Quotes about eye
page 24

“My mother took too much, a great deal too much, care of me; she over-educated, over-instructed, over-dosed me with premature lessons of prudence: she was so afraid that I should ever do a foolish thing, or not say a wise one, that she prompted my every word, and guided my every action. So I grew up, seeing with her eyes, hearing with her ears, and judging with her understanding, till, at length, it was found out that I had not eyes, ears or understanding of my own.”

Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849) Irish writer

Vivian (1812), ch. 1; Tales and Novels, vol. 8, p. 8.

Education, Understanding

“I don't cry. Water doesn't leave my head. I've got loads of gob. That's how water leaves me, it's not out of my eyes.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

The Moaning of Life, General Quotes

Water, Cry

“I became a vegetarian many years ago after listening to The Smiths’ ‘Meat Is Murder.’ It opened my eyes to the painful lives of animals raised for food, and I knew I wanted no part of that.”

Brian Fair (1975) American singer

“Shadows Fall’s Brian Fair,” PSA for peta2.com (11 November 2011) https://www.peta2.com/news/shadows-falls-brian-fair/.

Pain, Food, Animals, Parting

“The momentous meaning of this occasion impressed me deeply. I resolved to mark it by some token of recognition, which could be no other than a salute of arms. Well aware of the responsibility assumed, and of the criticisms that would follow, as the sequel proved, nothing of that kind could move me in the least. The act could be defended, if needful, by the suggestion that such a salute was not to the cause for which the flag of the Confederacy stood, but to its going down before the flag of the Union. My main reason, however, was one for which I sought no authority nor asked forgiveness. Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood: men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond;—was not such manhood to be welcomed back into a Union so tested and assured? Instructions had been given; and when the head of each division column comes opposite our group, our bugle sounds the signal and instantly our whole line from right to left, regiment by regiment in succession, gives the soldier's salutation, from the "order arms" to the old "carry"—the marching salute. Gordon at the head of the column, riding with heavy spirit and downcast face, catches the sound of shifting arms, looks up, and, taking the meaning, wheels superbly, making with himself and his horse one uplifted figure, with profound salutation as he drops the point of his sword to the boot toe; then facing to his own command, gives word for his successive brigades to pass us with the same position of the manual, honor answering honor. On our part not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of drum; not a cheer, nor word nor whisper of vain-glorying, nor motion of man standing again at the order, but an awed stillness rather, and breath-holding, as if it were the passing of the dead!”

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (1828–1914) Union Army general and Medal of Honor recipient

The Passing of the Armies: An account of the Army of the Potomac, based upon personal reminiscences of the Fifth Army Corps (1915), p. 260

Death, Men, Forgiveness, Suffering

“But as we do not light up our houses with our brightest lamps for all comers, so neither did she emit from her eyes their brightest sparks till special occasions for such shining had arisen.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 5

Light, Housing

“People who get implants, it's so depressing, you know… People— I don't know. The route of that, you know, maybe they want more love or attention, or what it is, but they always go for the most obvious place, you know? Here… Well if you really want more attention, why not get them in your eyes? And then move you eyes down to where you nipples used to be, put you breasts up on your head, EVERYBODY will pay attention!”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On implants.
Monster (2004)

Love, People

“Another force driving progressive evolution is the so-called "arms-race." Prey animals evolve faster running speeds because predators do. Consequently predators have to evolve even faster running speeds, and so on, in an escalating spiral. Such arms races probably account for the spectacularly advanced engineering of eyes, ears, brains, bat "radar" and all the other high-tech weaponry that animals display.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

The Evolutionary Future of Man (1993)

Animals, Speed

“Dialogue in Hell:
Seventeenth Dialogue

Montesquieu:… Now I understand the apologue the god Vishnu; you have a hundred arms like the Hindu idol and each one of your fingers touches a spring. In the same way that you touch everything, are you also able to see everything?
Machiavelli: Yes, for I shall make of the police an institution so vast that in the heart of my kingdom half of the people shall see the other half…
…If, as I scarcely doubt, I succeed in attaining this result, here are some of the forms by which my police would manifest themselves abroad: men of pleasure and good company in the foreign courts, to keep an eye on the intrigues of the princes and of the exiled pretenders…the establishment of political newspapers in the great capitals, printers and book stores places in the same conditions and secretly subsidized.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Men, God, People, Pleasure

“He loved me true did Harry-boy and I loved him true, and if the happiness we gave each other was wicked and wrong in the eyes of the Law and the Church and God Almighty, then the Law and the Church and God Almighty can go dig a hole and fall down it.”

Noel Coward (1899–1973) English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer

Me and the Girls (1964).

