Quotes about eye
page 37

“Nobody ever walked across the bridge, not on a night like this. The rain was misty enough to be almost fog-like, a cold gray curtain that separated me from the pale ovals of white that were faces locked behind the steamed-up windows of the cars that hissed by. Even the brilliance that was Manhattan by night was reduced to a few sleepy, yellow lights off in the distance.
Some place over there I had left my car and started walking, burying my head in the collar of my raincoat, with the night pulled in around me like a blanket. I walked and I smoked and I flipped the spent butts ahead of me and watched them arch to the pavement and fizzle out with one last wink. If there was life behind the windows of the buildings on either side of me, I didn't notice it. The street was mine, all mine. They gave it to me gladly and wondered why I wanted it so nice and all alone.
There were others like me, sharing the dark and the solitude, but they were huddled in the recessions of the doorways not wanting to share the wet and the cold. I could feel their eyes follow me briefly before they turned inward to their thoughts again.
So I followed the hard concrete footpaths of the city through the towering canyons of the buildings and never noticed when the sheer cliffs of brick and masonry diminished and disappeared altogether, and the footpath led into a ramp then on to the spidery steel skeleton that was the bridge linking two states.
I climbed to the hump in the middle and stood there leaning on the handrail with a butt in my fingers, watching the red and green lights of the boats in the river below. They winked at me and called in low, throaty notes before disappearing into the night.
Like eyes and faces. And voices.
I buried my face in my hands until everything straightened itself out again, wondering what the judge would say if he could see me now. Maybe he'd laugh because I was supposed to be so damn tough, and here I was with hands that wouldn't stand still and an empty feeling inside my chest.”

Mickey Spillane book One Lonely Night

One Lonely Night (1951)

Life, Cars, Feeling, Solitude

“Self-awareness and self-consciousness are entirely different. When I am “self-conscious,” it is really someone else’s eyes that are watching, judging, and criticizing me. … It is these eyes that must be put out if I am to make sense of and remain in touch with my true self. And when we fail to find symbolic ways of destroying the watchers by becoming our own true witness, then the parents or authorities are sometimes literally killed.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 136

Way, Parent, Sense

“I looked into his eyes and saw three letters: a 'K', a 'G', and a 'B.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

On Vladimir Putin
2000s, 2008

“Since the form is only an expression of the content and the content is different with different artists, it is then clear that there can be many different forms at the same time which are equally good. Necessity creates the form. Fish which live at great depths have no eyes. The elephant has a trunk. The chameleon changes its color, and so forth.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

1910 - 1915, On the Problem of Form (1912)

Color, Fish, Change, Time

“They left no stone unturned in de-Hinduizing or denationalizing the Hindus, in effect de-Indianizing the Indians, in various ways. It is preposterous to question their credentials as true Muslims. Their 'Ulama' exhorted them off and on to make the best of their sword to root out the Hindus and convert India into a full-fledged Dar al-lslam. Sayyid Nur ad-Din Mubarak Ghaznawi Suhrawardi, at once a leading Sufi, a leading Muslim divine, and the Shaykh al-lslam of Sultan Iltutmish. led a deputation of Ulama to the Sultan and advised him to give an ultimatum to the Hindus to embrace Islam or face death. The Sultan’s prime minister pleaded powerlessness on his behalf to do so." Then the Shaykh offered an alternative suggestion: ’… the king should at least strive to disgrace, dishonour, and defame the Mushrik and idol- worshipping Hindus…. The sign of the kings being protectors of the faith is this: When they see a Hindu, their faces turn red and they wish to swallow him alive….' A similar suggestion was made to Jalal ad-Din Khalji, who returned ruefully: 'Don’t you see that Hindus, who are the worst enemies of God and of Islam, pass daily below my royal palace to the Jamuna beating drums and playing flutes, and practise before our eyes the worship of the idols with all the rituals? Fie on us unworthy leaders who declare ourselves Muslim kings!… Had I been a Muslim ruler, a real king, or a prince and felt myself strong and powerful enough to protect Islam, any enemy of God and the faith of the Prophet of Islam would not have been allowed to chew betels in a care-free manner and put on a clean garment or live in peace. Qadi Mughis ad- Din’s advice to Sultan Ala' d-Din Khaiji was on similer lines, and the Sultan confessed that he had humiliated and pauperized the Hindus to his utmost even though without caring to know the provisions of the Shari'ah on the subject.”

Harsh Narain (1921–1995) Indian writer

Myths of Composite Culture and Equality of Religions (1990)

Death, God, Peace, Faith

“The foreign policy of the US has been one of "empire building" ever since the First World War. The Constitution authorizes government to provide for "national DE-fense", not "international OF-fense". If Americans were really interested in promoting our national safety, they would realize that a policy of constant foreign intervention directly undermines that stated goal. Our country has military forces stationed in 135 countries around the world, and we are influencing their governments and economies either directly or indirectly in every case. That is the political equivalent of poking them in the eye with a sharp stick. It is little wonder then that dozens of countries and millions of people around the world harbor more than a little resentment against us. The recent mutilation of American civilians is just the beginning of the violence that will be directed toward us if we do not bring our troops home where they belong.”

Michael Badnarik (1954) American software engineer

April 2004

War, People, World, Home

“Too young for wife, too old for child, but the ripe age for comrade — and such a comrade, for there was a boy's gallantry in her eyes and something of a child's confident fearlessness.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

Source: Midwinter (1923), Ch. XVII

Age, Confidence, Boy

“Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Nature

Source: 1830s, Nature http://www.emersoncentral.com/nature.htm (1836), Ch. 1, Nature

God, Universe, Parting

“It speaks to me in the silence of this one
then through the words of that one speaking;
it whispers to me through an eyebrow raised
and the message of an eye winking.”

