Quotes about eye (5835 quotes, page 29)

“We should consider for a moment how much the Christian understanding of life is based on the reality of "Grace"; let us also recall that the Holy Spirit Himself is called "Gift"; that the greatest Christian teachers have said that the Justice of God is based on Love; that something given, something free of all debt, something undeserved, something not-achieved - is presumed in everything achieved or laid claim to; that what is first is always something received — if we keep all this before our eyes, we can see the abyss that separates this other attitude from the inheritence of Christian Europe.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure, the Basis of Culture (1948), Leisure, the Basis of Culture, p. 20

Love , Life , God , Justice

“Never in his life had Alessandro had to squint in starlight, but now the stars were so bright that at times he had to cover his eyes, and when they burned too brilliantly for keeping still, they sometimes shot across the sky in short bursts. Though these quiet illuminations vanished almost as soon as they had started, they lingered in the eye’s inexact memory of their luminescent paths. Perhaps had they been stronger and more constant, and hung in a dull white line, Alessandro’s heart would not have risen each time he saw them. They were less than little puffs of smoke, their tracks thinner than a hair, the bursts of light mainly a matter of memory.”

Mark Helprin (1947) US author, journalist, commentator

A Soldier of The Great War (1991)

Life , Star , Light , Memory

“Cognitive liberty begins at home, behind your eyes and between your ears. The first act of liberation is to step forward, and be counted as one of us.”

Mark Pesce (1962) American writer

Tales of Un-DARE-ing Do http://hyperreal.org/~mpesce/undaringdo.html

Home

“But I have to tell you what I saw... I had entered a dark room [in the city Tunis], lit by a small, elongated horizontal window,.. The light cut sharply.... and drew itself on the stone floor... There behind the table was sitting the Jewish scribe with his arms forward, leaning on the parchment. He turned his lordly head in my direction... It was a beautiful head, delicate and translucent pale as alabaster, large and small wrinkles were lining along the small eyes and around the big curved hawk nose. A black cap covered the white skull and a low white-yellow beard lay in large tufts over the written parchment... two crutches lay slantingly on the floor beside him. How much I desired to get my sketchbook out.... but in front of the staring gaze of the scribe, I didn't find the courage to carry out my intention.”

Jozef Israëls (1824–1911) Dutch painter

translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van de tekst van Jozef Israëls, in het Nederlands): Maar ik moet u vertellen wat ik zag.. Ik was een donkere ruimte binnengetreden, verlicht door een klein langwerpig horizontaal liggend raampje,.. .Scherp sneed het licht.. ..en tekende zich af op de stenen vloer.. .Daar zat achter de tafel de joodse wetschrijver met zijn armen voorover op het perkament geleund en draaide zijn vorstelijk hoofd naar mij toe;. ..Het was een prachtig hoofd, fijn en doorschijnend bleek als albast, rimpels, grote en kleine, liepen langs de kleine ogen en om de grote gekromde haviksneus. Een zwart kapje bedekte de witte schedel en een lage witgele baard lag in grote vlokken over het beschreven perkament.. ..twee krukken lagen naast hem schuin op de grond. Hoe gaarne had ik mijn schetsboek voor de dag gehaald,. ..maar voor de starende blik van de wetschrijver durfde ik mijn voornemen niet ten uitvoer te brengen.
Quote of Israëls from his text Spanje, een reisverhaal, publisher, Martinus Nijhoff, De Haag, 1899, p. unknown
Quotes of Jozef Israels, 1871 - 1900

Beauty , Courage , Light

“So there you are – you can see what it is like. The camera's hot, probing eye, these monstrous machines and their attendants – a kind of twentieth century torture chamber, that's what it is. But I must try to forget about that, and imagine that you are sitting here in the room with me.”

Harold Macmillan (1894–1986) British politician

"Call for 'A little extra effort'", The Times, 25 January 1962, p. 6.

Opening to Conservative Party political broadcast (24 January 1962), quoted in "Call for 'A little extra effort'", The Times (25 January 1962), p. 6 Macmillan decided to open by showing the television outside broadcast crew who had set up their equipment.

Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Harold Macmillan / Quotes / Prime Minister
1960s

Imagination , Forgetting

“Faith is a Christian's right eye, without which he cannot look for Christ; right hand, without which he cannot do for Christ; it is his tongue, without which he cannot speak for Christ; it is his vital spirit, without which he cannot act for Christ.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

Source: Quotes from secondary sources, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers, 1895, P. 230.

Faith , Christ

“Nor, perchance,
If I were not thus taught, Should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou, my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! And this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith that all which we behold
Is full of blessings.”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Stanza 4.
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)

Love , Life , Men , Pleasure

“The merging of different motif areas in her drawings and the transformation of spacial relationships into flat correspondences gathers towards a distortion of depicted reality and the dissolution of its phenomenal form.' I didn't try to reach the sense of this. I understood the point of it was to transpose the locus of authority from the works to the discussion of the works. The writer had assumed the role of validating authority for the images he discussed. In order to do this he had been required to transform what he saw with his eyes into ideologies that he could 'see' with his intellect.”