Love, God, Law, Boy

“The idea that to make a man work you've got to hold gold in front of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom. We’ve done that for so long that we've forgotten there’s any other way.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

"Amory Blaine" in This Side of Paradise (1920) Bk. 2, Ch. 5
Quoted

Way, Idea

“My wish [c. 1911].... of compiling a book (a kind of Almanac) in which all the contributions should be written by artists. I dreamt primarily of painters and musicians. The ruinous separation of the arts from each other, and of 'Art' from folk-art and from children's art, the distinction between 'Art' and 'Ethnography' [folk-art].... the solid walls erected between phenomena that in my eyes were so closely related, even identical: in a word, the potentialities for synthesis left me no peace. It may well seem strange today [1930] that for a long time I could not find any co-workers or any means to promote this idea..”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

as quoted by de:Wolf-Dieter Dube, in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, p. 102
1920 - 1930

Children, Books, Peace, Art

“The spider hung motionless, like a dull brown gem in an intricate necklace. The web was complete, now, the last strands laid delicately in place; it stretched from one side of the ceiling corner to the other, quivering gently in the rising air as though strummed by invisible hands.
For a moment Isgrimnur lost the thread of talk, important talk though it was. His eyes had drifted from the worried faces huddled near the fireplace in the great hall, roving up to the darkened corner, and to the tiny builder at rest.
There’s sense, he told himself. You build something and then you stay there. That’s the way it’s meant to be. Not this running here, running there, never see your blood-family or your home roofs for a year at a time.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 37, “Jiriki’s Hunt” (p. 619).

Family, Way, Home, Sense

“Man is constituted as a speculative being; he contemplates the world, and the objects around him, not with a passive indifferent eye, but as a system disposed with order and design.”

John Herschel (1792–1871) English mathematician, astronomer, chemist and photographer

A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1831)

World, Indifference

“Baseball skill relates inversely to age. The older a man gets, the better a ball player he was when young, according to the watery eye of memory.”

Roger Kahn (1927–2020) American baseball writer

Source: The Boys Of Summer, Chapter 1, The Trolley Car That Ran By Ebbets Field, p. 10

Age, Memory

“I’m basically interested in intervention. The key question for me is: how can you intervene more systemically? Systems approaches make the assumption that things are interconnected. That’s the fundamental starting point. However, we don’t have the privilege of a God’s eye view of that interconnectedness, so there are inevitable limits to understanding, and it is those limits that we call boundaries. So systemic intervention, for me, at a fundamental level, is how to explore those boundaries, and how to take account of the inevitable lack of comprehensiveness and begin to deal with that.”

Gerald Midgley (1960) New Zealand acaedmic

Midgley (2012) Interview with systems thinker Gerald Midgley http://www.shiftn.com/news/detail/interview_with_systems_thinker_gerald_midgley, March 5, 2012.

God, Understanding, Question

“Red-in-red repetitions never going
Away, a little rusty, a little rouged,
A little roughened and ruder, a crownThe eye could not escape, a red renown
Blowing itself upon the tedious ear.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Give Pleasure

“John Randolph had only been a Senator for a few days when he gave an extraordinary speech denouncing John Quincy Adams. 'It is my duty,' said Randolph, 'to leave nothing undone that I may lawfully do, to pull down this administration…. They who, from indifference, or with their eyes open, persist in hugging the traitor to their bosom, deserve to be insulted… deserve to be slaves, with no other music to soothe them but the clank of the chains which they have put on themselves and given to their offspring.' John Randolph said this in 1826. This was a time, writes de Tocqueville, when the presidency was almost invisible. If we cannot say this and more today, when the presidency is dictator to the world, we are not authentic conservatives and libertarians. Indeed, we are not free men.”

Lew Rockwell (1944) American libertarian author and editor

6 October 1996 "Down With the Presidency"
1990s

Men, World, Music, Time

“Present and past—what had Dr. Orme said about that? The light was most fully in the present when, flaring up, it met John's eye directly. Whatever else he saw must have been lit up before and now shone only within his own eye—a light of the past.”

Sten Nadolny book The Discovery of Slowness

p, 125
The Discovery of Slowness (1983, 1987)

Light, Past

“Samuel Spade’s jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down-from high flat temples-in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blonde Satan.”

Dashiell Hammett book The Maltese Falcon

The Maltese Falcon (1930)

“Maia recognized a look of true religion in the other woman’s eyes. A version and interpretation that conveniently justified what had already been decided.”

David Brin book Glory Season

Source: Glory Season (1993), Chapter 14 (p. 240)

Religion

“To play great music, you must keep your eyes on a distant star.”

Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) American violinist and conductor

Source: Rene J. Smith The Spirit of Flight http://books.google.co.in/books?id=Euu4e-4qNAUC&pg=PT30, Peter Pauper Press, Inc., 15 January 2012, p. 30

Music, Star, Distant

“First I will make different color tests: I will study the dark – deep blue, deep violet, deep dirty green, etc. Often I see the colors before my eyes. Sometimes I imitate with my lips the deep sounds of the trumpet – then I see various deep mixtures which the word is uncapable od conceiving and which the palette can only feebly reproduce.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote in Kandinsky's letter to Gabriele Münter, 1915; as cited in Schönberg and Kandinsky: An Historic Encounter, by Klaus Kropfinger; edited by Konrad Boehmer; published by Routledge (imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informal company), 2003, p. 16 note 54
1910 - 1915

Color, Study

“Some write their wrongs in marble: he more just,
Stoop’d down serene and wrote them in the dust,—
Trod under foot, the sport of every wind,
Swept from the earth and blotted from his mind.
There, secret in the grave, he bade them lie,
And grieved they could not ’scape the Almighty eye.”

Samuel Madden (1686–1765) Irish writer

Boulter's Monument (1745), dedicated to Frederick, Prince of Wales, who had been Madden's student.