Fakhruddin 'Iraqi (1213–1289) Persian philosopher

Fakhruddin Iraqi: Divine Flashes (1982)

Silence

“Every riot is followed by an Inquiry Committee, but its report is never published. Take U. P. for instance. A report in the Times of India of 13.12.1990 from Lucknow says: “At least a dozen judicial inquiry reports into the genesis of communal riots in the state have never seen the light of the day. They have been buried in the secretariat-files over the past two decades. The failure of the successive state governments to publish these reports and initiate action has given credence to the belief that they are not serious about checking communal violence… There were other instances when the state government instituted an inquiry and then scuttled the commissions. In the 1982 and 1986 clashes in Meerut and in the 1986 riots in Allahabad, the judicial inquiries were ordered only as an ‘eye-wash’…” Judicial inquiries are ordered as an eye-wash because the perpetrators of riots are known but cannot be booked. In a secular state it is neither proper to name them nor political to punish them. Inquiry committee reports are left to gather dust, while those who should be punished are pampered and patronised as vote-banks in India’s democratic setup. Therefore communal riots in India as a legacy of Muslim rule may continue to persist. If these could help in partitioning the country, they could still help in achieving many other goals.”

K. S. Lal book The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India

Source: The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India (1992), Chapter 8

Books, Communication, Failure, Light

“September fattens on vines. Roses
flake from the wall. The smoke
of harmless fires drifts to my eyes.”

Geoffrey Hill (1932–2016) English poet and professor

September Song http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/september-song/. Poetry

“To get their attention, start lobbing the light grenades (That burst and blind them with the truth! An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!)”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

Lyrics, Light Grenades (2006)

Truth, Light

“Life invented it first, Zoe thought, like so many other things. Like eyes: Turning photon impacts into neurochemical events with such subtlety that a frog can target a fly and a man can admire a rose.”

Robert Charles Wilson book Bios

Source: Bios (1999), Chapter 25 (p. 194)

Life, Flying

“I speak to these people, and I speak to you because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you are there. I covet your eyes, your ears, the collapsible space between us. How blessed are we to have each other? I am alive and you are alive so we must fill the air with our words. I will fill today, tomorrow, every day until I am taken back to God. I will tell stories to people who will listen and to people who don’t want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who run. All the while I will know that you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

Source: What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (2006), Ch. 26, pp. 474-475

God, People, Help

“I had not failed to interpret the significance of that dark frown, that bitten lip and those flashing eyes, nor the way the willowy figure had quivered, indicating, unless she had caught a chill, that she was as sore as a sunburned neck.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Much Obliged, Jeeves

Much Obliged, Jeeves (1971)

Way

“I don't think there are any irredeemable themes or tropes, just ones that are waiting for a fresh eye. Horror, science fiction, and fantasy deal with the eternal verities, the subjects that have always - and will always - speak most deeply about who we are. That's why they're the most fascinating genres, and why they're always there to be reinvented. At the very least you can ask, "This subject has been done to death now, so why are we so obsessed with it?"”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

and take a new angle from there.
Associated Content Interview (October 23, 2006)

Death, Thinking, Science, Waiting

“And he walks round blocks and blocks looking for the door of the humming tinsel windowed skyscraper, round blocks and blocks and still no door. Every time he closes his eyes the dream has hold of him, every time he stops arguing audibly with himself in pompous reasonable phrases the dream has hold of him. Young man to save your sanity you've got to do one of two things… Please mister where's the door to the building? Round the block? Just round the block… one of two unalienable alternatives: go away in a dirty soft shirt or stay in a clean Arrow collar. But what's the use of spending your whole life fleeing the City of Destruction? What about your unalienable right, Thirteen Provinces? His mind unreeling phrases, he walks on doggedly. There's nowhere in particular he wants to go. If only I still had faith in words.”

John Dos Passos book Manhattan Transfer

Source: Manhattan Transfer (1925), pp. 365-366

Life, Faith, Dreams, Time

“Let's stop for a second and remember where we were eight years ago. We had the worst financial crisis, the Great Recession, the worst since the 1930s. That was in large part because of tax policies that slashed taxes on the wealthy, failed to invest in the middle class, took their eyes off of Wall Street, and created a perfect storm. In fact, Donald was one of the people who rooted for the housing crisis. He said, back in 2006, "Gee, I hope it does collapse, because then I can go in and buy some and make some money." Well, it did collapse…. We have come back from that abyss. And it has not been easy. So we're now on the precipice of having a potentially much better economy, but the last thing we need to do is to go back to the policies that failed us in the first place.”

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

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Money, People, Hope, Parting

“I asked a thief to steal me a peach:
He turned up his eyes.
I asked a lithe lady to lie her down:
Holy and meek, she cries.

As soon as I went
An angel came.
He winked at the thief
And smiled at the dame—

And without one word said
Had a peach from the tree,
And still as a maid
Enjoyed the lady.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

I Asked a Thief
1790s, Poems from Blake's Notebook (c. 1791-1792)

Lie, Smile, Angels, Tree

“If you have a dream, a passion and have the opportunity to make it happen, great. BUT, if you can’t get to it right away, which is quite often the case, give the job you’re doing 100 per cent and keep your eyes open. You never know what opportunity might arise … something you never thought of could become your life’s work. Success of any kind is the result of hard work … there’s no shortcut.”

Anne Murray (1945) Canadian singer

On success
Mount Saint Vincent University speech (2016)

Life, Dreams, Passion, Success

“I wanted something that was direct – right to you eye.... something you didn't have to look around – you got the whole thing right away.”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

Quotes, 1960 - 1970

“One problem the museum has always had in the eyes of some cadets is its worship of General Mark Clark. One whole room of the museum is dedicated to the propagation of Clark's exploits through two wars. The room itself is dark, an inner sanctum lit with tabernacle lights, and smoking with a kind of mystical incense which seems to compliment the godly aura of the man himself… Statues of Clark, pictures of Clark, letters from Clark, letters to Clark, speeches by Clark, and a seemingly endless amount of Clark memorabilia helps make the museum a monument to his career. If any pictures were available of Clark walking on water or changing wine into water, they would be dutifully placed in the museum by people who suffer guilt feelings that The Citadel has never produced an international figure of its own.”

Pat Conroy book The Boo

Source: The Boo (1970), p. 95

War, People, Feeling, Problem

“Ugly. Is irrelevant. It is an immeasurable insult to a woman, and then supposedly the worst crime you can commit as a woman. But ugly, as beautiful, is an illusion. A matter of taste, a whim, an eye, a beholder, an opinion, a spin, light crossing the frame, paint, projection. The moment. Context.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Weblog

Beauty, Light, Painting

“Not only must people know, they must see with their own eyes. Because they must be made to be afraid; but also because they must be the witnesses, the guarantors, of the punishment, and because they must to a certain extent take part in it.”