Alex Miller book The Ancestor Game

Page 18.
The Ancestor Game (1992)

Reality , Sense , Drawing

“…his book, Orpheus, or the Way to a Death Mask, of which he had said that he regretted not having written it as a poem.
And with dream-awakened eyes she saw all the beauty around her, saw the sea, felt the sun, and knew: she had to vanish for a while from the human plane and make every sacrifice in order to create her world anew out of the depths.”

Charlotte Salomon (1917–1943) German painter

Charlotte's 2th ending, written page in brush, related to JHM no. 4924v https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Charlotte_Salomon_-_JHM_4924-02.jpg: 'Life? or Theater..', p. 822
Charlotte Salomon - Life? or Theater?

Death , Books , World , Beauty

“Friends — They are like air bubbles on water, hastening to flow together. History tells of Orestes and Pylades, Damon and Pythias, but why should not we put to shame those old reserved worthies by a community of such? Constantly, as it were through a remote skylight, I have glimpses of a serene friendship-land, and know the better why brooks murmur and violets grow. This conjunction of souls, like waves which met and break, subsides also backward over things, and gives all a fresh aspect. I would live henceforth with some gentle soul such a life as may be conceived, double for variety, single for harmony — two, only that we might admire at our oneness — one, because indivisible. Such community to be a pledge of holy living. How could aught unworthy be admitted into our society? To listen with one ear to each summer sound, to behold with one eye each summer scene, our visual rays so to meet and mingle with the object as to be one bent and doubled; with two tongues to be wearied, and thought to spring ceaselessly from a double fountain.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

January 26, 1840
Journals (1838-1859)

Life , Friendship , Soul , History

“Coffee, which makes the politician wise,
And see through all things with his half-shut eyes.”

Alexander Pope The Rape of the Lock

Canto III, line 117.
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)

Coffee

“The point of poetry is to be acutely discomforting, to prod and provoke, to poke us in the eye, to punch us in the nose, to knock us off our feet, to take our breath away.”

Paul Muldoon (1951) Irish poet

Princeton University Library Chronicle, Spring 1998.

“She look'd down to blush, and she look'd up to sigh,
With a smile on her lips, and a tear in her eye.”

Walter Scott Marmion

Canto V, st. 12 (Lochinvar, st. 5).
Marmion (1808)

Smile , Tear

“If I could give advice to the planet, it would be; don't marry for looks alone, going either way, and I'll tell you why. In a few years, if Barbara's boobs start to sag too much, there's a place you can go where they can just lift 'em right back up to where they were. And they can point the nipple wherever they want 'em. You can actually go to a titty bar, pick out a set of titties and say, "I want those titties on that woman right there." If her belly gets too big and she don't wanna work it off, you can go get a tummy tuck- they'll give you a belly that looks like a cheerleader. You know, if your eyes start to go bad, you can have Lasik surgery and they can give you 20/20 vision at any age. If your hearing starts to fail, they can put a device in your ear that'll make you able to hear as good as you could the day you were born. But let me tell you something, folks… you can't fix stupid. There's not a pill you can take, there's not a class you can go to. Stupid is fo-evah.”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

You Can't Fix Stupid

Age , Stupidity , Way

“Nolan Ryan is simply a flame-thrower. They call him The Express. Get it? Ryan's Express. Harmon Killebrew says if he ever gets hit by Ryan's express, he'll have the pitcher arrested for manslaughter. Oakland slugger Reggie Jackson says Ryan is the only pitcher he's afraid of, down-deep-in-the-guts afraid of. "If a pitch ever gets away from him, he will kill someone." Nolan Ryan pitches for the California Angels, in Anaheim, which you also wouldn't confuse with New York. Thus, few people really know what an exciting young man this is, perhaps the most exciting single performer in baseball today. Yes, I've heard of Hank Aaron. For years I beat the drums, by myself, for Roberto Clemente. I like the cool gall of Vida Blue, the hot moxie of Pete Rose. They all excite me. But not down deep in the guts, the way this kid does. He excites me. He frightens me. He puts me on that double-pronged fork of attraction and revulsion. When you watch Nolan Ryan rear and throw that screaming blur of white toward the plate, you don't know whether to watch or cover your eyes. Will he strike out the hitter, or will he strike him dead?”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

From "Nolan Ryan: The Untouchable," in Baseball Stars of 1973 (March 1973), edited by Ray Robinson, p. 92
Sports-related

People , Angels , Way , Dead

“The minutest details of cost of materials and labor in every department appeared from day to day and week to week in the accounts; and soon every man about the place was made to realize it. The men felt and often remarked that the eye of the company were on them through the books.”

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. (1918–2007) American historian

Bridge (1903, p. 85), cited on p. 268; Cited in: Best (1990, p. 63).
The Visible Hand (1977)

Men , Books , Appearance

“The course of reform is in progress thanks to Decree No. 6 of the Revolutionary Council-one of the monumental achievements in the eyes of the regime. Under this decree, farmers with little or no land have been freed of the debts they had incurred to landlords and moneylenders. You have sharpened the class struggle in Afghanistan. The class struggle which we awaited for many long years is now gaining in intensity. Previously, nothing material existed for our people to awaken their political awareness and to make them rise against the feudal lords.”