Lie, Secret, Sport

“It wasn’t as direct as me saying “I now make the choice to bring the paparazzi into my life.” I really said, “I now make the choice to sleep with Jessica Simpson.” That was stronger than my desire to stay out of the paparazzi’s eye.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

On deciding to date Jessica Simpson (February 10, 2010), "John Mayer: Playboy Interview" http://www.playboy.com/articles/john-mayer-playboy-interview/index.html?page=1 Playboy. Retrieved February 10, 2010.

Life, Sleep

“Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling,
Do not forget what flowers
The great boar trampled down in ivy time.
Her brow was creamy as the crested wave,
Her sea-blue eyes were wild
But nothing promised that is not performed.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"To Juan at the Winter Solstice," lines 37–42, from Poems 1938-1945 (1946).
Poems

Smile, Flowers, Time, Sea

“I forgot out there on the stage to thank my cast. So if I could do that now, I want to thank Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld. I thought the love scene between Cheney and Rumsfeld brought a tear to my eye.”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

Statement after winning the top prize at the Cannes film festival for Fahrenheit 9/11, quoted Reuters reports (22 May 2004), partly quoted in [Moore scoops Palme d'Or with attack on US president, Patrick, Barkham, The Guardian, 24 May 2004, http://film.guardian.co.uk/cannes2004/story/0,,1223156,00.html]
2004

Love, Tear

“I can look sharp as well as another, and let me alone to keep the cobwebs out of my eyes.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book III, Ch. 33.

“I buried your face, someplace
by the side of the new road
so I would not trip over it
every morning or on evening strolls still, I am helplessly drawn
to the scene of this crime
for fear of forgetting
the sum of your splendor then there’s also the rain
that loosens the soil
to reveal a bewitching feature
awash with emotion an eye, perhaps tender or
a pale, becalmed cheek
a mouth tight with reproach or
lips pursed in a deathless smile other times you are inscrutable
worse, is when I seem to lose you
and pick at the earth like a scab
frantic, and faithful, like a dog.”

Yahia Lababidi (1973)

"Cairo" online at ditch, the poetry that matters http://www.ditchpoetry.com/yahialababidi.htm

Fear, Faith, Smile, Dogs

“Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
And some are treasured for their markings –
They cause the eyes to melt
Or the body to shriek without pain.”

Craig Raine (1944) Poet

"A Martian Sends a Postcard Home", line 1; first published in The New Statesman, December 23 and 30, 1977.

Pain, Bird

“The sky was dark, the night was black, obscurity reigned, the gleam of the wolves eyes was the only light that came to sight, the howling of the jackal was the only sound to be heard, conspiracies were in the making while slanderers and the malicious were busily chattering”

Ali Shariati (1933–1977) Iranian academic and activist

Quote in: Ali Rahnema An Islamic Utopian: A Political Biography of Ali Shariati. (2000), p. 258
Rahnema commented that "Shariati did not believe he had any chance of returning to Ershad and evaluated his situation in a poetical and macabre fashion".

Light, Night

“Reproof on her lip, but a smile in her eye.”

Samuel Lover (1797–1868) Irish song-writer, novelist, and painter

Rory O' More, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Smile

“Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”

Theodore Parker (1810–1860) abolitionist

This portion of Parker's sermon is thought to have inspired Martin Luther King, Jr.‎'s famous assertion of similar sentiments: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice". Ten Sermons of Religion (1853), III : Of Justice and the Conscience https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ten_Sermons_of_Religion/Of_Justice_and_the_Conscience

World, Justice, Way, Understanding

“God is everywhere present by His power. He rolls the orbs of heaven with His hand; He fixes the earth with His foot; He guides all creatures with His eye, and refreshes them with His influence; He makes the powers of hell to shake with His terrors, and binds the devils with His word.”

Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) English clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 274.

God, Hell

“A pretty little collection of weaknesses and a terror of spiders are our indispensable stock-in-trade with the men… nine men out of ten are superstitious, nineteen out of twenty believe in the evil eye, and ninety-eight out of a hundred are afraid of spiders. They forgive us — oh! for many things, but not for the absence in us of their own feelings.”

Colette (1873–1954) 1873-1954 French novelist: wrote Gigi

Aunt Alicia
Gigi (1945)

Men, Feeling, Forgiveness, Evil

“Where the blue of the night
Meets the gold of the day,
Someone waits for me.

And the gold of her hair
crowns the blue of her eyes
like a halo tenderly.”

Roy Turk (1892–1934) American songwriter

Song Where the Blue of the Night (Meets the Gold of the Day) http://www.lyrics007.com/Bing%20Crosby%20Lyrics/Where%20The%20Blue%20Of%20The%20Night%20Meets%20The%20Gold%20Of%20The%20Day%20Lyrics.html

Waiting, Night

“He gave us eyes to see them,
And lips that we might tell
How great is God Almighty,
Who has made all things well.”

Cecil Frances Alexander (1818–1895) British hymn-writer and poet

Hymn: All things bright and beautiful http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/a/l/allthing.htm

God

“I can only stick my neck out and offer my humble beliefs. If I become an outsider by doing so, this won't be a great hardship as I've been that as far back as I can remember — something strange and unacceptable in the eyes of those who believe they see straight. At least it's given me courage of a kind, which I'd like every Australian to acquire.”

Patrick White (1912–1990) English-born Australian writer

Australians in a Nuclear War (1983)

Courage

“I understand so very little. But I am not afraid to look: I am a good observer at last. My eyes are open, and I am not afraid.”