Michel Foucault book Discipline and Punish

Source: Discipline and Punish (1977), Chapter One, pp.58

People, Parting

“A life given to determining the best form for the letters of the alphabet — does it seem extraordinary to you? But no day passes that our eyes do not fall upon something that was influenced, and made better, by this extraordinary, eccentric Scot, and if that is not a life well spent, I should be interested in a better definition.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Edward Johnston (1960).

Life

“The minds of some of our statesmen, like the pupil of the human eye, contract themselves the more, the stronger light there is shed upon them.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Preface to Corruption and Intolerance.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Light

“For men have dulled their eyes with sin,
And dimmed the light of heaven with doubt,
And built their temple-walls to shut thee in,
And framed their iron creeds to shut thee out.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

God of the Open Air, st. III (1904).

Men, Light

“One thing about being in the public eye is that you cannot let anybody intimidate you.”

Nader Nadernejad (1997) producer

Newsigned Books (June 2014) http://www.newsignedbooks.com/nader-nadernejad.html

“[I was] a youth in his twenty third year, young of his age, who had seen little or nothing of the world, who resigned himself to politics, but whose desire had been for the ministry of God. The remains of this desire operated unfortunately. They made me tend to glorify in an extravagant manner and degree not only the religious character of the State, which in reality stood low, but also the religious mission of the Conservative party. There was, to my eyes, a certain element of AntiChrist in the Reform Act and that Act was cordially hated. … It was only under the (second) Government of Sir Robert Peel that I learned how impotent [and] barren was the conservative office for the Church.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

'My Earlier Political Opinions. (II) The Extrication' (16 July 1892), quoted in John Brooke and Mary Sorensen (eds.), The Prime Minister's Papers: W. E. Gladstone. I: Autobiographica (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1971), p. 40.
1890s

God, Hate, Youth, Age

“How could she tell, he deceived her so well;
Pity, she'll be the last one to know.
Silence is golden, but my eyes still see;
Silence is golden, golden,
But my eyes still see.”

Bob Gaudio

Song Silence is Golden http://www.lyricsdownload.com/tremeloes-silence-is-golden-lyrics.html

Silence

“It may be true that I had dancing in my blood… I was a toddler when I danced deliriously with that street beggar. All called him a madman when he brought the house down with his frenetic dancing. Was he really mad? His unerring jatis (danced to rhythmic patterns) reverberate in my mind. Who knows which siddhapurusha (literally: “with all accomplishments”) he was? I can still see the gleam in his eye. If I am dance-mad now how could it be otherwise?… My first guru was a madman.”

Balasaraswati (1918–1984) Indian dancer

[Knight, Douglas M., Balasaraswati: Her Art and Life, http://books.google.com/books?id=Q3EsA2NooW4C, 15 June 2010, Wesleyan University Press, 978-0-8195-6906-6, 17-18]
Quote

Dance, Housing, Madness

“Call us old-fashioned, but we think that we ought to avoid doing precisely what our enemies want us to do. They want us to elevate them, to give in to fear, to indulge in hatred, to eye one another with suspicion and to take leave of our faculties”

Justin Trudeau (1971) 23rd Prime Minister of Canada; eldest son of Pierre Trudeau

February 8, 2016 BBC Article https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-35526255 (later misquoted)

Fear, Fashion, Thinking

“The world recedes; it disappears!
Heav'n opens on my eyes! my ears
With sounds seraphic ring!
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O grave! where is thy victory?
O death! where is thy sting?”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

the last two lines are a quote of 1 Corinthians 15:55 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible_(King_James)/1_Corinthians#15:55. The Dying Christian to His Soul (1712)

Death, World, Victory, Flying

“When the object of sense is very violent, it injures sense at once, so that sense, after its occurrence, cannot immediately discern its weaker objects. Thus extreme brightness offends the eye, and a very loud noise offends the ears. Mind, however, is otherwise; by its most excellent object it is neither injured nor ever confused. Nay, rather, after this object is known, it distinguishes inferior things at once more clearly and more truly.”

Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) Italian philosopher

Source: Five Questions Concerning the Mind (1495), p. 205

Sense

“Sun-blistered ships on opal seas,
Pacific stars split round the skies,
What have I now to do with these
Who know the wonder of your eyes?”

Dorothy Wellesley, Duchess of Wellington (1889–1956) Duchess of Wellington

Poem: Winter Flame

Star, Sun, Sea

“You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.”

Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967) English poet, diarist and memoirist

"Suicide in the Trenches"
The Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918)

Youth, Home, Hell, Laughter

“It costs a beautiful person no exertion to paint her image on our eyes; yet how splendid is that benefit! It costs no more for a wise soul to convey his quality to other men.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

“Uses of Great Men,”
1850s, Representative Men (1850)

Men, Beauty, Soul, Painting

“And for tired eyes every light is too bright, and for tired lips every breath too heavy, and for tired ears every word too much.”

Georg Büchner Leonce and Lena

Und müden Augen jedes Licht zu scharf, und müden Lippen jeder Hauch zu schwer, Lächelnd. und müden Ohren jedes Wort zu viel.
Act II.
Leonce and Lena (1838)

Light

“Half the campus was designed by Bottom the Weaver, half by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; Benton had been endowed with one to begin with, and had smiled and sweated and and spoken for the other. A visitor looked under black beams, through leaded casements (past apple boughs, past box, past chairs like bath-tubs on broomsticks) to a lawn ornamented with one of the statues of David Smith; in the months since the figure had been put in its place a shrike had deserted for it a neighboring thorn tree, and an archer had skinned her leg against its farthest spike. On the table in the President’s waiting-room there were copies of Town and Country, the Journal of the History of Ideas, and a small magazine—a little magazine—that had no name. One walked by a mahogany hat-rack, glanced at the coat of arms on an umbrella-stand, and brushed with one’s sleeve something that gave a ghostly tinkle—four or five black and orange ellipsoids, set on grey wires, trembled in the faint breeze of the air-conditioning unit: a mobile. A cloud passed over the sun, and there came trailing from the gymnasium, in maillots and blue jeans, a melancholy procession, four dancers helping to the infirmary a friend who had dislocated her shoulder in the final variation of The Eye of Anguish.”