Nur Muhammad Taraki (1917–1979) Prime Minister of Afghanistan

Speech August 1, 1978 http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1978/eirv05n35-19780912/eirv05n35-19780912_061-who_are_afghanistans_new_leaders.pdf.

People

“As a man I ain’t never been much for sunny days.
I’m as calm as a fruit stand in New York and maybe as strange.
But when the color goes out of my eyes, it’s usually the change.
But damn, Sam, I love a woman that rains.”

Ryan Adams (1974) American alt-country/rock singer-songwriter

Damn Sam
29 (2005)

Love , Color , Change

“I’m vegan. It’s really changed, like, my eyes, my, you know, everything.”

Portia de Rossi (1973) Australian-American actress

Said in her shoot for People’s most beautiful list, as quoted in "Portia de Rossi Stays Youthful with Vegan Diet", in Ecorazzi (26 April 2013) http://www.ecorazzi.com/2013/04/26/portia-de-rossi-stays-youthful-with-vegan-diet/

Change

“I had been journeying to and fro on the face of a fine broad bit of English earth, seeking what wages I could earn, what work I could get, and what facts I could devour. I found, I got, I devoured, every morsel which came in my way. I read, marked, learned and inwardly digested, as the prayer book says somewhere, all I could lay my hands or ears or eyes on. At the same time I was taking in a supply of facts which would not be digested—tough facts about the land and the labourer, that accumulated and lay within my mind, heavy as a lump of lead, and hard as a stone. No matter what I did, whether I was working with my hands or my head, that mass of indigestible facts was always in the background, worrying and bothering me. I got no peace; it worried and bothered me more and more as each year went by.”

Joseph Arch (1826–1919) British politician

Source: The Story of his Life Told by Himself (1898), pp. 42-43

Books , Peace , Way , Learning

“Enthusiastic partisans of the idea of progress are in danger of failing to recognize — because they set so little store by them — the immense riches accumulated by the human race on either side of the narrow furrow on which they keep their eyes fixed; by underrating the achievements of the past, they devalue all those which still remain to be accomplished.”

Claude Lévi-Strauss book Tristes Tropiques

Source: Tristes Tropiques (1955), Chapter 38 : A Little Glass of Rum, p. 393

Idea , Past

“Slowly his eyes left my hair and traveled downwards. This time he really took in my outfit and then that Look that I’m always encountering; that special one composed in equal parts of amusement, astonishment and horror came over his face.
I am not a moron and I can generally guess what causes this look. The trouble is, it’s always something different.
I squirmed uncomfortably, feeling his eyes bearing down on my bare shoulders and breasts.
"What the hell are you doing in the middle of the morning with an evening dress on?” he asked me finally.
"Sorry about that,” I said quickly, "but it’s all I’ve got to wear. My laundry hasn’t come back yet.””

Elaine Dundy (1921–2008) American journalist, actress

Part One, One
The Dud Avocado (1958)

Travel , Feeling , Hell , Time

“How would you have us, as we are?
Or sinking 'neath the load we bear?
Our eyes fixed forward on a star?
Or gazing empty at despair?”

James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) writer and activist

To America, st. 1.
Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917)

Star , Despair

“The different strands of radical thought seek to lift a veil from our eyes in order to emancipate us from domination, cowardice, or repression. They unmask in order to liberate.”

Bernard Harcourt (1963) American academic

“Radical Thought from Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, through Foucault, to the Present: Comments on Steven Lukes's ‘In Defense of False Consciousness,’” The University Of Chicago Legal Forum, 2011, p. 34

“Is there any more mysterious idea for an artist than the conception of how nature is mirrored in the eyes of an animal? How does a horse see the world, or an eagle, or a doe, or a dog?”

Franz Marc (1880–1916) German painter

Source: 1915 - 1916, 100 Aphorisms', Franz Marc (1915), p. 445

World , Dogs , Idea , Nature

“The American statesmen, by subjecting the Church to the same regulations governing all other associations and institutions, have limited its field of activity to reasonable proportions; and, as the State does not contribute from State Funds one single cent to the church, the whole clergy cringes and sings hymns in praise of Government. This is not to be wondered at! The parson, like everyone else, has got to live; what he makes out of the public offertory doesn't amount to much, and so he is more or less dependent on State charity. As he has no legal claim whatever on the State, he therefore takes very good care that his demeanour is always pleasing in the eyes of the State and therefore deserving of the crumbs it cares to toss to him.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

4 July 1942.
Disputed, (1941-1944) (published 1953)

Singing , Dependency

“The eye was in the tomb and stared at Cain.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

L'œil était dans la tombe et regardait Caïn.
La Conscience http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Conscience, from La Légende des siècles (1859), First Series, Part I

“Tis possible, young sir, that some excess
Mars youthful judgment and old men’s no less;
Yet we must take our counsel as we may
For (flying years this lesson still convey),
’Tis worst unwisdom to be overwise,
And not to use, but still correct one’s eyes.”

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861) English poet

Thesis and Antithesis http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/C/CloughArthurHugh/verse/poemsproseremains/antithesis.html, st. 4.

