Bright Itempas is called, among other things, the god of justice. Perhaps that was why He responded when she came into His temple, her heart full of unchildlike rage.
“I want him to die,” she said (or so I imagine). “Please Great Lord, make him die.”
You know the truth now about Itempas. He is a god of warmth and light, which we think of as pleasant, gentle things. I once thought of Him that way, too. But warmth uncooled burns; light undimmed can hurt even my blind eyes. I should have realized. We should all have realized. He was never what we wanted Him to be.
So when the girl begged the Bright Lord to murder her father, He said, “Kill him yourself.” And He gifted her with a knife perfectly suited to her small, weak child’s hands.
She took the knife home and used it that very night. The next day, she came back to the Bright Lord, her hands and soul stained red, happy for the first time in her short life. “I will love you forever,” she declared. And He, for a rare once, found Himself impressed by mortal will.
Or so I imagine.
The child was mad, of course. Later events proved this. But it makes sense to me that this madness, not mere religious devotion, would appeal most to the Bright Lord. Her love was unconditional, her purpose undiluted by such paltry considerations as conscience or doubt. It seems like Him, I think, to value that kind of purity of purpose—even though, like warmth and light, too much love is never a good thing.”

Source: The Broken Kingdoms (2011), Chapter 11 “Possession” (watercolor) (pp. 202-203)

Martin Farquhar Tupper photo

“You wear a thin disguise,
O, Light within my Brother's eyes!”

Every Thought a Thought of You.
It's All Crazy! It's All False! It's All A Dream! It's Alright (2009)

Charles Baudelaire photo

“It is at once by way of poetry and through poetry, as with music, that the soul glimpses splendors from beyond the tomb; and when an exquisite poem brings one’s eyes to the point of tears, those tears are not evidence of an excess of joy, they are witness far more to an exacerbated melancholy, a disposition of the nerves, a nature exiled among imperfect things, which would like to possess, without delay, a paradise revealed on this very same earth.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

C'est à la fois par la poésie et à travers la poésie, par et à travers la musique, que l'âme entrevoit les splendeurs situées derrière le tombeau; et, quand un poème exquis amène les larmes au bord des yeux, ces larmes ne sont pas la preuve d'un excès de jouissance, elles sont bien plutôt le témoignage d'une mélancolie irritée, d'une postulation des nerfs, d'une nature exilée dans l'imparfait et qui voudrait s'emparer immédiatement, sur cette terre même, d'un paradis révélé.
XI: "Notes nouvelles sur Edgar Poe III," IV
L'art romantique (1869)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Game (rapper) photo

“Raybans on my face, never know when my eyes low.”

Game (rapper) (1979) American rapper, record producer and actor from California

Celebration, Featuring Lil Wayne, Tyga, Wiz Khalifa, and Chris Brown.
LAX (2008), Jesus Piece (2012)

Rosa Luxemburg photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Joseph von Fraunhofer photo
André Breton photo

“Eyes exist in the savage state.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

L'œil existe à l'état sauvage.
Le Surréalisme et la Peinture, (1926) Andre Breton

Roger Ebert photo
Eric Hoffer photo
Thiruvalluvar photo
Ossip Zadkine photo
John James Audubon photo
Jacques Ellul photo
Jerome David Salinger photo
Martin Harris photo

“BE IT KNOWN unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people, unto whom this work shall come: That we, through the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, have seen the plates which contain this record, which is a record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites, their brethren, and also of the people of Jared, who came from the tower of which hath been spoken. And we also know that they have been translated by the gift and power of God, for his voice hath declared it unto us; wherefore we know of a surety that the work is true. And we also testify that we have seen the engravings which are upon the plates; and they have been shown unto us by the power of God, and not of man. And we declare with words of soberness, that an angel of God came down from heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the plates, and the engravings thereon; and we know that it is by the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, that we beheld and bear record that these things are true. And it is marvelous in our eyes. Nevertheless, the voice of the Lord commanded us that we should bear record of it; wherefore, to be obedient unto the commandments of God, we bear testimony of these things. And we know that if we are faithful in Christ, we shall rid our garments of the blood of all men, and be found spotless before the judgment-seat of Christ, and shall dwell with him eternally in the heavens. And the honor be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, which is one God. Amen. OLIVER COWDERY DAVID WHITMER MARTIN HARRIS”