Robert Charles Wilson (1953) author

The Observer (p. 113)
The Perseids and Other Stories (2000)

Understanding

“"Maybe this isn't coffee at all," I said. "Maybe it's just water after they boiled your filthy shoes in it." I looked up to her black blazing eyes. "Maybe you don't know any better. Maybe you're just naturally careless. But if I were a girl I wouldn't be seen in a Main Street alley with those shoes."”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Shoe, Girl, Coffee, Nature

“The fact is that Christian art failed at a deeper level. It failed not in execution but in conception and vision, and this failure was at bottom failure of Christian theology in which mysticism is rudimentary and peripheral. Christian theology has no concept of transcendence, non-attachment, recollectedness, equality (samatâ), liberation (moksha), the vast (bhûmâ) and the infinite (ananta), compassion (kurunâ), of cosmic action emanating from restfulness at the centre; therefore, it felt no call to try to convey them in its art-forms. A deeper iconography needed the support of a deeper theology and vision. This explains why Christian art has no equivalents of Far Eastern Buddhas and Bodhisattvas as Huxley notices. The Eastern tradition was shaped by Hindu religious thinking and sensibility. Hindu art tried to portray the inner man: the Man behind the man, the Eye behind the eye, the Seeing behind the seeing, man's inner prânika or life-currents, the nodal points in his subtle body where the individual meets the cosmic. It portrayed man's inner physiognomy. …. But they portrayed the external man; there was no portrayal of the inner man, the luminous man, the transcendental man.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

On Hinduism (2000)

Life, Art, Failure, Support

“There was Riley pushing it, shoving it, shushing it
Hogan, Logan and ev'ryone in town lined up
Attacking it and shoving it and smacking it
They might as well have tried to push the Town Hall down.
The donkey was eyeing them,
Openly defying them
Winking, blinking and twisting out of place,
Riley reversing it,
Ev'rybody cursing it
The day Delaney's donkey ran the half mile race.”

William Hargreaves (1880–1941) English composer

Song Delaney's Donkey.

“The time has come for us to stand a little taller, to lift our eyes and stretch our minds to a greater comprehension and understanding of the grand millennial mission of this, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Conference Report, Apr. 1995, 95.

Understanding, Time, Christ

“Dear Jackson, -.. First and most unfortunately, I have been four times after Bach, and have never laid eyes on him.... but surely I shall catch Bach soon to get you an answer to your letter..”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote from Gainsborough's letter to his friend & composer William Jackson of Exeter, from Pall Mall, 25 Jan. 1777; as cited in Thomas Gainsborough, by William T, Whitley https://ia800204.us.archive.org/6/items/thomasgainsborou00whitrich/thomasgainsborou00whitrich.pdf; New York, Charles Scribner's Sons – London, Smith, Elder & Co, Sept. 1915, p. 388 1770 - 1788

Time

“"I have one more message for you men, and for the SS goons who skulk in the woods and in the darkness," Eisenhower said. "It's very simple. We are going to stay here as long as it takes to make sure Germany can never again trouble the peace of the world." He probably expected more cheers then. He got… a few. Lou was one of the men who clapped. The guy in the tanker's coveralls edged away, as if afraid he had something contagious. That saddened him without much surprising him. He wondered how many of the others who applauded there were also Jewish. Quite a few, unless he missed his guess. Yes, Eisenhower had looked for more in the way of approval there. He'd acted professionally grim before. Now his eyes narrowed and the corners of his mouth turned down. He wasn't just grim any more; he was pissed off.”

Harry Turtledove (1949) American novelist, short story author, essayist, historian

Source: The Man With the Iron Heart (2008), p. 63

Men, World, Peace, Way

“Japan's racialized worldview equated virtue with strength, the North Koreans are taught that their virtue has rendered them as vulnerable as children in an evil world — unless they are protected by a great leader who keeps a watchful eye on military readiness. Unfortunately for the United States, there is no place in this for any improvement in relations between the two countries.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, North Korea's Race Problem (February 2010)

Children, World, Evil, Country

“A diary is more or less the work of a man of clay whose hands are clumsy and in whose eyes there is no light.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Journal entry (26 July 1899); as published in Souvenirs and Prophecies: the Young Wallace Stevens (1977) edited by Holly Stevens, Ch. 3

Light

“Death continued to stare at the emperor with his cold, hollow eyes, and the room was fearfully still. Suddenly there came through the open window the sound of sweet music. Outside, on the bough of a tree, sat the living nightingale. She had heard of the emperor's illness, and was therefore come to sing to him of hope and trust. And as she sung, the shadows grew paler and paler; the blood in the emperor's veins flowed more rapidly, and gave life to his weak limbs; and even Death himself listened, and said, "Go on, little nightingale, go on."”

Hans Christian Andersen book The Nightingale

The Nightingale
Fairy Tales (1835)

Life, Death, Hope, Music

“You can be an ugly baby and everyone goes awww innit nice? There was some women in a cafe the other week that I was sat in, and she came up and she sat down with her mate and she was talkin' loudly goin' on about oh the baby's lovely. They said it's got, er, lovely big eyes, er, really big hands and feet. Now that doesn't sound like a nice baby to me. I felt like sayin' it sounds like a frog. But I thought I dont know her, there's only so much you can say to a stranger. I dont know what kept me from sayin' it.”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

The Podfather Trilogy, Episode 1 Halloween
On Life

Love, Women, Baby

“Philosophy gets on my nerves. If we analyze the ultimate ground of everything, then everything finally falls into nothingness. But I have decided to resume my lectures again and look the Hydra of doubt straight into the eye, and it be quite ominous if one values one's life.”