Men , Youth , Flying

“You still got that light in your eye,
And our day is comin’ by and by.
I’m travellin’ this long road here with you;
We still gotta long way, we still gotta long way to go.”

Gerry Rafferty (1947–2011) Scottish singer and songwriter

Days Gone By.
Song lyrics, Night Owl (1979)

Way , Light

“He who feels that in his inmost being he cannot be compared with others, will be his own lawgiver. For one thing is needful: to give style to one’s character. This art is practised by him who, with an eye for the strong and weak sides of his nature, removes from it one quality and another, and then by daily practice and acquired habit replaces them by others which become second nature to him; in other words, he puts himself under restraint in order by degrees to bend his nature entirely to his own law. Only thus does a man arrive at satisfaction with himself, and only thus does he become endurable to others. For the dissatisfied and the unsuccessful as a rule avenge themselves on others. They absorb poison from everything, from their own incompetence as well as from their poor circumstances, and they live in a constant craving for revenge on those in whose nature they suspect harmony. Such people ever have virtuous precepts on their lips; the whole jingle of morality, seriousness, chastity, the claims of life; and their hearts ever burn with envy of those who have become well [harmonious] and can therefore enjoy life.”

Georg Brandes (1842–1927) Danish literature critic and scholar

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), p. 26

Life , People , Law , Art

“You opened your eyes -I saw my darkness live. I see through it down to the bed; there too it is mine and lives.”

Paul Celan (1920–1970) Romanian poet and translator

"From Darkness to Darkness," in: Donald Wesling, ‎Tadeusz Sławek (1995). Literary Voice: The Calling of Jonah. p. 54

“A man who submits himself wholeheartedly to God might handle them and not be harmed. That was the faith my father had professed. Certainly he trusted God, in his own case, and believed God manifested Himself in the rolled eyes of his congregants and in their babble of incomprehensible tongues. Trust and be saved, was his philosophy. And yet in the end it was the snakes that killed him. I wondered which element of the calculation had ultimately failed him—human faith or divine patience.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America

Source: Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (2009), pp. 355-356

God , Faith , Patience

“In Christ we see the strength of achievement, and the strength of endurance. He moved with a calm majesty, like the sun. The bloody sweat, and the crown of thorns, and the cross, were full in His eyes; but He was obedient unto death. In His perfect self-sacrifice, we see the perfection of strength; in the love that prompted it, we see the perfection of beauty. This combination of self-sacrifice and love must be commenced in every Christian; and when it shall be in its spirit complete in him, then will he also be perfect in strength and beauty.”

Mark Hopkins (educator) (1802–1887) American educationalist and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 61.

Love , Death , Beauty , Sun

“The applause of list'ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their hist'ry in a nation's eyes.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

St. 16
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=elcc (written 1750, publ. 1751)

Pain , Smile , Reading

“With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eye is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book I, Chapter XI, Part II, p. 202 (See also Thorstein Veblen).

People , Decision , Appearance , Parting

“I saw the end of an age
with these, my eyes.
But I didn't want to know
that it's my turn next.”

Ayumi Hamasaki (1978) Japanese recording artist, lyricist, model, and actress

Duty
Lyrics, Duty

Age

“He quickly lowered his eyes to his knees again, to conceal the pain in them, to conceal his broken faith in the innate goodness of men, the profound despair of realization that reason might not after all triumph over ignorance.
“Perhaps,” he murmured aloud, “To believe in the inevitable triumph of rationality might, in itself, be no more than another expression of those same superstitions which we deplore in the ignorant. It is apparently an occupational disease, perhaps a fatal one, for the scientist to be too sanguine about eventual rule by reason. There is so little evidence…””

Mark Clifton book They'd Rather Be Right

Source: They'd Rather Be Right (1954), p. 16.

Men , Pain , Disease , Faith

“Three and a half million years separate the individual who left these footprints in the sands of Africa from the one who left them on the moon. A mere blink in the eye of evolution. Using his burgeoning intelligence, this most successful of all mammals has exploited the environment to produce food for an ever-increasing population. In spite of disasters when civilisations have over-reached themselves, that process has continued, indeed accelerated, even today. Now mankind is looking for food, not just on this planet but on others. Perhaps the time has now come to put that process into reverse. Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, perhaps it's time we control the population to allow the survival of the environment.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

Closing lines
The Life of Mammals (2002)

Food , Intelligence , Time , Success

“To realize Medieval India there is no better way than to dive into the eight volumes of the priceless History of India as Told by its Own Historians' a revelation of Indian life as seen through the eyes of the Persian court annalists.”

Stanley Lane-Poole (1854–1931) British orientalist

Lanepoole, quoted in K.S. Lal, The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India

Life , Way , History

“To hide our eyes to make others believe we are hiding tears.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Tear

“The invisible is seen among the shadows and the mist:
Before my doubting eyes,
The infinite appears this time,
The unquestionable is questioned
But makes no reply!”