Martin Harris (1783–1875) Book of Mormon witness

Book of Mormon, 1830 Edition, p. 585 (1830)

Charles Stross photo

“Well, moving swiftly sideways into cognitive neuroscience…In the past twenty years we’ve made huge strides, using imaging tools, direct brain interfaces, and software simulations. We’ve pretty much disproved the existence of free will, at least as philosophers thought they understood it. A lot of our decision-making mechanics are subconscious; we only become aware of our choices once we’ve begun to act on them. And a whole lot of other things that were once thought to correlate with free will turn out also to be mechanical. If we use transcranial magnetic stimulation to disrupt the right temporoparietal junction, we can suppress subjects’ ability to make moral judgements; we can induce mystical religious experiences: We can suppress voluntary movements, and the patients will report that they didn’t move because they didn’t want to move. The TMPJ finding is deeply significant in the philosophy of law, by the way: It strongly supports the theory that we are not actually free moral agents who make decisions—such as whether or not to break the law—of our own free will.
“In a nutshell, then, what I’m getting at is that the project of law, ever since the Code of Hammurabi—the entire idea that we can maintain social order by obtaining voluntary adherence to a code of permissible behaviour, under threat of retribution—is fundamentally misguided.” His eyes are alight; you can see him in the Cartesian lecture-theatre of your mind, pacing door-to-door as he addresses his audience. “If people don’t have free will or criminal intent in any meaningful sense, then how can they be held responsible for their actions? And if the requirements of managing a complex society mean the number of laws have exploded until nobody can keep track of them without an expert system, how can people be expected to comply with them?”

Source: Rule 34 (2011), Chapter 26, “Liz: It’s Complicated” (pp. 286-287)

Hillary Clinton photo

“People can judge me for what I’ve done. And I think when somebody’s out in the public eye, that’s what they do. So I’m fully comfortable with who I am, what I stand for, and what I’ve always stood for.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

From an interview http://www.mediaite.com/tv/hillary-clinton-pushes-back-at-pbs-gwen-ifill-im-not-mitt-romney/ with Gwen Ifill (25 June 2014)
Interim (2013–2015)

Bayard Taylor photo
Richard Leakey photo
Joseph Conrad photo

“The future is of our own making — and (for me) the most striking characteristic of the century is just that development, that maturing of our consciousness which should open our eyes to that truth.”

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-British writer

Letter to H. G. Wells (February 1902), published in The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad, edited by Frederick R. Karl and Laurence Davies, Vol. 2, p. 509

James Jeans photo
Stevie Nicks photo

“We all did everything we could do to try and talk her out of [quitting]. But you look in someone's eyes and you can tell they're finished. As Taylor Swift would say: 'We are never ever getting back together ever!' That's what Chris was saying… But I'd beg, borrow and scrape together $5 million and give it to her in cash if she would come back. That's how much I miss her.”

Stevie Nicks (1948) American singer and songwriter, member of Fleetwood Mac

(on asking Christine McVie to return in 2013) Caspar Llewellyn Smith, "Stevie Nicks: the return of Fleetwood Mac", http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/jan/12/stevie-nicks-return-of-fleetwood-mac?intcmp=ILCMUSTXT9383 The Guardian, 12 January 2013

Nat King Cole photo
Bob Dylan photo

“Took a stranger to teach me to look into justice's beautiful face, and to see an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Infidels (1983), I and I

John Ruysbroeck photo
Mike Huckabee photo
Gregory of Nyssa photo
William Wordsworth photo

“A noticeable man, with large gray eyes.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Stanzas written in Thomson's Castle of Indolence.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Denise Scott Brown photo
Joaquin Miller photo
Mani Madhava Chakyar photo
Richard Brinsley Sheridan photo

“An unforgiving eye, and a damned disinheriting countenance.”