Randall Jarrell book Pictures from an Institution

Source: Pictures from an Institution (1954) [novel], Chapter 1: “The President, Mrs., and Derek Robbins”, p. 3; opening paragraph of novel

Smile, History, Idea, Tree

“Oft, in the stilly night,
Ere Slumber's chain has bound me,
Fond Memory brings the light
Of other days around me;
The smiles, the tears,
Of boyhood's years,
The words of love then spoken;
The eyes that shone,
Now dimm'd and gone,
The cheerful hearts now broken!”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

National Airs, Oft in the Stilly Night http://www.james-joyce-music.com/song04_lyrics.html, st. 1 (1815).

Love, Smile, Tear, Light

“The Holocaust was perpetrated by the Nazis for very specific reasons. They saw in the Jews the ultimate enemy, who was behind all the other enemies they had. And the Jews were in their eyes Satan; coming from a Christian background, although anti-Christian, if somebody was Satan you knew what to do with him. Murder him. Kill him. Annihilate him. Ultimately. Perhaps drive him out first. And then finally when this didn't work kill him. And it wasn't really directed against the Jews of country X but against the concept of the Jew. The Jew. Anywhere. Everywhere. At all times. Forever. And that is unique. That has never happened before but it can happen again. The idea of some powerful force that unless it is totally annihilated there's no chance for your survival. That was the Nazi ideology.”

Yehuda Bauer (1926) Israeli historian of the Holocaust

Interview with Michael Dunn (2 June 1993) http://www.remember.org/hist.per.bauer.html.

Idea, Chance, Time, Country

“Why do we forget our childhood? With rare exceptions we have no memory of our first four, five, or six years, and yet we have only to watch the development of our own children during this period to realize that these are precisely the most exciting, the most formative years of life. Schachtel’s theory is that our infantile experiences, so free, so uninhibited, are suppressed because they are incompatible with the conventions of an adult society which we call ‘civilized’. The infant is a savage and must be tamed, domesticated. The process is so gradual and so universal that only exceptionally will an individual child escape it, to become perhaps a genius, perhaps the selfish individual we call a criminal. The significance of this theory for the problem of sincerity in art (and in life) is that occasionally the veil of forgetfulness that hides our infant years is lifted and then we recover all the force and vitality that distinguished our first experiences—the ‘celestial joys’ of which Traherne speaks, when the eyes feast for the first time and insatiably on the beauties of God’s creation. Those childhood experiences, when we ‘enjoy the World aright’, are indeed sincere, and we may therefore say that we too are sincere when in later years we are able to recall these innocent sensations.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

Source: Collected Poems (1966), pp. 16-17

Life, God, Children, World

“Whether it be in the toleration of sharia courts, or the turning of a blind eye to cultural practices which go against our laws, too often it has been women who have been the victims of those problems. I have always believed that a multi-ethnic society such as ours can be successful if it can be united by a common set of values and sense of identity, instead of a constant emphasis on division. It’s amazing to think that this was once considered outlandish. It can be difficult to explain this crucial difference in a city like London. More than one TV interviewer has asked me how, as UKIP’s Mayoral candidate, I can appeal to such a multicultural place as our capital. But this is to miss the point entirely. Like anybody else, I enjoy the huge profusion of completely diverse cuisine, fashion and music. Indeed the different cultural influences on our city are so big and ingrained it’s easy to take them for granted. But this is not the same thing as ensuring and, indeed, standing up for the common values and laws which should and must underpin any cohesive society. Here, as across Europe, one of those values – enshrined in our legal system – is that everybody is equal before the law regardless of their gender, sexuality or ethnicity.”

Peter Whittle (politician) (1961) British author, politician, and journalist

‘Cultural Cringe’: Women Are The First Victims Of State-Sponsored Multiculturalism http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/01/13/2764329/ (January 13, 2016)

Women, Law, Music, Fashion

“In order to stand well in the eyes of the community, it is necessary to come up to a certain, somewhat indefinite, conventional standard of wealth.”

Thorstein Veblen book The Theory of the Leisure Class

Source: The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), p. 19

Communication, Wealth

“386. The buyer needes a hundred eyes, the seller not one.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

“Reputation runs in a vicious circle, and Merit limps behind it, mortified and abashed at its own insignificance. It has been said that the test of fame or popularity is to consider the number of times your name is repeated by others … So, if you see the same name staring you in the face in great letters at the corner of every street, you involuntarily think the owner of it must be a great man to occupy so large a space in the eye of the town. The appeal is made, in the first instance, to the senses, but it sinks below the surface into the mind. There are various ways of playing one's-self off before the public, and keeping one's name alive. The newspapers, the lamp-posts, the walls of empty houses, the shutters of windows, the blank covers of magazines and reviews, are open to every one.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"On Patronage and Puffing" Table Talk: Essays On Men And Manners http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/TableHazIV.htm (1821-1822)

Way, Thinking, Sense, Time

“A time will come when men will stretch out their eyes. They should see planets like our Earth.”

Christopher Wren (1632–1723) English architect

Inaugural Lecture as Professor of Astronomy, Gresham College, as quoted in If the Universe is Teeming with Aliens-- where is Everybody? Fifty Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life, by Stephen Webb (2002), p. 150.

Men, Time

“Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Source: 1800s, Auguries of Innocence (1803), Line 67

Tear

“Far before the rest, the son of Ossian comes; bright in the smiles of youth, fair as the first beams of the sun. His long hair waves on his back: his dark brows are half hid beneath his helmet of steel. His sword hangs loose on the hero's side. His spear glitters as he moves. I fled from his terrible eyes, King of high Temora!”