Aaron Weiss

A Glass Can Only Spill What It Contains.
Brother, Sister (2006)

Question , Appearance , Time

“The neurotic has perfect vision in one eye, but he cannot remember which.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Neurotics and neurosis

Perfection

“No nation can fully understand itself or find its place in the world if it does not look with clear eyes at all the glories and disgraces, too, of the past. We, in the United States, acknowledge such an injustice in our own history: The internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry was a great injustice, and it will never be repeated.”

George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) American politician, 41st President of the United States

Observing the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, December 7 1991 http://www.navy.mil/navco/pages/2001/01pg-017-ph-bush120791.htm

World , History , Understanding , Past

“When first to man the privilege was given
To hold by verse an intercourse with Heaven,
Unwilling that the immortal art should lie
Cheap, and exposed to every vulgar eye,
Great Jove, to drive away the groveling crowd,
To narrow bounds confined the glorious road,
For more exalted spirits to pursue,
And left it open to the sacred few.”
Principio quoniam magni commercia coeli Numina concessere homini, cui carmina curae, Ipse Deum genitor divinam noluit artem Omnibus expositam vulgo, immeritisque patere: Atque ideo, turbam quo longe arceret inertem, Angustam esse viam voluit, paucisque licere.

Marco Girolamo Vida (1485–1566) Italian bishop

Book III, line 358
De Arte Poetica (1527)

Lie , Art

“Baine, what do you think of this?” Tossie said, indicating the bishop’s bird stump. “Don’t you agree it’s the most beautiful piece of art you’ve ever seen?”
Baine straightened and looked at it, blinking water out of his eyes.
There was a considerable pause while Baine wrung out his sleeve. “No.”
“No?” Tossie said, making it into a screamlet.
“No.”…
“What do you mean, ‘no’?”
“I mean the sculpture is a hideous atrocity, vulgarly conceived, badly designed, and shoddily executed,” he said, folding the shawl carefully and bending to lay it back in the bundle.
“How dare you say that,” Tossie said, her cheeks very pink.
Baine straightened. “I beg you pardon, miss. I thought you were asking my opinion.”
“I was, but I expected you to tell me you thought it was beautiful.”

Connie Willis book To Say Nothing of the Dog

He bowed slightly. “As you wish, miss.” He looked at it, his face impassive. “It is very beautiful.”
Source: To Say Nothing of the Dog (1998), Chapter 19 (p. 333; the ellipsis represents a minor elision of description)

Beauty , Art , Bird , Thinking

“She'll turn her music on you
You won't have to think twice
She's pure as New York snow
She's got Bette Davis eyes”

Jackie DeShannon (1941) American singer-songwriter

"Bette Davis Eyes" (1975); written with Donna Weiss

Music , Thinking

“Matilda told such Dreadful Lies,
It made one Gasp and Stretch one's Eyes;
Her Aunt, who from her Earliest Youth,
Had kept a Strict Regard for Truth,
Attempted to Believe Matilda:
The effort very nearly killed her.”

Hilaire Belloc book Cautionary Tales for Children

"Matilda, Who Told Lies, and Was Burned to Death"
Cautionary Tales for Children (1907)

Truth , Youth , Effort

“Why do sorcerers always use languages nobody understands? Even Goblin and One-Eye do it. Each has confided that he cannot follow the tongue the other uses. Maybe they make it up?”

Glen Cook book The White Rose

Source: The White Rose (1985), Chapter 53, “The Recovery” (p. 677)

Confidence , Understanding

“If I were the government I would have a special brigade of gendarmes to keep an eye on artists who paint landscapes from nature. Oh, I don't mean to kill anyone; just a little dose of bird-shot now and then as a warning.”

Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French artist

"Some of Degas' Views on Art" (p. 56)
Degas hated to paint outdoor and even to see landscape-paintings, like for instance the 'draughty' ones of Monet
posthumous quotes, Degas: An Intimate Portrait' (1927)

Nature , Bird , Painting

“Day thrust its brightness through the window-pane.
They, locked together, strove to keep Day out
And could not, whence they grew aware of dread.
She, his beloved, casting her arms about
Her loved one, caught him close to her again.
Her eyes drenched both their cheeks. She said:
"One body and two hearts are we."”

Wolfram von Eschenbach (1170–1220) German knight and poet

Der tac mit kraft al durh diu venster dranc.
vil slôze sie besluzzen.
daz half niht: des wart in sorge kunt.
diu vriundîn den vriunt vast an sich twanc.
ir ougen diu beguzzen
ir beider wangel. sus sprach zim ir munt:
"zwei herze und einen lîp hân wir."
"Den Morgenblic bî Wahtærs Sange Erkôs", line 11; translation in Margaret F. Richey Essays on Mediæval German Poetry (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969) p. 99.

Love , Heart

“Nothing made the horse so fat as the king's eye.”

Plutarch book Moralia

Moralia, Of the Training of Children

Horse

“What has value in their eyes is never what is done for them; it's what they do for themselves.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

Source: All Men are Mortal (1946), p. 315

“I might be better able to help parents of dying children, but for quite a while I felt less able, too emotionally involved. And from that time on, I could rarely discuss the death of a child without tears welling up into my eyes.”

C. Everett Koop (1916–2013) American pediatric surgeon and public health administrator

Koop: The Memoirs of America's Family Doctor (1993), p. 126.