Ludwig Boltzmann (1844–1906) Austrian physicist

"Into the Cool: Energy Flow, Thermodynamics and Life", Eric D. Schneider and Dorion Sagan, 2005, p. 323
Attributed

Life

“I do not trust my eyes to tell me what a man is: I have a better and more trustworthy light by which I can distinguish what is true from what is false: let the mind find out what is good for the mind.”
Oculis de homine non credo, habeo melius et certius lumen quo a falsis uera diiudicem: animi bonum animus inueniat.

Seneca the Younger Moral Essays

De Vita Beata (On the Happy Life): cap. 2, line 2
Alternate translation: I do not distinguish by the eye, but by the mind, which is the proper judge of the man. (translator unknown).
Moral Essays

Light, Falseness

“I smiled at him but knew it did not reach my eyes. I smiled because he smiled at me, more reflex than emotion. Inside I was nothing. It was a little like being in shock. Shock is nature's insulation, the thing that shuts you down so you can heal, or sometimes so you can die without hurting, or being afraid…”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

Unidentified edition/page
Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, Incubus Dreams (2004)

Smile, Nature, Hurt

“His eyes
All radiant with glad surprise,
Looked forward through the Centuries
And saw the seeds which sages cast
In the world’s soil in cycles past
Spring up and blossom at the last;
Saw how the souls of men had grown,
And where the scythes of Truth had mown
Clear space for Liberty’s white throne;
Saw how, by sorrow tried and proved,
The blackening stains had been removed
Forever from the land he loved;
Saw Treason crushed and Freedom crowned,
And clamorous Faction, gagged and bound,
Gasping its life out on the ground.”

Richard Realf (1832–1878) American poet

Apocalypse.

Love, Life, Men, Truth

“Today China and the world will meet again. People will see that the planet is now smaller than at any time in history, that mankind should bid farewell to arrogance and indifference, to ignorance and discrimination, and understand that we share the same small piece of land. It will be a time to rediscover each other, to share what is good in life, to look each other in the eye and link all ten fingers.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

“ Why I’ll Stay Away from the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/07/olympics2008.china.” Guardian, August 7, 2008. 2000-09, 2008

Life, People, World, History

“Hindu society has produced many communalists. Admitted. But it has also produced men like Mahatma Gandhi who went on a fast unto death to save the Muslims of Bihar from large-scale butchery. It has produced men like Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru who had the Bihari Hindus bombed from the air when they did not respond to the Mahatma’s call. These have not been isolated men in Hindu society, as Rafi Ahmad Kidwai and M. C. Chagla have been in Muslim society. The Mahatma was a leader whom the whole Hindu society honoured. Pandit Nehru has been kept as Prime Minister over all these years by a majority vote of the same Hindu society. “Now let me give you a sample of the leadership which Muslim society has produced so far, and in an ample measure. The foremost that comes to my mind is Liaqat Ali Khan, the first Prime Minister of Pakistan. Immediately after partition, there was a shooting in Sheikhupura in which many Hindus who were waiting for repatriation in a camp, were shot down. There was a great commotion in India, and Pandit Nehru had to take up the matter in his next weekly meeting with Liaqat Ali in Lahore. The Prime Minister of Pakistan had brought the Deputy Commissioner of Sheikhupura with him. The officer explained that the Hindus had broken out of the camp at night in the midst of a curfew, and the police had to open fire. Pandit Nehru asked as to why the Hindus had broken out of the camp. The officer told him that some miscreants had set the camp on fire. Pandit Nehru protested to Liaqat Ali that this was an amazing explanation. Liaqat Ali replied without batting an eye that they had to maintain law and order. This exemplifies the quality of leadership which Muslim society has produced so far. This…”

Hamid Dalwai (1932–1977) Indian social reformer, thinker and writer

From a speech by Hamid Dalwai. Quoted from Goel, S. R. (1994). Defence of Hindu society.

Death, Men, Law, Waiting

“When all my five and country senses see,
The fingers will forget green thumbs and mark
How, through the halfmoon's vegetable eye,
Husk of young stars and handfull zodiac,
Love in the frost is pared and wintered by.”

Dylan Thomas (1914–1953) Welsh poet and writer

" When All My Five And Country Senses See http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Dylan_Thomas/1149" (1939)

Love, Star, Sense, Winter

“Man, to think the Lord got hold of me just one day before I was to register for school! I've got money put away and was all set to go. Today was registration day so I went over to school to let them know why I wouldn't be back. I really prayed like the apostle asked the Ephesians to pray, that I might "open my mouth boldly." I talked to all the fellows that I knew well. Then I went in to see a professor I thought a lot about. I told him what I planned to do, and before I left he had tears in his eyes. I went in to see another professor and talked to him. All I got was a cold farewell and a good luck wish.”

Ed McCully (1927–1956) American Christian missionary

Money, School, Thinking, Tear

“As a young man, Valmiki searched through the world seeking open friendship and happiness and hope and finding none of these he went alone into the empty forest where no man lived, to as spot where the Tamasa River flows into Ganga. There he sat for years without moving, so still that white ants built an anthill over him. There Valmiki sat inside that anthill for thousands of years with only his eyes showing out, trying to find the True, his hands folded and his mind lost in contemplation.”

