Quotes about look
page 5

The Mother photo
Eminem photo

“Look, if you had one shot or one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted in one moment, would you capture it, or just let it slip?”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Lose Yourself".
2000s, 8 Mile (2002)

Paul Gauguin photo
Mick Jones (The Clash) photo

“He was just there, looking fantastic… the bastard.”

Mick Jones (The Clash) (1955) British rock guitarist (The Clash, Big Audio Dynamite)

As quoted in 3:AM magazine (1994) http://www.3ammagazine.com/musicarchives/2004/nov/interview_paul_simonon.html Mick Jones on Paul Simonon.

Charlotte Brontë photo

“I avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.”

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) English novelist and poet

15 January, 1849. As quoted in Elizabeth Gaskell The life of Charlotte Brontë (1870), p. 285

Rabindranath Tagore photo

“Open your doors and look abroad.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

85
The Gardener http://www.spiritualbee.com/love-poems-by-tagore/ (1915)
Context: Who are you, reader, reading my poems an hundred years hence?
I cannot send you one single flower from this wealth of the spring, one single streak of gold from yonder clouds.
Open your doors and look abroad.
From your blossoming garden gather fragrant memories of the vanished flowers of an hundred years before.
In the joy of your heart may you feel the living joy that sang one spring morning, sending its glad voice across a hundred years.

Grover Cleveland photo

“A sensitive man is not happy as President. It is fight, fight, fight all the time. I looked forward to the close of my term as a happy release from care. But I am not sure I wasn't more unhappy out of office than in. A term in the presidency accustoms a man to great duties. He gets used to handling tremendous enterprises, to organizing forces that may affect at once and directly the welfare of the world. After the long exercise of power, the ordinary affairs of life seem petty and commonplace.”

Grover Cleveland (1837–1908) 22nd and 24th president of the United States

As quoted in American Magazine (September 1908)
Context: A sensitive man is not happy as President. It is fight, fight, fight all the time. I looked forward to the close of my term as a happy release from care. But I am not sure I wasn't more unhappy out of office than in. A term in the presidency accustoms a man to great duties. He gets used to handling tremendous enterprises, to organizing forces that may affect at once and directly the welfare of the world. After the long exercise of power, the ordinary affairs of life seem petty and commonplace. An ex-President practicing law or going into business is like a locomotive hauling a delivery wagon. He has lost his sense of proportion. The concerns of other people and even his own affairs seem too small to be worth bothering about.

Kanō Jigorō photo

“Judo teaches us to look for the best possible course of action, whatever the individual circumstances, and helps us to understand that worry is a waste of energy.”

Kanō Jigorō (1860–1938) Japanese educator and judoka

Source: Kodokan Judo (1882), p. 23
Context: Judo teaches us to look for the best possible course of action, whatever the individual circumstances, and helps us to understand that worry is a waste of energy. Paradoxically, the man who has failed and one who is at the peak of success are in exactly the same position. Each must decide what he will do next, choose the course that will lead him to the future. The teachings of judo give each the same potential for success, in the former instance guiding a man out of lethargy and disappointment to a state of vigorous activity.

Florence Nightingale photo

“The next Christ will perhaps be a female Christ. But do we see one woman who looks like a female Christ? or even like "the messenger before" her "face", to go before her and prepare the hearts and minds for her?”

Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Cassandra (1860)
Context: The great reformers of the world turn into the great misanthropists, if circumstances or organisation do not permit them to act. Christ, if He had been a woman, might have been nothing but a great complainer. Peace be with the misanthropists! They have made a step in progress; the next will make them great philanthropists; they are divided but by a line.
The next Christ will perhaps be a female Christ. But do we see one woman who looks like a female Christ? or even like "the messenger before" her "face", to go before her and prepare the hearts and minds for her?
To this will be answered that half the inmates of Bedlam begin in this way, by fancying that they are "the Christ."
People talk about imitating Christ, and imitate Him in the little trifling formal things, such as washing the feet, saying His prayer, and so on; but if anyone attempts the real imitation of Him, there are no bounds to the outcry with which the presumption of that person is condemned.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry photo

“Have you looked at a modern airplane? Have you followed from year to year the evolution of its lines?”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944) French writer and aviator

Ch III : The Tool
Variant translation of: <span id="perfection"></span>Il semble que la perfection soit atteinte non quand il n'y a plus rien à ajouter, mais quand il n'y a plus rien à retrancher.
Ch. III: L'Avion <!-- p. 60 -->
It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove.
Terre des Hommes (1939)
Context: Have you looked at a modern airplane? Have you followed from year to year the evolution of its lines? Have you ever thought, not only about the airplane but about whatever man builds, that all of man's industrial efforts, all his computations and calculations, all the nights spent over working draughts and blueprints, invariably culminate in the production of a thing whose sole and guiding principle is the ultimate principle of simplicity?
It is as if there were a natural law which ordained that to achieve this end, to refine the curve of a piece of furniture, or a ship's keel, or the fuselage of an airplane, until gradually it partakes of the elementary purity of the curve of a human breast or shoulder, there must be the experimentation of several generations of craftsmen. In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.