Death , Children , Parent , Tear

“It is possible, in the interests of a false religion (such as Nationalism or Fascism) to avert one's eyes from the plain fact of human brotherhood; but the fact stubbornly remains, and we ignore it at our peril. We are all in the same boat, and we live in the shadow of a common doom.”

Gerald Bullett (1893–1958) British writer

Gerald Bullett, "Walt Whitman" in", in Alfred Barratt Brown, Great Democrats, 1934 (reprinted by Spokesman Books, 2013).

Religion , Falseness

“No. It is not wonderful. It is an ugly world. Not like this one. Anarres is all dusty and dry hills. All meager, all dry. And the people aren’t beautiful. They have big hands and feet, like me and the waiter there. But not big bellies. They get very dirty, and take baths together, nobody here does that. The towns are very small and dull, they are dreary. No palaces. Life is dull, and hard work. You can’t always have what you want, or even what you need, because there isn’t enough. You Urrasti have enough. Enough air, enough rain, grass, oceans, food, music, buildings, factories, machines, books, clothes, history. You are rich, you own. We are poor, we lack. You have, we do not have. Everything is beautiful here. Only not the faces. On Anarres nothing is beautiful, nothing but the faces. The other faces, the men and women. We have nothing but that, nothing but each other. Here you see the jewels, there you see the eyes. And in the eyes you see the splendor, the splendor of the human spirit. Because our men and women are free—possessing nothing, they are free. And you the possessors are possessed. You are all in jail. Each alone, solitary, with a heap of what he owns. You live in prison, die in prison. It is all I can see in your eyes—the wall, the wall!”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 7 (pp. 228-229)

Life , Women , Men , People

“Llonio said life was a net for luck; to Hevydd the Smith life was a forge; and to Dwyvach the Weaver-Woman a loom. They spoke truly, for it is all of these. But you,” Taran said, his eyes meeting the potter’s, “you have shown me life is one thing more. It is clay to be shaped, as raw clay on a potter’s wheel.”

Lloyd Alexander The Chronicles of Prydain

Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book IV: Taran Wanderer (1967), Chapter 21

Life

“I would like to tell them, the graduates, all of this, and I know that if we thought they would not be embarrassed by hearing it, we would all be telling them about how proud we are of them and how much we believe in them and their future. But again maybe we don't have to tell them; maybe they know. Maybe they can tell just by seeing the love in our eyes today.”

Mario Cuomo (1932–2015) American politician, Governor of New York

Address at Iona College (1984)

Love , Future

“To the eye of God there are no numbers: seeing all things at one time, he counts nothing.”

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1714–1780) French academic

As quoted in Physically Speaking: A Dictionary of Quotations on Physics and Astronomy (1997), p. 101.

God , Time

“Thank you, Donald, for that well-meant but rather pedestrian introduction. Regarding yourself, I quote from the third part of Shakespeare's Henry VI, Act Two, Scene One. Richard speaks, "Were thy heart as hard as steel/ As thou hast shown it flinty by thy deeds/ I come to pierce it, or to give thee mine." To translate into your own idiom, Donald; you're a yo-yo. Now I direct my remarks to Dean Martin, who is being honored here tonight… for reasons that completely elude me. No, I'm not being fair to Dean because - this is true - in his way Dean, and I know him very well, has the soul of a poet. I'm told that in his most famous song Dean authored a lyric which is so romantic, so touching that it will be enjoyed by generations of lovers until the end of time. Let's share it together. [Opens a songsheet for Dean's "That's Amore" and reads in a monotone] "When the moon hits your eye/ Like a big pizza-pie/ That's amore" Now, that's what I call 'touching', Dean. It has all the romanticism of a Ty-D-Bol commercial. "When the world seems to shine/ Like you've had too much wine/ That's amore" What a profound thought. It could be inscribed forever on a cocktail napkin. Hey, there's more. "Tippy-tippy-tay/ Like a gay tarantella" Like a gay tarantella? Apparently, Dean has a 'side Dean' we know nothing about. "When the stars make you drool/ Just like a pasta fazool…. Scuzza me, but you see/ Back in old Napoli/ That's amore" No, Dean; that's infermo, Italian for "sickened". Now, lyrics like that - lyrics like that ought to be issued with a warning: a song like that is hazardous to your health. Ladies and gentlemen… [motions to Dean] you are looking at the end result!”

Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer

Speech given at a Dean Martin Celebrity Roast. Viewable here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlKR0i-51S4.

Health , World , Way , Quotes

“In 1982, when he was 45 and Philadelphia 76er owner Harold Katz was hot after him, the Houston Chronicle's George White asked Elvin Hayes if Chamberlain could still play. "Some things about Wilt, you never forgot," Hayes said. "He was such an awesome physical specimen. To go up under Wilt Chamberlain, to be down there and look up at him when he's towering up over you waiting to dunk, was a terrifying picture. To see him poised up there, knowing he was about to sweep down with that big jam... that must be the most frightening sight in sports. The ball goes shooting through the net and you better have your body covered up because he could really hurt someone. I was scared. Everyone was scared when he got that look in his eye, that don't-try-to-stop-this look that he got when he really wanted it.... "I think Russell realized there was no way he could have stopped Wilt if he had been fully intent on making it a two-man game. No one who ever put on a uniform could have done it. When I played him, I kept this foremost in my mind: Above all, don't make him mad. Don't embarrass him. You wanted to keep him quiet as long as possible."”

