Quotes about eye
page 41

Anthony Bourdain photo
Toby Keith photo

“Now this nation that I love
Has fallen under attack
A mighty sucker punch came flying in
From somewhere in the back
Soon as we could see clearly
Through our big black eye
Man, we lit up your world
Like the 4th of July.”

Toby Keith (1961) American country music singer and actor

Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue (The Angry American).
Song lyrics, Unleashed (2002)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“Then gaze not on other eyes, Love;
Breathe not other sighs, Love;
You may find many a brighter one
Than your own rose, but there are none
So true to thee, Love.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

5th January 1822) Song ("Are other eyes beguiling, Love?"
The London Literary Gazette, 1821-1822

Peter Greenaway photo
Anne Morrow Lindbergh photo
Uri Avnery photo
Norodom Sihanouk photo

“We don't want any Vietnamese in Cambodia…. We will be very glad if you solve our problem. We are not opposed to hot pursuit in uninhabited areas. You would be liberating us from the Viet Cong. For me only Cambodia counts. I want you to force the Viet Cong to leave Cambodia. In unpopulated areas, where there are not Cambodians,- such precise cases I would shut my eyes.”

Norodom Sihanouk (1922–2012) Cambodian King

Said to presidential emissary Chester Bowles (January 10, 1968), as quoted by Henry Kissinger (2003) Ending the Vietnam War: A History of America's Involvement in and Extrication from the Vietnam War, page 67.

Cormac McCarthy photo
John Fante photo
David D. Levine photo
Margaret Trudeau photo

“Señora Perez, I would like to thank you. I would like to sing to you, to sing a song of love; for I have watched you with my eyes wide open. I have watched you with learning eyes. You are a mother, and your arms are open wide for your children, for your people. Mrs. Perez, you are working hard.”

Margaret Trudeau (1948) ex-wife of the late Canadian prime minister Pierre Trudeau

1976 song about Blanca Rodríguez (wife of Carlos Andrés Pérez) according to 4 Feb 1976 New York Times article http://www.nytimes.com/1976/02/04/archives/mrs-trudeau-replies-on-radio-to-critics-of-tour.html

Max Scheler photo

“But this instinctive falsification of the world view is only of limited effectiveness. Again and again the ressentiment man encounters happiness, power, beauty, wit, goodness, and other phenomena of positive life. They exist and impose themselves, however much he may shake his fist against them and try to explain them away. He cannot escape the tormenting conflict between desire and impotence. Averting his eyes is sometimes impossible and in the long run ineffective. When such a quality irresistibly forces itself upon his attention, the very sight suffices to produce an impulse of hatred against its bearer, who has never harmed or insulted him. Dwarfs and cripples, who already feel humiliated by the outward appearance of the others, often show this peculiar hatred—this hyena-like and ever-ready ferocity. Precisely because this kind of hostility is not caused by the “enemy's” actions and behavior, it is deeper and more irreconcilable than any other. It is not directed against transitory attributes, but against the other person's very essence and being. Goethe has this type of “enemy” in mind when he writes: “Why complain about enemies?—Could those become your friends—To whom your very existence—Is an eternal silent reproach?” (West-Eastern Divan). The very existence of this “being,” his mere appearance, becomes a silent, unadmitted “reproach.””

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Other disputes can be settled, but not this! Goethe knew, for his rich and great existence was the ideal target of ressentiment. His very appearance was bound to make the poison flow.
Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

András Petőcz photo
Raymond Chandler photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Walter Savage Landor photo
John Constable photo
Van Morrison photo

“You can't stop us on the road to freedom
You can't stop us 'cause our eyes can see
Men with insight, men in granite
Knights in armor intent on chivalry.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Tupelo Honey
Song lyrics, Tupelo Honey (1971)

Adele (singer) photo
Theodore L. Cuyler photo
Maggie Stiefvater photo
Edgar Degas photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Amit Chaudhuri photo
Stella Vine photo
Basil of Caesarea photo
Charan Singh photo
W. H. Auden photo
Elie Wiesel photo

“Even with these dark eyes, a gift of the dark night
I go to seek the shining light.”

Gu Cheng (1956–1993) Chinese poet

"A Generation" [Yidai ren]

Gloria E. Anzaldúa photo
Thomas Gray photo

“When love could teach a monarch to be wise,
And gospel-light first dawn'd from Bullen's eyes.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