John Wesley photo
Desiderius Erasmus photo

“Wherever you encounter truth, look upon it as Christianity.”

Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and theologian

As quoted in Erasmus of Rotterdam‎ (1934) by Stefan Zweig, Eden Paul, and Cedar Paul, p. 91; also in Erasmus — The Right to Heresy (2008) by Staffan Z. Weig, p. 62

Laxmi Prasad Devkota photo

“Look at the withered tongues of shameless leaders,”

Laxmi Prasad Devkota (1909–1959) Nepali poet

Lunatic. 6
पागल (The Lunatic)
Context: I see the blind man as the people's guide, the ascetic in his cave a deserter; those who act in the theater of lies I see as dark buffoons. Those who fail I find successful, and progress only backsliding. am I squint-eyed, Or just crazy? Friend, I'm crazy. Look at the withered tongues of shameless leaders, The dance of the whores At breaking the backbone on the people's rights. When the sparrow-headed newsprint spreads its black lies In a web of falsehood

W.B. Yeats photo

“When they have but looked upon their images--
Would none had ever loved but you and I!”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

The Ragged Wood http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1673/
In The Seven Woods (1904)
Context: p>O hurry where by water among the trees
The delicate-stepping stag and his lady sigh,
When they have but looked upon their images--
Would none had ever loved but you and I!Or have you heard that sliding silver-shoed
Pale silver-proud queen-woman of the sky,
When the sun looked out of his golden hood?--
O that none ever loved but you and I!O hurry to the ragged wood, for there
I will drive all those lovers out and cry—
O my share of the world, O yellow hair!
No one has ever loved but you and I.</p

Matka Tereza photo

“As for me, the silence and emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear. The tongue moves but does not speak.”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

Letter to Michael van der Peet (September 1979), quoted in "Mother Teresa Did Not Feel Christ's Presence for Last Half of Her Life, Letters Reveal", Fox News (24 August 2007) http://www.foxnews.com/story/2007/08/24/mother-teresa-did-not-feel-christ-presence-for-last-half-her-life-letters/
1970s
Context: Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear. The tongue moves but does not speak.

Joseph Stalin photo

“It is well known that ancient Rome looked upon the ancestors of the present-day Germans and French in the same way as the representatives of the "superior race" now look upon the Slav races. It is well known that ancient Rome treated them as an "inferior race," as "barbarians," destined to live in eternal subordination to the "superior race," to "great Rome", and, between ourselves be it said, ancient Rome had some grounds for this, which cannot be said of the representatives of the "superior race" of today.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Report to the Seventeenth Party Congress on the Work of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U. (B.) https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1934/01/26.htm (January 26, 1934)
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews
Context: Still others think that war should be organised by a "superior race," say, the German "race," against an "inferior race," primarily against the Slavs; that only such a war can provide a way out of the situation, for it is the mission of the "superior race" to render the "inferior race" fruitful and to rule over it. Let us assume that this queer theory, which is as far removed from science as the sky from the earth, let us assume that this queer theory is put into practice. What may be the result of that? It is well known that ancient Rome looked upon the ancestors of the present-day Germans and French in the same way as the representatives of the "superior race" now look upon the Slav races. It is well known that ancient Rome treated them as an "inferior race," as "barbarians," destined to live in eternal subordination to the "superior race," to "great Rome", and, between ourselves be it said, ancient Rome had some grounds for this, which cannot be said of the representatives of the "superior race" of today. (Thunderous applause.) But what was the upshot of this? The upshot was that the non-Romans, i. e., all the "barbarians," united against the common enemy and brought Rome down with a crash. The question arises: What guarantee is there that the claims of the representatives of the "superior race" of today will not lead to the same lamentable results? What guarantee is there that the fascist literary politicians in Berlin will be more fortunate than the old and experienced conquerors in Rome? Would it not be more correct to assume that the opposite will be the case?

Karl Popper photo

“If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories.”