Wilt Chamberlain (1936–1999) basketball player

[Heisler, Mark, Larger Than Life, The Los Angeles Times, 1999-10-13]
Post-NBA life

Way , Game , Thinking , Sport

“I have one word to say upon the subject of profound writers, who are grown very numerous of late; and I know very well the judicious world is resolved to list me in that number. I conceive therefore, as to the business of being profound, that it is with writers as with wells - a person with good eyes may see to the bottom of the deepest, provided any water be there: and often when there is nothing in the world at the bottom besides dryness and dirt, though it be but a yard and a-half under-ground, it shall pass, however, for wondrous deep upon no wiser reason than because it is wondrous dark”

Jonathan Swift book A Tale of a Tub

A Tale of a Tub (1704)

World , Business , Water , Personality

“Old man take a look at my life
I'm a lot like you.
I need someone to love me
The whole day through.
Ah, one look in my eyes
And you can tell that's true.”

Neil Young Old Man

Old Man
Source: Song lyrics, Harvest (1972)

Love , Life

“Heim ignored the mob scene on the 3V, rested his eyes on the cold serenity of the Milky Way and thought that this, at least, would endure.”

Poul Anderson book The Star Fox

Section 1 “Marque and Reprisal”, Chapter IX (p. 69)
The Star Fox (1965)

Way

“So I bought a.44 magnum, it was solid steel cast.
And in the blessed name of Elvis well I just let it blast.
'Til my TV lay in pieces there at my feet
And they busted me for disturbin' the almighty peace.
Judge said "What you got in your defense son?"
"Fifty-seven channels and nothin' on."
I can see by your eyes friend you're just about gone.
Fifty-seven channels and nothin' on…
Fifty-seven channels and nothin'”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"57 Channels"
Song lyrics, Human Touch (1992)

Peace

“[Martin Luther King, Jr. ] concluded the learned discourse that came to be known as the 'loving your enemies' sermon this way: "So this morning, as I look into your eyes and into the eyes of all my brothers in Alabama and all over America and over the world, I say to you,'I love you. I would rather die than hate you.'" Go ahead and reread that. That is hands down the most beautiful, strange, impossible, but most of all radical thing a human being can say. And it comes from reading the most beautiful, strange, impossible, but most of all radical civics lesson ever taught, when Jesus of Nazareth went to a hill in Galilee and told his disciples, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you."”

Sarah Vowell The Wordy Shipmates

The Wordy Shipmates (2008)

Love , Hate , World , Beauty

“A mind cannot possibly consider anything beyond what it can measure or calculate; without a body it can only consider itself. Without the interruptions of hellos from the eye, ear, tongue, nose, and finger, the evolving mind huddles in the corner picking its navel.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995)

“I encourage you to visit the devastated areas and talk to the people and listen to them… Not just distribute relief and then leave. I encourage you to visit the devastated areas and talk to the people and listen to them… Not just distribute relief and then leave. I assure u that you will learn a lot by being able to see things from their eyes… and perhaps those who criticize would understand. Beyond receiving relief goods, sometimes they also need someone who will listen to them. Try it. I promise that u will learn a lot.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Francis Escudero Twitter feed: @SayChiz (5:44 p.m. 13 October 2009).
2009, Twitter Feed

People , Understanding , Learning

“For the student of visionary art the interesting fact is that an image comes first and takes up residence in the mind long before the artist has any notion why it is there or what it means. Whether visions come from some great reservoir of symbolic images which are eternally there (and if one examines the recurrence of images in history this proposition is not quite as crazy as it sounds) or whether they are due to buried memories, their obsessive power over an artist's mind, and their clear, compulsive emergence in his work depends on a mental condition that can come and go. When, for some reason, they no longer present themselves to the mind's eye, alive or clamoring to be born, the visionary artist has a hard time — dark days. This is particularly true if he has lost the habit of feeding his mind on the observation of nature.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: The Romantic Rebellion (1973), Ch. 6: Blake

Art , History , Nature , Memory

“Bion used to say that the way to the shades below was easy; he could go there with his eyes shut.”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Bion, 3.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 4: The Academy

Way

“Human rights and the rule of law are vital to global security and prosperity. As Truman said, “We must, once and for all, prove by our acts conclusively that Right Has Might”. That’s why this country has historically been in the vanguard of the global human rights movement. But that lead can only be maintained if America remains true to its principles, including in the struggle against terrorism. When it appears to abandon its own ideals and objectives, its friends abroad are naturally troubled and confused.
— And States need to play by the rules towards each other, as well as towards their own citizens. That can sometimes be inconvenient, but ultimately what matters is not inconvenience. It is doing the right thing. No State can make its own actions legitimate in the eyes of others. When power, especially military force, is used, the world will consider it legitimate only when convinced that it is being used for the right purpose — for broadly shared aims –- in accordance with broadly accepted norms.
— No community anywhere suffers from too much rule of law; many do suffer from too little — and the international community is among them. This we must change.”