Education and Government; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

John Gray photo

“While it is much preferable to anarchy, government cannot abolish the evils of the human condition. At any time the state is only one of the forces that shape human behaviour, and its power is never absolute. At present, fundamentalist religion and organized crime, ethnic-national allegiances and market forces all have the ability to elude the control of government, sometimes to overthrow or capture it. States are at the mercy of events as much as any other human institution, and over the longer course of history all of them fail. As Spinoza recognized, there is no reason to think the cycle of order and anarchy will ever end. Secular thinkers find this view of human affairs dispiriting, and most have retreated to some version of the Christian view in which history is a narrative of redemption. The most common of these narratives are theories of progress, in which the growth of knowledge enables humanity to advance and improve its condition. Actually, humanity cannot advance or retreat, for humanity cannot act: there is no collective entity with intentions or purposes, only ephemeral struggling animals each with its own passions and illusions. The growth of scientific knowledge cannot alter this fact. Believers in progress – whether social democrats or neo-conservatives, Marxists, anarchists or technocratic Positivists – think of ethics and politics as being like science, with each step forward enabling further advances in future. Improvement in society is cumulative, they believe, so that the elimination of one evil can be followed by the removal of others in an open-ended process. But human affairs show no sign of being additive in this way: what is gained can always be lost, sometimes –as with the return of torture as an accepted technique in war and government – in the blink of an eye. Human knowledge tends to increase, but humans do not become any more civilized as a result. They remain prone to every kind of barbarism, and while the growth of knowledge allows them to improve their material conditions, it also increases the savagery of their conflicts.”

Post-Apocalypse: After Secularism (pp. 264-5)
Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (2007)

James Frey photo

“What I know is that I can trust his eyes because what lives in them, lives in me.”

page 108
A Million Little Pieces (2003)

Jack Johnson (musician) photo
Karl Pilkington photo

“A dog has got human eyes.”

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

Podcast Series 3 Episode 3
On Nature

Jacques Derrida photo
El Lissitsky photo
Cat Stevens photo
Houston Stewart Chamberlain photo
Joseph E. Stiglitz photo

“It's actually a tribute to the quality of economics teaching that they have persuaded so many generations of students to believe in so much that seems so counter to what the world is like. Many of the things that I'm going to describe make so much more common sense than these notions that seem counter to what ones eyes see every day.”

Joseph E. Stiglitz (1943) American economist and professor, born 1943.

"Nobel Prize Lecture" http://nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=507 Information and the Change in the Paradigm in Economics, at Aula Magna, Stockholm University, (2001-12-08).

Richard Anthony Proctor photo

“An air of mystery surrounds his researches, lying, as they do, chiefly in depths to which the far-seeing eye of the telescope alone penetrates.”

Richard Anthony Proctor (1837–1888) English astronomer

Source: Saturn and its System (2nd ed 1882), Chapter 1, p. 2

Joseph Joubert photo
Natalie Merchant photo

“motherland cradle me
close my eyes
lullaby me to sleep
keep me safe
lie with me
stay beside me
don't go, don't you go”

Natalie Merchant (1963) American singer-songwriter

Song lyrics, Motherland (2001), Motherland

David Foster Wallace photo
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson photo
V. P. Singh photo
Alexis De Tocqueville photo
Dinah Craik photo
Willa Cather photo
Lucille Ball photo

“Shykh Nuruddin Mubarak Ghaznavi was the most important disciple of Shykh Shihabuddin Suhrawardi, founder of the second most important sufi silsila after the Chishtiyya, who died in Baghdad in 1235 AD. Ghaznavi had come and settled down in India where he passed away in 1234-35 AD. He served as Shykh-ul-Islam in the reign of Shamsuddin Iltutmish (AD 1210-1236), and propounded the doctrine of Din Panahi. Barani quotes the first principle of this doctrine as follows in his Tarikh-i-Firuzshahi. “The kings should protect the religion of Islam with sincere faith… And kings will not be able to perform the duty of protecting the Faith unless, for the sake of God and the Prophet’s creed, they overthrow and uproot kufr and kafiri (infidelity), shirk (setting partners to God) and the worship of idols. But if the total uprooting of idolatry is not possible owing to the firm roots of kufr and the large number of kafirs and mushriks (infidels and idolaters), the kings should at least strive to insult, disgrace, dishonour and defame the mushrik and idol-worshipping Hindus, who are the worst enemies of God and the Prophet. The symptom of the kings being the protectors of religion is this:- When they see a Hindu, their eyes grow red and they wish to bury him alive; they also desire to completely uproot the Brahmans, who are the leaders of kufr and shirk and owning to whom kufr and shirk are spread and the commandments of kufr are enforced… Owing to the fear and terror of the kings of Islam, not a single enemy of God and the Prophet can drink water that is sweet or stretch his legs on his bed and go to sleep in peace.””

Ziauddin Barani (1285–1357) Indian Muslim historian and political thinker (1285–1357)

Quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (2001). The story of Islamic imperialism in India. ISBN 9788185990231
Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi

Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“1817. Keep thy eyes wide open before Marriage; and half shut afterward.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Compare Poor Richard's Almanack (1738) : Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727)

“Brant felt a spasm of pain. “Uh,” she said. She closed her eyes tight until the pain went away.
“Can I do anything?” said Staefler.
“Yes,” she said. “Have my baby for me.””

George Alec Effinger (1947–2002) Novelist, short story writer

Source: Death in Florence (1978), Chapter 4 “Queene Eileen” (p. 177).