Act IV, sc. i.
The School for Scandal (1777)

Stephen Vincent Benét photo
Mirkka Rekola photo
Maggie Stiefvater photo
Gerald Durrell photo
Louis Agassiz photo

“The eye of the trilobite tells us that the sun shone on the old beach where he lived; for there is nothing in nature without a purpose, and when so complicated an organ was made to receive light, there must have been light to enter it.”

Louis Agassiz (1807–1873) Swiss naturalist

Geological Sketches (1870), ch. 2, pp. 31–32 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044018968388;view=1up;seq=49

Maryanne Amacher photo
Henry Suso photo
William James photo
James McNeill Whistler photo
John Fante photo
Swami Vivekananda photo
Richard Long photo
Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) photo
Milo Yiannopoulos photo
Samuel Adams photo
Thomas Gray photo
Meša Selimović photo
Chuck Berry photo
W. H. Auden photo
W.E.B. Du Bois photo
R. A. Salvatore photo
Anne Rice photo
Joseph Addison photo
Northrop Frye photo

“In society's eyes the virtue of saying the right thing at the right time is more important that the virtue of telling the whole truth, or even of telling the truth at all.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

"Quotes", The Educated Imagination (1963), Talk 6: The Vocation of Eloquence

Wu Jingzi photo
Jim Morrison photo

“b>Don't let me die in an automobile
I wanna lie in an open field
Want the snakes to suck my skin
Want the worms to be my friends
Want the birds to eat my eyes
As here I lie
The clouds fly by</b”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

"The End; <i>Live in New York</i>" (1970), "The End; Live at The Hollywood Bowl" (1968)

Neil Young photo

“Oh tell me where the answer lies,
Is it in the notebook behind your eyes?”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

Speakin' Out
Song lyrics, Tonight's the Night (1975)

James Macpherson photo
Ben Gibbard photo
Robert E. Howard photo
Mahatma Gandhi photo

“An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

1914: "If…we were to go back to…'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,' there would be very few [Honourable] Gentlemen in this House who would not…be blind and toothless." — George Perry Graham, during a debate on capital punishment before the Canadian House of Commons. Official Report of the Debates of the House of Commons of the Dominion of Canada, Third Session-Twelfth Parliament, Vol CXIII, p. 496, February 5, 1914. http://parl.canadiana.ca/view/oop.debates_HOC1203_01/508
1950: "An-eye-for-an-eye-for-an-eye-for-an-eye … ends in making everybody blind" in The Life of Mahatma Gandhi by Louis Fischer (1950), though Fischer did not attribute it to Gandhi and seemed to be giving his own description of Gandhi's philosophy.
1958: "The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind" in Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story by Martin Luther King, Jr., 1958.
1982: "An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind" in the 1982 film, Gandhi. In a 1993 biographical article about screenwriter John Briley, Jon Krampner wrote, "…Gandhi never said it. Michigan graduate John Briley put those pithy words in his mouth." From "John Briley '51 - Epic Screenwriter", Michigan Today, March 1993, p. 12. http://michigantoday.umich.edu/93/Mar_and_Oct_93/Mar_93/briley.html
2006: There is a quaternary source in Yale Book of Quotations http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=w5-GR-qtgXsC&pg=PA269&dq=whole-world-blind+ (2006), in which editor Fred R. Shapiro states that the Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence stated that Gandhi's family believes it authentic, but did not provide any further reference and provided no year, place or body of work.
2006: Discussed in The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where, and When, by Ralph Keyes (2006), 1st ed., p. 74.
2010: Research detailed by Garson O'Toole in "An Eye for an Eye Will Make the Whole World Blind" http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/12/27/eye-for-eye-blind/ in Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/.
Misattributed

Ani DiFranco photo
Dadasaheb Phalke photo