The Poverty of Historicism (1957) Ch. 29 The Unity of Method
Context: If we are uncritical we shall always find what we want: we shall look for, and find, confirmations, and we shall look away from, and not see, whatever might be dangerous to our pet theories. In this way it is only too easy to obtain what appears to be overwhelming evidence in favor of a theory which, if approached critically, would have been refuted.

George Orwell photo

“Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"You and the Atom Bomb" http://orwell.ru/library/articles/ABomb/english/e_abomb, Tribune (19 October 1945). Reprinted in George Orwell: The Collected Essays, Journalism & Letters, Volume 4: In Front of Your Nose 1946–1950 (2000) by Sonia Orwell, Ian Angus, p. 9. <!-- http://books.google.com/books?id=zaxG_3ivhVAC&pg=PA9&dq=orwell+%22permanent+state+of+cold+war%22&sig=XIYruzSnIoMeE2TwqGRNoNA4IuE -->
First documented use of the phrase "cold war".
Context: Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery. We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity. James Burnham's theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications — that is, the kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of "cold war" with its neighbors.
Had the atomic bomb turned out to be something as cheap and easily manufactured as a bicycle or an alarm clock, it might well have plunged us back into barbarism, but it might, on the other hand, have meant the end of national sovereignty and of the highly-centralised police state. If, as seems to be the case, it is a rare and costly object as difficult to produce as a battleship, it is likelier to put an end to large-scale wars at the cost of prolonging indefinitely a "peace that is no peace."

Václav Havel photo

“Today's world, as we all know, is faced with multiple threats. From whichever angle I look at this menace, I always come to the conclusion that salvation can only come through a profound awakening of man to his own personal responsibility, which is at the same time a global responsibility.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

The Onassis Prize For Man and Mankind (1993)
Context: Today's world, as we all know, is faced with multiple threats. From whichever angle I look at this menace, I always come to the conclusion that salvation can only come through a profound awakening of man to his own personal responsibility, which is at the same time a global responsibility. Thus, the only way to save our world, as I see it, lies in a democracy that recalls its ancient Greek roots: democracy based on an integral human personality personally answering for the fate of the community.

Andrew Jackson photo

“As Americans, your country looks with confidence on her adopted children, for a valorous support, as a faithful return for the advantages enjoyed under her mild and equitable government.”

Andrew Jackson (1767–1845) American general and politician, 7th president of the United States

In New Orleans, Louisiana, 1814. As quoted in The Life of Andrew Jackson https://web.archive.org/web/20111029143820/http://home.nas.com/lopresti/ps7.htm (1967), by John Spencer Bassett, Archon Books. p. 156-157.
1810s
Context: As sons of freedom you are now called upon to defend your most inestimable blessing. As Americans, your country looks with confidence on her adopted children, for a valorous support, as a faithful return for the advantages enjoyed under her mild and equitable government.

José Mourinho photo
Jared Leto photo
Marina Abramović photo
Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk photo
Marlene Dietrich photo
Etty Hillesum photo
Ricky Gervais photo

“If your boss is getting you down, look at him through the prongs of a fork and imagine him in jail.”

Ricky Gervais (1961) English comedian, actor, director, producer, musician, writer, and former radio presenter
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn photo
G. K. Chesterton photo
Alfred Freddy Krupa photo
Chris Martin photo
Joseph Goebbels photo

“We look to Russia because Russia is our natural ally against the fiendish contamination and corruption from the west... Because we can see the commencement of our own national and socialist survival in an alliance with a truly national and socialist Russia.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

National Socialist Letters (Nationalsozialistische Briefe), “National Socialism or Bolshevism”, (November 15, 1925)
1920s

Benjamin Disraeli photo

“I look upon the Whigs as an anti-national party. … Believing that the policy of the party was such as must destroy the honour of the kingdom abroad and the happiness of the people at home, I considered it my duty to oppose the Whigs, to ensure their discomfiture, and, if possible, their destruction.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Speech in Taunton (28 April 1835), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804&ndash;1859 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 286
1830s

George Orwell photo
George Orwell photo
Ronald Reagan photo

“God made all his creations in different colors. It would be pretty boring if we all looked the same.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

As quoted in "Daughter of Ronald Reagan breaks silence on ‘monkeys’ remark" https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/daughter-of-ronald-reagan-breaks-silence-on-monkeys-remark (2 August 2019), by Zachary Halaschak, The Washington Examiner

Richard Wright photo
Ozzy Osbourne photo

“I tried out that Buckethead guy. I met with him and asked him to work with me but only if he got rid of the fucking bucket. So I came back a bit later and he's wearing this green fucking Martian's-hat thing. I said, 'Look, just be yourself!' He told me his name was Brian, so I said that's what I'd call him. He says, 'No one calls me Brian except my mother.' So I said, 'Pretend I'm your mum then!' I haven't even got out of the room and I'm already playing fucking mind games with the guy. What happens if one day he's gone and there's a note saying, 'I've been beamed up?”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