Vālmīki Ramayana

In p. 5.
Ramayana

Friendship, World, Hope, Search

“It was one of those cold, clammy, accusing sort of eyes--the kind that makes you reach up to see if your tie is straight: and he looked at me as I were some sort of unnecessary product which Cuthbert the Cat had brought in after a ramble among the local ash-cans.”

P.G. Wodehouse book The Adventures of Sally

The Adventures of Sally (1922)

Cats

“I've seen the light
And I've seen the flame.
And I've been this way before,
And I'm sure to be this way again.For I've been refused,
And I've been regained,
And I've seen your eyes before,
And I'm sure to see your eyes again.
Once again.For I've been released,
And I've been regained,
And I've sung my song before,
And I'm sure to sing my song again.
Once again.”

Neil Diamond (1941) American singer-songwriter

I've Been This Way Before
Song lyrics, Serenade (1974)

Way, Light, Singing

“None of them knew the color of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were of the hue of slate, save for the tops, which were of foaming white, and all of the men knew the colors of the sea. The horizon narrowed and widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged with waves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks.”

Stephen Crane book The Open Boat

Pt. I
The Open Boat (1894)

Men, Color, Time, Sea

“The head tumbles between the legs
like a wooden ball
you fall, dark night
in the eyes,
the door a span away
inaccessible
you are on your knees
…”

Caterina Davinio (1957) Italian writer

The Book of Opium (1975 - 1990), Overdose
Source: Caterina Davinio, Il libro dell'oppio 1975 – 1990] (The Book of Opium 1975 – 1990), Puntoacapo Editrice, Novi Ligure 2012. English translation by Caterina Davinio and David W. Seaman.</ref>

Night

“I love the idea that something would be whimsical, and like "delightful", you know, but also disgusting — so I like this sort of, you know, a really gnarly guitar — really gross, disgusting guitar and then a — really a whimsical… — it's one of those things you can only describe in sort of awkward hand gestures and eye motions. Imagine!”

St. Vincent (musician) (1982) American singer-songwriter

On one of her compositions on the album Actor, in an interview for Billboard magazine (20 March 2009)

Love, Imagination, Idea

“Starting from a drawing, a pure creation of the mind, I expand it in space by giving it three dimensions, by giving it a material body [in polystyrene] and then enlarge it to the proportions of a site where it can evolve. In this way, instead of having only the drawing before you while remaining anchored in the everyday world, you can finally leave the world and penetrate into drawing, and thus inhabit the creation of the mind instead of merely looking at it prudently in a frame on the wall. The experience consists, therefore, in abstracting yourself totally from the natural everyday world in order to feed your eyes solely on your own mental elaborations.”

Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985) sculptor from France

Note of 7 mai 1968, as quoted in the catalogue of the exhibition La Fiast invita all'incontro con Jean Dubuffet, Turin 1978
posthumous

World, Way, Nature, Drawing

“Probability is too important to be left to the experts. […] The experts, by their very expert training and practice, often miss the obvious and distort reality seriously. […] The desire of the experts to publish and gain credit in the eyes of their peers has distorted the development of probability theory from the needs of the average user. The comparatively late rise of the theory of probability shows how hard it is to grasp, and the many paradoxes show clearly that we, as humans, lack a well grounded intuition in the matter. Neither the intuition of the man in the street, nor the sophisticated results of the experts provides a safe basis for important actions in the world we live in.”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

Source: The Art of Probability for Scientists and Engineers (1991), p. 4 [emphasis in original]

World, Reality, Training

“The Unicorn Sonata … tells us that our true home is often right around the corner, if we'd only open our eyes — and our ears — to find it.”

Peter S. Beagle (1939) American writer

The Unicorn Sonata (1996)

Home

“The ecclesiastical description of Hell is that of a horrible place of fire and torment; in Dante's Inferno, and in northern climes, it was thought to be an icy cold region, a giant refrigerator. (Even with all their threats of eternal damnation and soul roasting, Christian missionaries have run across some who were not so quick to swallow their drivel. Pleasure and pain, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder. So, when missionaries ventured into Alaska and warned the Eskimos of the horrors of Hell and the blazing lake of fire awaiting transgressors, they eagerly asked: "How do we get there?")”

Anton LaVey book The Satanic Bible

The Satanic Bible (1969)

Pain, Pleasure, Beauty, Soul

“By following up this idea, also, we might go a little further. We might arrive at the conviction that our present science is human, petty, and contingent; that it is closely linked with the structure of our sensory organs; that this structure results from the evolution which fashioned these organs; that this evolution has been an accident of history; that in the future it may be different; and that, consequently, by the side or in the stead of our modern science, the work of our eyes and hands—and also of our words—there might have been constituted, there may still be constituted, sciences entirely and extraordinarily new—auditory, olfactory, and gustatory sciences, and even others derived from other kinds of sensations which we can neither foresee nor conceive because they are not, for the moment, differentiated in us. Outside the matter we know, a very special matter fashioned of vision and touch, there may exist other matter with totally different properties. …We must, by setting aside the mechanical theory, free ourselves from a too narrow conception of the constitution of matter. And this liberation will be to us a great advantage which we shall soon reap. We shall avoid the error of believing that mechanics is the only real thing and that all that cannot be explained by mechanics must be incomprehensible. We shall then gain more liberty of mind for understanding what the union of the soul with the body may be.”

