Quotes about look
page 8

“Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.”

John Berger (1926–2017) British painter, writer and art critic

“In olden days a glimpse of stocking
Was looked on as something shocking
But now, Heaven knows,
Anything goes.”

Cole Porter (1891–1964) American composer and songwriter

"Anything Goes"; there are also variants on this line which read "But now, God knows,
Anything goes", but the most common renditions are done with "Heaven knows"
Anything Goes (1934)

“Poetry is a way of looking at the world for the first time.”

W.S. Merwin (1927–2019) American poet

World, Way, Time

“God loves you even on your blackest days, and He will always, be there to guide you home. All you have to do is look for the light of His love.”

Lauren Myracle book Shine

Source: Shine

Love, God, Home, Light

“Confusion is a good state to be in. It means you are looking, constantly looking. People ask me, "Why do you confuse us like this?" I want you to understand, if you can be confused by anybody, it means you do not know. If you are fanatical, you cannot be confused. Or if you are realized, you cannot be confused. Between ignorance and enlightenment is a very thin line. But they are worlds apart.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Of Mystics & Mistakes

People, World, Understanding

“As far as I can tell, the only thing worth looking at in most museums of art is all the schoolgirls on day trips with the art department.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Existencilism (2002)

Art

“Oh, yesterdays are over my shoulder,
So I can't look back for too long.
There's just too much to see waiting in front of me,
and I know that I just can't go wrong.”

Jimmy Buffett (1946) American singer–songwriter and businessman

Waiting

“Look, that's why there's rules, understand? So that you think before you break 'em.”

Terry Pratchett book Thief of Time

Source: Thief of Time

Understanding, Thinking

“You're so good looking I can barely keep my eyes on the meter.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Source: Manhattan

“Frank Sinatra stopped his car. The light was red. Pedestrians passed quickly across his windshield but, as usual, one did not. It was a girl in her twenties. She remained at the curb staring at him. Through the corner of his left eye he could see her, and he knew, because it happens almost every day, that she was thinking, It looks like him, but is it? Just before the light turned green, Sinatra turned toward her, looked directly into her eyes waiting for the reaction he knew would come. It came and he smiled. She smiled and he was gone.”

Gay Talese (1932) American writer

"Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" (Esquire, April 1966)

Smile, Cars, Girl, Thinking

“This is a photograph of me as I wish I looked all the time. Then I might have a chance of getting in Hollywood.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

Chance, Time

“The thing is, I mean, there’s times when you look at the universe and you think, “What about me?” and you can just hear the universe replying, “Well, what about you?”

Terry Pratchett book Thief of Time

Source: Thief of Time

Thinking, Universe, Time

“For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.”

Sam Levenson (1911–1980) American journalist

Deep, Beauty, Happy, Friendship

“Keep your eyes open, Fireheart. Keep your ears pricked. Keep looking behind you. Because one day I'll find you, and then you'll be crowfood.”

Erin Hunter

Source: Forest of Secrets

“Look, he said to his imagination, if this is how you're going to behave, I shan't bring you again.”

Terry Pratchett book Going Postal

Source: Going Postal

Imagination

“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Man and the Gospel (1865) by Thomas Guthrie "and you may know how little God thinks of money by observing on what bad and contemptible characters he often bestows it."
“We may see the small Value God has for Riches, by the People he gives them to.” -- Alexander Pope (1727).
Misattributed
Variant: If you want to know what the Lord God thinks of money, just look at those to whom he gives it.

Money, God, People, Thinking

“If someone falls down, pick them back up. Just because there's not a frickin camera in your face doesn't mean you don't have to look out for each other.”

Green Day

“I sit, I read, I listen to music, I go or a walk, I ride to Prospect Park and sit under the Willow Tree, I remember, I forget, I look at pictures, I do, I do, I do… or I don't, but its peaceful… only me… no worries.”

Hubert Selby Jr. (1928–2004) American writer

Peace, Music, Tree, Reading

“I don’t like the way he looks at you.”

My stomach lurched. “What do you mean? How does he look at me?”

“Like you’re not a student and he’s not a teacher.”

P. C. Cast book Chosen

Source: Chosen

Way, Teachers

“Magrat had used a lot of powder to make her face pale and interesting. It combined with the lavishly applied mascara to give the guard the impression that he was looking at two flies that had crashed into a sugar bowl.”

Terry Pratchett book Wyrd Sisters

Source: Wyrd Sisters

“I don’t know what I’m looking for.”
“What not?”
“Because … because … I think it might be because if I knew I wouldn’t be able to look for them.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Thinking

“Neither at things, nor at people should one look. Only in mirrors should one look, for mirrors do but show us masks.”

Oscar Wilde Salome

Source: Salomé

People

“The problem is that most people spend their lives looking but not truly seeing, or, as Sherlock Holmes, the meticulous English detective, declared to his partner, Dr. Watson, “You see, but you do not observe.”

Joe Navarro (1953) Author, professional speaker, ex-FBI agent and supervisor

Source: What Every Body is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Speed-Reading People

People, Problem

“The more you look into and understand yourself, the less judgmental you become towards others.”

Tariq Ramadan (1962) Swiss muslim scholar

Understanding

“People tell their children there are no monsters in the world. They tell them that because they believe it, or they want the child to feel safe. But there are monsters, Luke, all the more frightening because they look like people.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Honest Illusions

Children, People, World, Feeling

“Music is only love looking for words.”