[Laughs] Don't get me wrong, he's a great player. He plays like a motherfucker!
Revolver interview; as quoted in "Ozzy Osbourne "Says Ex-GUNS N' ROSES Guitarist Buckethead Auditioned For His Solo Band" http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/ozzy-osbourne-says-ex-guns-n-roses-guitarist-buckethead-auditioned-for-his-solo-band/, Blabbermouth.net, January 5, 2005

Isabel II do Reino Unido photo

“Today it may seem hard that we cannot mark this special anniversary as we would wish. Instead we remember from our homes and our doorsteps. But our streets are not empty; they are filled with the love and the care that we have for each other. And when I look at our country today, and see what we are willing to do to protect and support one another, I say with pride that we are still a nation those brave soldiers, sailors and airmen would recognise and admire.”

Isabel II do Reino Unido (1926–2022) queen of the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and head of the Commonwealth of Nations

Address to the UK on the 75th anniversary of VE Day, which occurred during the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic, 08/05/2020 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-queen-ve-day-speech-read-full-a9506226.html.

“If you look for an identity you find inequality. If you look for similarities you separate one truth from another.”

Giannina Braschi (1953) Puerto Rican writer

Giannina Braschi, in United States of Banana, 2011

Alexis Karpouzos photo
Albert Camus photo

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”

Albert Camus (1913–1960) French author and journalist

Source: "Intuitions" (October 1932), published in Youthful Writings (1976)

Stephen Hawking photo
Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Benjamin Disraeli photo
Benjamin Disraeli photo
Eminem photo
Neale Donald Walsch photo
Franco Battiato photo

“You look at the hands, not at the face, if you want to stay out of trouble.”

Franco Battiato (1945) Italian singer-songwriter, composer, and filmmaker

Source: da Strani giorni

David Mitchell photo

“Sit down beat or two
Hold out your hands
Look”

Source: Atlas mraků

Markus Zusak photo

“Sometimes people are beautiful.
Not in looks.
Not in what they say.
Just in what they are.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Variant: Sometimes people are beautiful.
Not in looks.
Not in what they say.
Just in what they are.
Source: I Am the Messenger

Jane Austen photo
Joel Osteen photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
William Shakespeare photo
Julio Cortázar photo
Scott Westerfeld photo
William Gibson photo
Eleanor Roosevelt photo

“I could not at any age be content to take my place in a corner by the fireside and simply look on.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Variant: I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived.

Christine de Pizan photo

“[A] person whose head is bowed and whose eyes are heavy cannot look at the light.”

Christine de Pizan (1365–1430) Italian French late medieval author

Source: Ditié de Jehanne d'Arc

Jonathan Safran Foer photo
Anne Frank photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.”

Speech in the House of Commons, February 27, 1945 "Crimea Conference" http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1945/feb/27/crimea-conference#column_1294; in The Second World War, Volume VI: Triumph and Tragedy (1954), Chapter XXIII – Yalta: Finale.
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Neal Shusterman photo

“And when the abyss looks into you - and it will - may you look back unflinching.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: Challenger Deep

John Locke photo
Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo
Rainer Maria Rilke photo
Vladimir Nabokov photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Sadhguru photo
Henry David Thoreau photo

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”

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

Variant: It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.

Leo Tolstoy photo
Giorgos Seferis photo
Cassandra Clare photo
James Baldwin photo
Viktor E. Frankl photo
Dilgo Khyentse photo
Virginia Woolf photo
Ramana Maharshi photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Saul Bellow photo

“When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.”

Saul Bellow (1915–2005) Canadian-born American writer

Demander un conseil, c'est presque toujours chercher un complice. — Adélaïde-Édouard le Lièvre, marquis de La Grange et de Fourilles (1796–1876), Pensées (1872) http://books.google.com/books?id=_YcDAAAAMAAJ&pg=RA2-PA479&dq=%22Demander+un+conseil,+c'est+presque+toujours+chercher+un+complice%22&hl=en
Misattributed

Salvador Dalí photo
Fulton J. Sheen photo
Leonardo Da Vinci photo
Nora Roberts photo
Edmund Burke photo

“People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.”

Volume iii, p. 274
Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Dr. Seuss photo
Stephen King photo
Hayao Miyazaki photo
Madeline Miller photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Alice Munro photo