Alfred Binet (1857–1911) French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test

Source: The Mind and the Brain, 1907, p. 43

Error, Soul, History, Idea

“If you want to know why I’m here and what I want from you I can only assure you this: you have already given it to me. Your presence was what I wanted. Sanity will always be and has always been in the eye of the beholder. To see you here today and the kind of people that you are has restored mine. Thank you.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear closing speech (2010)

People

“She tended to keep her eyes half closed, as if full sight of the world’s absurdity might be too much to bear.”

Joan Slonczewski book A Door into Ocean

Part 2, “A Door Into Ocean” - Chapter 4 (p. 71)
A Door into Ocean (1986)

World

“There is little in common between the organised parading of madness in the eighteenth century and the freedom with which madness came to the fore during the Renaissance. The earlier age had found it everywhere, an integral element of each experience, both in images and in real life dangers. During the classical period, it was also on public view, but behind bars. When it manifested itself it was at a carefully controlled distance, under the watchful eye of a reason that denied all kinship with it, and felt quite unthreatened by any hint of resemblance. Madness had become a thing to be observed, no longer the monster within, but an animal moved by strange mechanisms, more beast than man, where all humanity had long since disappeared.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Part One: 5. The Insane
History of Madness (1961)

Life, Age, Freedom, Animals

“In this dim world of clouding cares,
We rarely know, till wildered eyes
See white wings lessening up the skies,
The angels with us unawares.”

Gerald Massey (1828–1907) British poet

Babe Cristabel, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

World, Angels

“Masculinity is tragic. Masculinity is a lifelong struggle, a gauntlet run against nature ad other men to demonstrate virility and prove one's worthiness as a man in the eyes of other men. Masculinity is a challenge to honor that ends only in death- a challenge to win coupled with a guarantee that, eventually, even the best man will lose.”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

Pg 19-20
Becoming A Barbarian (2016)

Death, Men, Nature

“My dad, Ron Brand, was an entrepreneurial Essex man, Del Boy’d up to the hilt on Thatcher’s creed. He was a self-made and self-destructive man and intermittently tumbled either side of the line. The prevailing mentality of the time, the eighties, was “every man for himself.” Unions were crushed, state interests were carved up and flogged, and council houses were sold back to the people whose efforts had built them. One of the great venture-capitalist heroes of this time, who epitomized this buccaneering spirit, was Sir James Goldsmith, Tory hero, Thatcher crush, scourge of Private Eye, and demon of the left. My dad and a lot of people from modest backgrounds admired him; there was something appealingly antiestablishment and daring in the aggressive and ingenious ways that James Goldsmith exploited the system.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

People, Way, Effort, Time

“Today, there is no greater injustice than that suffered by the 4,000 babies, 1,400 of them black, who die on any given day at the hands of abortionists. Friday, we will stand witness in front of the White House and testify to President Obama and that while he is living his dreams, those babies will be dying horrible deaths because of the policies he supports. I see the pride on African American faces everywhere, pride in the tremendous breakthrough President Obama represents," added Dr. King. "But I also can close my eyes and see the millions upon millions of young black, white, red, and yellow faces who never had the chance to live, overcome, or witness history.”

Alveda King (1951) American, civil rights activist, Christian minister, conservative, pro-life activist, and author

Dr. Alveda King featured speaker at prolife rally http://www.speroforum.com/a/17811/Dr-Alveda-King-featured-speaker-at-prolife-rally#.WH0nsFMrLIU (January 22, 2009)

Death, Dreams, History, Support

“Half of the human race lives in manifest obedience to the lunar rhythm; and there is evidence to show that the psychological and therefore the spiritual life, not only of women, but of men too, mysteriously ebbs and flows with the changes of the moon. There are unreasoned joys, inexplicable miseries, laughters and remorses without a cause. Their sudden and fantastic alternations constitute the ordinary weather of our minds. These moods, of which the more gravely numinous may be hypostasized as gods, the lighter, if we will, as hobgoblins and fairies, are the children of the blood and humours. But the blood and humours obey, among many other masters, the changing moon. Touching the soul directly through the eyes and, indirectly, along the dark channels of the blood, the moon is doubly a divinity.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

"Meditation on the Moon"
Music at Night and Other Essays (1931)

Life, Women, Men, God

“I breathe in the full scent of her. If it ends tomorrow or in eighty years, I could breathe her for the rest of my life. But I want more. I need more. I tilt her slender jaw up with my hand so that she's looking at me. I was going to say something important. Something memorable. But I've forgotten it in her eyes. That gulf that divided us is still there, filled with questions and recrimination and guilt, but that's only part of love, part of being human. Everything is cracked, everything is stained except the fragile moments that hang crystalline in time and make life worth living.”