James Macpherson Temora

Temora, Book I
The Poems of Ossian

Youth, Smile, Sun

“We all see these great calamities with different eyes, and so their impact upon us is different.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

The Path To Power (1995)

“It is all a matter of comparing one’s own life with something worse and consoling oneself with the relativity of human fortunes. When I was eight or nine I had an experience which came clearly to mind when I read your advice. I used to know a family in a little village near mine: father, mother and sons: they were small landowners and had an inn. Very energetic people, especially the woman. I knew (I had heard) that besides the sons we knew, this woman had another son nobody had seen, who was spoken of in whispers, as if he were a great disgrace for the mother, an idiot, a monster or worse. I remember that my mother referred to this woman often as a martyr, who made great sacrifices for this son, and put up with great sorrows. One Sunday morning about ten, I was sent to this woman’s: I had to deliver some crocheting and get the money. I found her shutting the door, dressed up to go out to mass, she had a hamper under her arm. On seeing me she hesitated then decided. She told me to accompany her to a certain place, and that she would take delivery and give me the money on our return. She took me out of the village, into an orchard filled with rubbish and plaster; in one corner there was a sort of pig sty, about four feet high, and windowless, with only a strong door. She opened the door and I could hear an animal-like howling. Inside was her son, a robust boy of 18, who couldn’t stand up and hence scraped along on his seat to the door, as far as he was permitted to move by a chain linked to his waist and attached to the ring in the wall. He was covered with filth, and his eyes shone red, like those of a nocturnal animal. His mother dumped the contents of her basket – a mixed mess of household leftovers – into a stone trough. She filled another trough with water, and we left. I said nothing to my mother about what I had seen, so great an impression it had made on me, and so convinced was I that nobody would believe me. Nor when I later heard of the misery which had befallen that poor mother, did I interrupt to talk of the misery of the poor human wreck who had such a mother.”

Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) Italian writer, politician, theorist, sociologist and linguist

Gramsci, 1965, p. 737 cited in Davidson, 1977, p. 35.

Life, Money, People, Family

“But the serpent with his sharp unsleeping eyes had seen them coming and now confronted them, stretching out his long neck and hissing terribly.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book IV. Homeward Bound, Lines 127–129

“Thus the creationist's favourite question "What is the use of half an eye?" Actually, this is a lightweight question, a doddle to answer. Half an eye is just 1 per cent better than 49 per cent of an eye.”

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

Part 2: "The Virus of Faith"
The Root of All Evil? (January 2006)

Question

“When somebody enrolls, consider he or she has joined up for the duration of the universe — never permit an "open-minded" approach… If they enrolled, they're aboard, and if they're aboard they're here on the same terms as the rest of us — win or die in the attempt. Never let them be half minded about being Scientologists. … When Mrs. Pattycake comes to us to be taught, turn that wandering doubt in her eye into a fixed, dedicated glare. … The proper instruction attitude is, "We'd rather have you dead than incapable."”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

Scientology Policy Letters

Universe, Dead

“The proprietor had hair so red that pigmentation had flowed out into every visible inch of his skin and even into the pinks of his eyes, as the colour of flowering cherry trees stains their leaves.”

Quentin Crisp book The Naked Civil Servant

Source: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), Ch. 13

Flowers, Tree

“Then he saw that she was blind, her face slightly upcast to her companion's in the manner of those whose expressions never fully attain their target - the eyes of another.”

Lawrence Durrell The Alexandria Quartet

Source: The Alexandria Quartet (1957–1960), Mountolive (1958), II

“According to my judgement, the French Revolution and the doings of Napoleon opened the eyes of the world. The nations knew nothing before and the people thought that kings were gods upon the earth and that they were bound to say that whatever they did as well done.”

Theodoros Kolokotronis (1770–1843) Greek general

Kolokotronis's Memoirs, (2013)

God, People, World

“Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation? And what creature of all that the Lord has taken the pains to make is not essential to the completeness of that unit — the cosmos? The universe would be incomplete without man; but it would also be incomplete without the smallest transmicroscopic creature that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes and knowledge. From the dust of the earth, from the common elementary fund, the Creator has made Homo sapiens. From the same material he has made every other creature, however noxious and insignificant to us. They are earth-born companions and our fellow mortals. … This star, our own good earth, made many a successful journey around the heavens ere man was made, and whole kingdoms of creatures enjoyed existence and returned to dust ere man appeared to claim them. After human beings have also played their part in Creation's plan, they too may disappear without any general burning or extraordinary commotion whatever.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Source: A Thousand-Mile Walk To the Gulf, 1916, chapter 6: Cedar Keys, pages 160-161

Pain, Star, Knowledge, Universe

“This they do in the service of an imaginary science; and, like the astrologers and soothsayers whom they have succeeded, cast up their eyes to the clouds, and speak in immense, unsubstantiated images and similes, in deeply misleading metaphors and allegories, and make use of hypnotic formulae with little regard for experience, or rational argument, or tests of proven reliability. Thereby they throw dust in their own eyes as well as in ours, obstruct our vision of the real world, and further confuse an already sufficiently bewildered public about the relations of morality to politics, and about the nature and methods of the natural sciences and historical studies alike.”

Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) Russo-British Jewish social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas

Five Essays on Liberty (2002), Historical Inevitability (1954)

World, Nature, Study, Science

“Cold on Canadian hills or Minden’s plain,
Perhaps that parent mourned her soldier slain;
Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew,
The big drops mingling with the milk he drew
Gave the sad presage of his future years,—
The child of misery, baptized in tears.”

John Langhorne (poet)

The Country Justice, Part i, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). This allusion to the dead soldier and his widow on the field of battle was made the subject of a print by Bunbury, under which were engraved the pathos-laden lines of Langhorne. Sir Walter Scott mentioned that the only time he saw Burns this picture was in the room. Burns shed tears over it; and Scott, then a lad of fifteen, was the only person present who could tell him where the lines were to be found. In Lockhart, Life of Scott, vol. i. chap. iv.

Sadness, Parent, Tear, Future

“Prayer is the burden of a sigh,
The falling of a tear,
The upward glancing of an eye
When none but God is near.”

James Montgomery (1771–1854) British editor, hymn writer, and poet

What is Prayer?
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

God, Tear

“A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained weddingveil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or saber done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses’ ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse’s whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Source: Blood Meridian (1985), Chapter IV

Death, Men, Dreams, Color

“Oh God they got you gun shy
You know your skin's as cold as ice
Your eyes are double filtered babe
You're so afraid to be nice
There's no way you're ready
To let your defenses down
Though I won't come on heavy
There is a lesson that I've found.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

If You Want to Feel
Song lyrics, Living Room Suite (1978)

God, Way

“In Japan, even when you’re alone, you’re never really that lonely. But the loneliness you feel among people with differently colored skin and eyes, whose language you don’t even speak very well – that sort of loneliness is something you feel down to the marrow of your bones.”