Kofi Annan (1938–2018) 7th Secretary-General of the United Nations

Truman Library address (2006)

World , Law , Communication , Nature

“One needs only eyes to see the necessary influence of old age on reason.”

Julien Offray de La Mettrie book Man a Machine

p, 125
Man a Machine (1747)

Age

“In the restaurant, eyes / above a soup bowl's rim / Is it she? / Changes shape, is and is not. / Now she's spat out a bit of bone, / I don't think it's her, / I'm leaving, I'm done eating. / This is a long and mad journey: / I see her on the faces of others, my own.”

Mirkka Rekola (1931–2014) Finnish writer

Thinking , Change , Madness

“My arrangement of my shelves may earn me a reputation for untidiness among the unthinking, but I am indifferent to these. From natural laziness – if you like – from sheer inability to discover any congruity between one book and another – I will not classify. There they are – as they come – as they go – in serried shelves – all happy with the fortuity of things – there are my books from the lowest shelf – to reach which the seeker must go (as he ought) on bended knees – to "the dust and silence of the upper shelf," as Lord Macaulay put it – there they are – awaiting the touch of the discerning hand and the light of the critical eye.
The Bankrupt Bookseller by Will Y. Darling, Robert Grant & Son Ltd, Edinburgh, 1947, p. 28.”

William Darling (politician) (1885–1962) Scottish politician

The Bankrupt Bookseller (1947)

Books , Nature , Light , Silence

“During my early years as an actor, Bond was never a desire, but when Cassie was playing in For Your Eyes Only, then, of course, it became a joke. I would do my own impersonations of James Bond. Just for fun. Just driving her home from work, or going out, or talking about her experience on it. But even so, it was not an ambition to play James Bond. I had my sights set on other aspects of the work.”

Pierce Brosnan (1953) Irish-American actor, film producer, and environmentalist

Brosnan. Pierce Brosnan. http://www.cigaraficionado.com/webfeatures/show/id/Brosnan-Pierce-Brosnan_6003/p/2 (November 1997)

Home

“In my Spanish cloak,
And old slouch hat,
And overshoes of felt,
And Tyke, my faithful dog,
And my knotted hickory cane,
I slipped about with a bull's-eye lantern
From door to door on the square”

Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950) American writer

" Andy the Night-Watch http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/andy-the-night-watch/"

Faith , Dogs

“To conclude, if we call light, those rays which illuminate objects, and radiant heat, those which heat bodies, it may be inquired whether light be essentially different from radiant heat? In answer to which I would suggest that we are not allowed, by the rules of philosophizing, to admit two different causes to explain certain effects, if they may be accounted for by one. …If this be a true account of the solar heat, for the support of which I appeal to my experiments, it remains only for us to admit that such of the rays of the sun as have the refrangibility of those which are contained in the prismatic spectrum, by the construction of the organs of sight, are admitted under the appearance of light and colors, and that the rest, being stopped in the coats and humors of the eye, act on them, as they are known to do on all the other parts of our body, by occasioning a sensation of heat.”

William Herschel (1738–1822) German-born British astronomer, technical expert, and composer

Source: Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works (1880), Ch.4 "Life and Works" on his discovery of the infrared light.

Color , Support , Light , Appearance

“Fool if you think it's over
'Cause you said goodbye
Fool if you think it's over
I'll tell you why
New born eyes always cry with pain
At the first look at the mornin' sun
Fool if you think it's over
It's just begun”

Chris Rea (1951) English singer-songwriter

"Fool (If You Think It's Over)"
Song lyrics, Whatever Happened to Benny Santini? (1978)

Pain , Fools , Thinking , Sun

“A pleasant-smiling cheek, a speaking eye,
A brow for love to banquet royally.”

Christopher Marlowe book Hero and Leander

First Sestiad
Hero and Leander (published 1598)

Love , Smile

“For I could tell you a story which is true;
I know a lady with a terrible tongue,
Blear eyes fallen from blue,
All her perfections tarnished—and yet it is not long
Since she was lovelier than any of you.”

John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974) American poet

"Blue Girls", line 13, from Two Gentlemen in Bonds (1927).

Perfection

“The announcers sounded giddily excited. Their faces flushed, their eyes bright. Natural disasters did that to people, made them feel significant, reassured them that their actions mattered.”

Michael Swanwick book Stations of the Tide

Source: Stations of the Tide (1991), Chapter 12, “Across the Ancient Causeway” (p. 223)

People , Feeling , Nature

“The eye of the intellect "sees in all objects what it brought with it the means of seeing."”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Varnhagen von Ense's Memoirs.
1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)

“If you stare into a flame
You'll get an eye full of energy
If you write your nightscapades
You'll get a dawn full of promises”

Happy Rhodes (1965) American singer-songwriter

"Many Worlds Are Born Tonight" - Live performance at The Tin Angel (24 July 1999) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGdnjC48aJg
Many Worlds Are Born Tonight (1998)