Pierce Brown book Morning Star

Source: Morning Star (2016), Ch. 56: In Time

Love, Life, Question, Time

“What happens when our eye sees a rose? What do we do when that happens? Our mind does something, to be sure, in the mere fact of taking in the object, grasping its color, its shape, and so on. We have to be awake and active. But all the same, it is a "relaxed" looking, so long as we are merely looking at it and not observing or studying it, counting or measuring its various features. Such observation would not be a "relaxed" action; it would be what Ernst Jünger termed an "act of aggression." But simply looking at something, gazing at it, "taking it in," is merely to open our eyes to receive the things that present themselves to us, that come to us without any need for "effort" on our part to "possess" them.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), Leisure, the Basis of Culture, p. 9
The Ernst Jünger quote is from Blätter und Steine (Hamburg, 1934), p. 202.

Color, Effort, Study, Parting

“Frances Egan, the school nurse, left her nutrition charts long enough to tell me there was nothing that could have been done. "Evelyn had a rough time with her father," she said. "Once she came in beaten black and blue."
"What did you do for her?"
"I gave her a cup of tea."
"Tea? Why tea, for heaven's sake?"
"Why? Because I know all about it," she said, shaking with anger. "I know more than anyone here what goes on outside — poverty, disease, dope, degeneracy — yet I'm not supposed to give them even a band-aid. I used to plead, bang on my desk, talk myself hoarse arguing with kids, parents, welfare, administration, social agencies. Nobody really heard me. Now I give them tea. At least, that's something."
"But you're a nurse," I said helplessly.
She showed me the Directive from the Board posted on her wall: THE SCHOOL NURSE MAY NOT TOUCH WOUNDS, GIVE MEDICATION, REMOVE FOREIGN PARTICLES FROM THE EYE…
Are we, none of us, then, allowed to touch wounds? What is the teacher's responsibility? And if it begins at all, where does it end?”

Bel Kaufmanová book Up the Down Staircase

Part V, ch. 26 (Sylvia Barrett)
Up the Down Staircase (1965)

Disease, School, Parent, Teachers

“Vacant heart, and hand, and eye,
Easy live and quiet die.”

Walter Scott book The Bride of Lammermoor

The Bride of Lammermoor (1819), Ch. 3 - Lucy Ashton's Song.

Heart

“Let us begin with the simplest illustration possible: let us, emulating Bastiat, choose a broken pane of glass.A young hoodlum, say, heaves a brick through the window of a baker’s shop. The shopkeeper runs out furious, but the boy is gone. A crowd gathers, and begins to stare with quiet satisfaction at the gaping hole in the window and the shattered glass over the bread and pies. After a while the crowd feels the need for philosophic reflection. And several of its members are almost certain to remind each other or the baker that, after all, the misfortune has its bright side. It will make business for some glazier. As they begin to think of this they elaborate upon it. How much does a new plate glass window cost? Fifty dollars? That will be quite a sum. After all, if windows were never broken, what would happen to the glass business? Then, of course, the thing is endless. The glazier will have $50 more to spend with other merchants, and these in turn will have $50 more to spend with still other merchants, and so ad infinitum. The smashed window will go on providing money and employment in ever-widening circles. The logical conclusion from all this would be, if the crowd drew it, that the little hoodlum who threw the brick, far from being a public menace, was a public benefactor.Now let us take another look. The crowd is at least right in its first conclusion. This little act of vandalism will in the first instance mean more business for some glazier. The glazier will be no more unhappy to learn of the incident than an undertaker to learn of a death. But the shopkeeper will be out $50 that he was planning to spend for a new suit. Because he has had to replace a window, he will have to go without the suit (or some equivalent need or luxury). Instead of having a window and $50 he now has merely a window. Or, as he was planning to buy the suit that very afternoon, instead of having both a window and a suit he must be content with the window and no suit. If we think of him as a part of the community, the community has lost a new suit that might otherwise have come into being, and is just that much poorer.The glazier’s gain of business, in short, is merely the tailor’s loss of business. No new “employment” has been added. The people in the crowd were thinking only of two parties to the transaction, the baker and the glazier. They had forgotten the potential third party involved, the tailor. They forgot him precisely because he will not now enter the scene. They will see the new window in the next day or two. They will never see the extra suit, precisely because it will never be made. They see only what is immediately visible to the eye.”

Henry Hazlitt book Economics in One Lesson

Economics in One Lesson (1946), The Broken Window (ch. 2)

Death, Money, People, Feeling

“Heaven is always ready to shut its eyes to our sins when they are not committed before the eyes of the world, and when the lack of witnesses makes it impossible to bring the charge home to us.”

Girolamo Gigli (1660–1722) Italian dramaturge

Il cielo chiude volentieri gli occhi a nostri difetti, quando non son fatti avanti gli occhi del mondo, e quando per mancanza di testimoni non possa compire perfettamente il processo contra di noi.
Il Don Pilone (1711), Act III., Sc. V. — (Don Pilone.)
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 312.

World, Home

“My dad hates umbrellas,” said Deeba, swinging her own. “When it rains he always says the same thing. ‘I do not believe the presence of moisture in the air is sufficient reason to overturn society’s usual sensible taboo against wielding spiked clubs at eye level.’”

China Miéville book Un Lun Dun

Source: Un Lun Dun (2007), Chapter 3, “The Visiting Smoke” (p. 11)

Hate

“Dear as the vital warmth that feeds my life;
Dear as these eyes, that weep in fondness o’er thee.”

Thomas Otway Venice Preserv'd

Venice Preserv'd (1682), Act v. Sc. 1. Compare: "Dear as the light that visits these sad eyes; Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart", Thomas Gray, The Bard, part i. stanza 3.

Life