Ryū Murakami book Audition

Source: Audition (1997), Chapter Five

People, Color, Feeling, Loneliness

“Nobody really wants to spend life with someone who has no other choice, and children who have been raised by a mother who gave up her life for them almost always spend years on an analyst's couch learning to spit in her eye.”

Merle Shain (1935–1989) Canadian writer

Some Men are More Perfect Than Others (1973)

Life, Children, Learning

“As queen, Farah achieved almost immediate popularity. She had several features that pleased the Iranians: she was 'fully Iranian' and also worthy of honour because she descended from the family of the Prophet. She was a brunette with deep black eyes of the kind most Persians cherish. (The Shah's outlandish taste for blondes was not shared by his compatriots.) Farah appeared to be slightly taller than the Shah, but this could not be held against her. The new queen's athletic physique and her well-publicised love of sports disconcerted some religious circles, but even the more conservative Iranians now understood that times were changing.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

The Unknown Life of the Shah (1991)

Love, Family, Sport, Appearance

“Ever see a hot shot hit, kid? I saw the Gimp catch one in Philly. We rigged his room with a one-way whorehouse mirror and charged a sawski to watch it. He never got the needle out of his arm. They don't if the shot is right. That's the way they find them, dropper full of clotted blood hanging out of a blue arm. The look in his eyes when it hit --- Kid, it was tasty.”

William S. Burroughs book Naked Lunch

Opening Chapter
Naked Lunch (1959)

Way

“Turn on your side and bear the day to me
Beloved, sceptre-struck, immured
In the glass wall of sleep. Slowly
Uncloud the borealis of your eye
And show your iceberg secrets, your midnight prizes
To the green-eyed world and to me.”

George Barker (1913–1991) British poet

Turn on your side and bear the day to me

Secret, World, Sleep

“I am just an ordinary human being, with two legs, two eyes, and I work, and I voluntary put myself here so that I can reveal this Knowledge to people, I think because people need it. People have forgotten what this Knowledge is. And I am just teaching them perfectness, and that’s why they called me Perfect Master. And as a matter of fact, I am Perfect Master because I can reveal them this peace. Not saying that I am bodily perfect. I’m not saying I’m... I am perfect because of this reason or that reason, but simply one reason: because I can reveal them this Knowledge, which is perfect.”

Prem Rawat (1957) controversial spiritual leader

London, UK 13 July, 1973
1970s

People, Peace, Knowledge, Thinking

“We receive data through five portals, five windows; the house of human consciousness has but five windows. Do you imagine that we will ever perceive all through these five windows? Do you imagine that that which is most important can ever be seen? How do you describe the most important things that have ever happened to you? The moment you knew you loved her: Can you reassemble that magnetic pull with the Lego of light and language? The moment you heard he’d died—can you define it, calcify it, crystallize it, make it live again, or is it at best a kind of taxidermy that language can provide? A stuffed dead effigy with cold unseeing eyes. And Jupiter revolves. And the moon watches, the moon you saw as a child, the moon that hung in the sky when Christ was crucified, the crescent moon, like a tear in heaven as the Prophet heard Allah.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Love, Imagination, Tear, Light

“There's a long goodbye,
and it happens every day,
when a passerby
invites your eye
to come away.
Even as you smile a quick hello
you let her go,
you let the moment fly…
Too late you turn your head,
you know you've said
the Long Goodbye.”

Johnny Mercer (1909–1976) American lyricist, songwriter, singer and music professional

Song "The Long Goodbye" (1973)

Smile, Flying

“Like Dead Sea fruits, that tempt the eye,
But turn to ashes on the lips.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Lalla Rookh http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/lallarookh/index.html (1817), Part V-VIII: The Fire-Worshippers

Sea, Dead

“Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret. You are looking into a predator's eyes. Most predators have eyes set right on the front of their heads, so they can use binocular vision to sight and track their prey.”

Diane Ackerman book A Natural History of the Senses

Source: A Natural History of the Senses (1991), p. 229

Secret

“I'd like you [Theo] to spend some time here, you'd feel it — after some time your vision changes, you see with a more Japanese eye, you feel colour differently. I'm also convinced that it's precisely through a long stay here that I'll bring out my personality. The Japanese [like a. o. Hokusai, admired by Vincent] draws quickly, very quickly, like a flash of lightning, because his nerves are finer, his feeling simpler. I've been here [Arles] only a few months but — tell me, in Paris would I have drawn in an hour the drawing of the boats?... Now this [sketch] was done without measuring, letting the pen go. So I tell myself that gradually the expenses will be balanced by work.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

In a letter to brother Theo, from Arles, c. 5 June 1888, in 'Van Gogh's Letters', letter 620 http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let620/letter.html, Van Goghmuseum The Japanese artists with their colored woodblock-prints meant a great inspirations for several Paris' artists - they were extremely important for Vincent, these years 1880s, 1888

Feeling, Change, Time, Drawing

“I learned have, not to despise,
What ever thing seemes small in common eyes.”

Edmund Spenser (1552–1599) English poet

Visions of the Worlds Vanitie (1591), line 69

Learning

“When Nature her great masterpiece designed,
And framed her last, best work, the human mind,
Her eye intent on all the wondrous plan,
She formed of various stuff the various Man.”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

To Robert Graham, st. 1 (1791)

Nature

“Cause I live and breathe this Philadelphia freedom.
From the day that I was born I've waved the flag.
Philadelphia freedom took me knee-high to a man.
Yeah gave me peace of mind my daddy never had.Oh Philadelphia freedom shine on me, I love you.
Shine a light through the eyes of the ones left behind.
Shine a light, shine a light
Shine a light, won't you shine a light.
Philadelphia freedom I love you, yes I do.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Philadelphia Freedom (1975)
Song lyrics, Singles

Love, Peace, Freedom, Light

“The most graphic description of the Muslim army is by a Hindu, the famous Maithli poet Vidyapati of the fourteenth century. Vidyapati was patronised by Sultans Ghiyasuddin and Nasiruddin of Bengal. Writing about Muslim soldiers, he says:
“Sometimes they ate only raw flesh. Their eyes were red with the intoxication of wine. They could run twenty yojanas within the span of half of a day. They used to pass the day with the (bare) loaf under their arm… (The soldier) takes into custody all the women of the enemy’s city… Wherever they happened to pass in that very place the ladies of the Raja’s house began to be sold in the market. They used to set fire to the villages. They turned out the women (from their homes) and killed the children. Loot was their (source of) income. They subsisted on that. Neither did they have pity for the weak nor did they fear the strong… They had nothing to do with righteousness… They never kept their promise… They were neither desirous of good name, not did they fear bad name…”
At another place he says: “Somewhere a Musalman shows his rage and attacks (the Hindus)… It appears on seeing the Turks that they would swallow up the whole lot of Hindus.””