Philip Pullman photo
Thomas Gainsborough photo

“Do you consider, my dear maggotty sir [cosy-name for his friend], what a deal of work history pictures require to what little dirty subjects of coal horses and jackasses and such figures as I fill up with; no, you don't consider anything about that part of the story... But to be serious (as I know you love to be), do you really think that a regular composition in the Landskip [landscape] way should ever be filled with History, or any figures but such as fill a place (I won't say stop a gap) or create a little business for the eye to be drawn from the trees in order to return to them with more glee.”

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

Quote from Gainsborough's letter to his friend William Jackson of Exeter, from Bath 23 Aug. 1767; as cited in Thomas Gainsborough, by William T, Whitley https://ia800204.us.archive.org/6/items/thomasgainsborou00whitrich/thomasgainsborou00whitrich.pdf; New York, Charles Scribner's Sons – London, Smith, Elder & Co, Sept. 1915, p. 379 (Appendix A - Letter I)
1755 - 1769

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis photo

“The children have been a wonderful gift to me, and I’m thankful to have once again seen our world through their eyes. They restore my faith in the family’s future.”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

The Unknown Wisdom of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1994) edited by Bill Adler

Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo
Nick Cave photo

“Nick the Stripper,
Hideous to the eye,
Hideous to the eye,
He's a fat little insect,
A fat little insect,
And oooooooh! Here we go again.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, Prayers on Fire (1981), Nick the Stripper

Milan Kundera photo
Khaled Hosseini photo
Michel Seuphor photo
Alfred Horsley Hinton photo
Conrad Aiken photo
Robert Benchley photo
Berthe Morisot photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo
John Allen Paulos photo

“To follow foolish precedents, and wink with both eyes, is easier than to think.”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 3, “Pseudoscience” (p. 67; quoting William Cowper)

Stephenie Meyer photo
Denis Diderot photo

“The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

"Death"
Elements of Physiology (1875)

John F. Kennedy photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Jacopo Sannazaro photo

“Envy, my son, wears herself away, and droops like a lamb under the influence of the evil eye.”

Jacopo Sannazaro (1458–1530) Italian writer

L'invidia, figliuol mio, se stessa macera,
E si dilegua come agnel per fascino.
Ecloga Octava; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), "Envy".

T.S. Eliot photo
Will Cuppy photo
Chinmayananda Saraswati photo
Ben Harper photo
Hendrik Werkman photo

“.. When I have made some drawings I see them immediately in front of my eyes, enlarged [and] in colors..”

Hendrik Werkman (1882–1945) Dutch artist

version in original Dutch (origineel citaat van Hendrik Werkman, in het Nederlands): ..Als ik eenige teekeningen gemaakt heb zie ik ze ook direct in kleuren [en] vergroot voor me..
In a letter (nr. 356) to Bastiaan Kist, 9 Sept. 1943; as cited in H. N. Werkman - Leven & Werk - 1882-1945, ed. A. de Vries, J. van der Spek, D. Sijens, M. Jansen; WBooks, Groninger Museum / Stichting Werkman, 2015 (transl: Fons Heijnsbroek), p. 176
1940's

Ai Weiwei photo
Ted Hughes photo

“Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.”

Ted Hughes (1930–1998) English poet and children's writer

"Hawk Roosting", line 22
Lupercal (1960)

William Burges photo
Ben Bernanke photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Johann Georg Hamann photo
Greg Bear photo

“Having one’s eyes opened doesn’t make one grateful.”

Greg Bear book Eon

Source: Eon (1985), p. 291

Ellen Terry photo

“Tall, slender, with beautiful flaxen hair, grey eyes, full red lips, finely framed features, graceful of carriage and movement, fresh and always young, Ellen Terry was as much an art object as an actress.”

Ellen Terry (1847–1928) English actress

Katharine Cockin, quoted in Spartacus biography http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ACterry.htm
About

Nina Kiriki Hoffman photo
William S. Burroughs photo
John Galsworthy photo
Amanda Lear photo
Tom Hanks photo
Gloria Estefan photo
Harry Reid photo

“Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all Republicans have come up with is this slow down, stop everything, let's start over. You think you've heard these same excuses before, you're right. When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said, slow down, it's too early. Let's wait. Things aren't bad enough. When women spoke up for the right to speak up, they wanted to vote, some insisted slow down, there will be a better day to do that. The day isn't quite right. When this body was on the verge of guaranteeing equal civil rights to everyone, regardless of the color of their skin, some senators resorted to the same filibuster threats that we hear today. More recently, when chairman Chris Dodd of Connecticut, one of the people who will go down as a chief champion of the bill before us today, said that Americans should be able to take care of their families without fear of losing their jobs, you heard the same old excuses, seven years of fighting and more than one presidential veto, it was slow down, stop everything, start over. History is repeating itself before our eyes. There are now those who don't think it is the right time to reform health care. If not now, when, madam president? But the reality for many that feel that way, it will never, never be a good time to reform health care.”

Harry Reid (1939) American politician

On the Senate floor, during a debate on health care reform, December 7, 2009
Reid Compares Health Reform Bill with Slavery, Suffrage - George's Bottom Line, abcnews.com, December 7, 2009, 2009-12-08 http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/12/reid-compares-health-reform-bill-with-slavery-suffrage.html,