Vidyapati

Vidyapati, Kirtilata. Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

Women, Children, Fear, Home

“Her eyes the glow-worm lend thee,
The shooting stars attend thee;
And the elves also,
Whose little eyes glow
Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee.”

Robert Herrick book Hesperides

"The Night Piece to Julia".
Hesperides (1648)

Star

“You're a hostage of the heart
Twisted 'round the smallest finger
Two burning eyes are tearing you apart
Turn your soul into a cinder!”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Earth Moving (1989)

Soul, Tear, Heart

“My parents danced together, her head on his chest. Both had their eyes closed. They seemed so perfectly content. If you can find someone like that, someone who you can hold and close your eyes to the world with, then you’re lucky. Even if it only lasts for a minute or a day. The image of them gently swaying to the music is how I picture love in my mind even after all these years.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 15, “Distractions and Farewells” (pp. 119-120)

Love, World, Music, Parent

“Attack of the Clones displays some similarities to The Empire Strikes Back, but, overall, it is not as effective a piece of cinema (although the 2002 era special effects make it far more pleasing to the eye). Both films contain romantic subplots and are darker in tone than their predecessors. Both develop a number of unresolved plot elements. And both end on a note that incorporates hope with ambiguity. There is, however, one major difference. The Empire Strikes Back includes a shocking revelation. Nothing of that sort is present in Attack of the Clones. In terms of its plotting, this film is relatively straightforward. There's nothing wrong with that — in fact, it works. In a time when, more often than not, sequels disappoint, it's refreshing to uncover something this high-profile that fulfills the promise of its name and adds another title to a storied legacy.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/movies/s/sw2002.html of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002). Three-and-a-half star reviews

Hope, Disappointment, Time

“Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence and thereby eventually lose all ability to defend ourselves and those we love. In a modern economy it is impossible to seal oneself off from injustice. If we have brains or courage, then we are blessed and called on not to frit these qualities away, standing agape at the ideas of others, winning pissing contests, improving the efficiencies of the neocorporate state, or immersing ourselves in obscuranta, but rather to prove the vigor of our talents against the strongest opponents of love we can find. If we can only live once, then let it be a daring adventure that draws on all our powers. Let it be with similar types whos hearts and heads we may be proud of. Let our grandchildren delight to find the start of our stories in their ears but the endings all around in their wandering eyes. The whole universe or the structure that perceives it is a worthy opponent, but try as I may I can not escape the sound of suffering. Perhaps as an old man I will take great comfort in pottering around in a lab and gently talking to students in the summer evening and will accept suffering with insouciance. But not now; men in their prime, if they have convictions are tasked to act on them.”

Julian Assange (1971) Australian editor, activist, publisher and journalist

[Witnessing, 2007-01-03, 2012-08-16, http://web.archive.org/web/20071020051936/http://iq.org/#Witnessing]

Love, Men, Idea, Courage

“If I gaze at a comet with all the strength of my soul,
It cannot stir from the spot while my eyes are upon it.”

Adam Mickiewicz book Dziady

Kiedy spójrzę w kometę z całą mocą duszy, Dopóki na nią patrzę, z miejsca się nie ruszy. Part three, scene two ("The Great Improvisation"). Translated by Louise Varese. Dziady (Forefathers' Eve) http://www.ap.krakow.pl/nkja/literature/polpoet/mic_fore.htm

Soul

“I would give a good deal of money, blood, books or years to be able to watch as Amanda, in a picture hat, looked back from the vantage of a long and productive career to reject her first published efforts as uneven or only halfway there or, worst of all, as promising, or to see her condescend to them, cuddle them almost, as mature writers sometimes do with their early books, the way we give our old stuffed pony or elephant, with its one missing shirt-button eye, a fond squeeze before returning it to the hatbox in the attic.At bottom of this kind of behavior on the part of old, established writers is the undeniable way in which our young selves, and the books that issued from them, invariably seem to reproach us: with the fading of our fire, the diminishment of our porousness to the world and the people in it, the compromises made, the friendships abandoned, the opportunities squandered, the loss of velocity on our fastball.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

The New York Times Magazine http://wonderwhenyoullmissme.com/chabon.html (December 28th, 2003) About Amanda Davis, who died at the age of 32 in a plane crash

Money, Friendship, People, Books

“You stared out of the window on the emptiness
Of a world exploding:
Stones and rubble thrown upwards in a fountain
Blasted sideways by the wind.
Every sensation except loneliness
Was drained out of your mind
By the lack of any motionless object the eye could
find.
You were a child again
Who sees for the first time things happen.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

"To A Spanish Poet" (for Manuel Altolaguirre)
The Still Centre (1939)

World, Time, Loneliness

“Because of the influence of the cinema, most reports or stories of violence are so pictorial that they lack content or meaning. The camera brings them to our eyes, but does not settle them in our minds, nor in time.”

V.S. Pritchett (1900–1997) British writer and critic

"Jorge Luis Borges: Medallions", p. 178
The Myth Makers: European and Latin American Writers (1979)

Time

“The boats, and trains, and cows and horses were quite meaningless to him, but not quite so baffling as the odd little figures which appeared beneath and between the colored pictures — some strange kind of bug he thought they might be, for many of them had legs though nowhere could he find one with eyes and a mouth. It was his first introduction to the letters of the alphabet, and he was over ten years old.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 6 : Jungle Battles

Color, Appearance, Horse, Training

“[War] isn't a Nintendo game… There's no hitting reset and coming back to life. If you turn your head around the corner in the streets of Baghdad and take one between the eyes, your brain is gone. Maybe you turn around the corner and you take one in your chest and it'll sever your spinal cord and you can spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair. That's war! Maybe you step on a landmine and there goes your leg, you lose an arm, you lose eyesight. That's war! And we're talking about going to war. There better be a hell of a good reason for this. There better be a reason worthy of the sacrifice we're asking Americans to make. And you know, it's not just going to be Americans dying in this war; we're going to be killing Iraqis, by the thousands. I have to tell you, as a former Marine, I was involved with the worlds most efficient killing machine. We were the best led, best trained, best equipped warriors anybody's ever seen, and we are today. When we go to war we will slaughter those who oppose us, because that's what we do, and we do it better than anyone else. If you get in my way, I will kill you. You try hurt one of my marines, I'm taking you down. And I will continue to go until my government tells me to stop. We are the dogs of war and when we are unleashed there is nothing but hell. That's the reality of war. For God's sake, don't unleash the dogs of war unless there's an absolute necessary to do so.”

Scott Ritter (1961) American weapons inspector and writer

Keynote address, California Institute of Technology http://sass.caltech.edu/events/ritter.shtml November 13, 2002 2000

Life, God, War, World

“Recently I dreamed of you [of the artist Herman van der Weele and his wife] and that you two were very rich and lived in a beautiful place and that I sat in your room with you and Herman, with beautiful fabrics and wallpapers that I couldn't stop looking to them and you wore black glasses, just like me now [to protect his eyes], but they [black glasses] were so amazingly beautiful and they suited you so well, as is only possible in a dream, and your dress was beautifully deep red blue black with exotic figures woven into it and the walls were yellow and pink. Anyway it was all a miracle of beauty and I wished that.... my eyes were healthy again and that we each could spent hundred thousand guilders a week, then we had built a beautiful yacht and we all sailed to the country of the Mikado [Japan], to have a look there.”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch / citaat uit de brief van Breitner, in het Nederlands: Laatst heb ik van jelui [de kunstenaar Herman van der Weele en zijn vrouw] gedroomd en dat jelui heel rijk waren en prachtig woonden en dat ik met U en Herman in een vertrek daarvan zat, met zulke prachtige stoffen en behangen, dat ik mij niet kan verzadigen er naar te kijken en gij hadt een zwarte bril op net als ik nu, maar die was zo verbazend mooi en stond U zoo goed, als dat alleen maar in een droom mogelijk is en uw costuum was prachtig diep rood blauw zwart met exotische figuren daarin geweven en de wanden waren geel en rose, enfin het was een wonder van pracht en ik wou dat.. ..mijn oogen weer heel waren en dat we ieder honderdduizend gld in de week te verteren hadden, dan lieten we een mooi jacht bouwen en zeilden allemaal naar het land van den Mikado, om daar eens te kijken.
Quote of Breitner, in a letter to Herman van der Weele, c. 1892-96; as cited in Meisjes in kimono. Schilderijen, tekeningen en foto's van George Hendrik Breitner (1857-1923) en zijn Japanse tijdgenoten, J.H.G. Bergsma & H. Shimoyama; Hotei Publishing, Leiden 2001, pp. 15-16
1890 - 1900

Beauty, Dreams, Country

“The time comes in the life of each of us when we realize that death awaits us as it awaits others, that we will receive at the end neither preference nor exemption. It is then, in that disturbed moment, that we know life is an adventure with an ending, not a succession of bright days that go on forever. Sometimes the knowledge come with the repudiation and quick revolt that such injustice awaits us, sometimes with fear that dries the mouth and closes the eyes for an instant, sometimes with servile weariness, an acquiescence more dreadful than fear. The knowledge that my own end was near came with pain, and afterwards astonishment, with the conventional heart attack, from which, I've been told, I've made an excellent recovery.”

William March (1893–1954) United States Marine, novelist, short story writer

Entitled "Poor Pilgrim, Poor Stranger", Found in the typewriter the morning of his death.

Life, Death, Pain, Fear

“Close your eyes and you will see.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

“Look babies in your eyes, my pretty sweet one.”

John Fletcher The Loyal Subject

The Loyal Subject (c. 1616–19; published 1647, 1679)

Baby

“Love looks forward, hate looks back, anxiety has eyes all over its head.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Love, Hate

“Drink to me with your eyes alone…. And if you will, take the cup to your lips and fill it with kisses, and give it so to me.”

Philostratus (170) Lucius Flavius Philostratus, Greek sophist of Roman imperial period

XXIV. Quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 801-03.
Letters

Drink, Kiss

“I made the flags and targets to open men's eyes.... [they] were both things - which are seen and not looked at - examined.”

Jasper Johns (1930) American artist

John's own comment on his exhibition of the 'Flag, Target and Number' paintings in 1958
1950s

Men

“I don't ever wanna wake up, looking into someone else's eyes.
Another voice calling me baby on the other end of the phone.
A new girl putting on her makeup before dinner on Friday night.
No, I don't ever wanna know. Oh, oh.
No other shotgun rider, beside me, singin' to the radio.
Oh, oh. Oh, oh.”

Tim McGraw (1967) American country singer

Shotgun Rider
Song lyrics, Sundown Heaven Town (2014)

Girl, Baby, Night

“It's rather like a Poe story, isn't it,' said Patrick luxuriously, unfocusing his eyes. 'A person sees the chance of a better life passing by, and he makes as if to call out' - he flung one arm in the imploring gesture of a soul in torment - 'but something in his nature makes him hesitate. He pauses… he closes his lips… he steps back… and then he slides down, and down, and down.”

Helen Garner book Cosmo Cosmolino

Page 8.
Cosmo Cosmolino (1992)

Life, Soul, Nature, Chance

“History is philosophy teaching by example, and also warning; its two eyes are geography and chronology.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

This quote was already published in 1853 http://books.google.com/books?id=LM0QVhkWKrcC&pg=PA129&dq=%22two+eyes+are+geography+and+chronology.%22#v=onepage&q=%22two%20eyes%20are%20geography%20and%20chronology.%22&f=false, when Garfield was only 22. Misattributed

History

“On October 19, 2009, my sixteenth birthday, Wild Eyes officially became mine! Now it was really happening.”

Abby Sunderland (1993) Camera Assistant, Inspirational Speaker and Sailor

Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p. 31

Birthday

Quotes about eye page 37

Quotes about eye
page 37