Lawrence Durrell (1912–1990) British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer

Love, Music

“It's a fool that looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart.”

Joel Coen (1954) American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor

Source: O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Fools, Heart

“The figures looked more or less human. And they were engaged in religion. You could tell by the knives (it's not murder if you do it for a god).”

Terry Pratchett book Small Gods

Source: Small Gods

God, Religion

“Everywhere I look, I see something holy.”

Terry Pratchett book Carpe Jugulum

Source: Carpe Jugulum

“What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. Sure he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason to fust in us unused.”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet

God, Sleep, Time

“Will looked horrified. "What kind of monster could possibly hate chocolate?”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Hate

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that enables you to laugh at life's realities.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Life, Way, Reality

“when a language dies, a way of understanding the world dies with it, a way of looking at the world.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

World, Way, Understanding

“Success is determined not by whether or not you face obstacles, but by your reaction to them. And if you look at these obstacles as a containing fence, they become your excuse for failure. If you look at them as a hurdle, each one strengthens you for the next.”

Ben Carson book Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story

Source: Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story

Failure, Success

“Okay, well, let's do a little reenactment. I'm the gay-looking DiCaprio and you're Rose. You have to keep your eyes open and on my face, or you'll have to let me go and I'll turn into a huge gay Popsicle.”

P. C. Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

“He's waiting for yu, young queen.'

Shocked, I stared at Seoras. 'Heath?'

The Warrior's look was wise and understanding - his voice gentle. 'Aye, yur Heath probably does await you somewhere in the future, but it is of your Guardian I speak.”

P. C. Cast book Awakened

Source: Awakened

Understanding, Waiting, Future

“Love is like a precious plant. You can't just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it's going to get on by itself. You've got to keep on watering it. You've got to really look after it and nurture it.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Relationship, Love, Thinking, Water

“He leaned back a little, not taking his arm from around me, but looking into my eyes.

“You’re changing, Zoey. And I’m not sure what you’re changing into.”

P. C. Cast book Chosen

Source: Chosen

Change

“While you're working, you don't have to look life in the eye.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Life

“I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Recollection by Gilbert J. Greene, quoted in The Speaking Oak (1902) by Ferdinand C. Iglehart and Latest Light on Abraham Lincoln (1917) by Ervin S. Chapman
Posthumous attributions

God

“Do you know what happens when you always look before you leap?"

She reached out and touched his hand before hurrying toward the door.

"You hardly ever make the jump.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Key of Light

“The deeper we look into nature, the more we recognize that it is full of life, and the more profoundly we know that all life is a secret and that we are united with all life that is in nature. Man can no longer live for himself alone. We realize that all life is valuable, and that we are united to all this life. From this knowledge comes our spiritual relationship to the universe.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 248

Life, Secret, Nature

“To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“Look closely. The beautiful may be small.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Beauty

“He is really not so ugly after all, provided, of course, that one shuts one's eyes, and does not look at him.”

Oscar Wilde book A House of Pomegranates

"The Birthday of the Infanta", The House of Pomegranates http://emotionalliteracyeducation.com/classic_books_online/hpomg10.htm (1892) <br class="br">Source: A House of Pomegranates

“Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things.”

Terry Pratchett book Wyrd Sisters

Source: Wyrd Sisters

“Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.”

Virginia Woolf book A Room of One's Own

Source: A Room of One's Own (1929), Ch. 2, p. 35

Women, Nature

“I nodded, looking at Rachel with respect. "You hit the Lord of the Titans in the eye with a blue plastic hairbrush.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

“once you have tasted the taste of sky, you will forever look up”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Source: Leonardo on Painting: An Anthology of Writings by Leonardo Da Vinci with a Selection of Documents Relating to His Career

“Just look down the road and tell me if you can see either of them."
I see nobody on the road." said Alice.
I only wishhad such eyes,"the King remarked in a fretful tone. "To be able to see Nobody! And at such a distance too!”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

“My darling," she said at last, are you sure you don't mind being a mouse for the rest of your life?"
"I don't mind at all" I said.
It doesn't matter who you are or what you look like as long as somebody loves you.”

Roald Dahl book The Witches

Source: The Witches

Love, Life

“The longest and most destructive party ever held is now into its fourth generation and still no one shows any signs of leaving. Somebody did once look at his watch, but that was eleven years ago now, and there has been no follow up.”

Douglas Adams Life, the Universe and Everything

Source: Life, the Universe and Everything

“Whatever we look at, and however we look at it, we see only through our own eyes.”

C.G. Jung book Modern Man in Search of a Soul

Source: Modern Man in Search of a Soul

“Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Bird by Bird

“If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not…”

William Shakespeare Macbeth

Source: Macbeth

Time

“"Do I look like someone who has something to do here on Earth?" - That's what I'd like to answer the busybodies who inquire into my activities.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

“There was this about vampires : they could never look scruffy. Instead, they were… what was the word… deshabille. It meant untidy, but with bags and bags of style.”

Terry Pratchett book Monstrous Regiment

Source: Monstrous Regiment

“I don't like the looks of it,' said the King: 'however, it may kis my hand, if it likes.'
'I'd rather not,' the Cat remarked.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Source: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

Cats

“Martin, at my age, eroticism is reduced to enjoying caramel custard and looking at widows' necks.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

Age

“I would tell you that you looked really hot today when I saw you naked, but that probably wouldn't be appropriate, being as we're in bed together but not doing anything."
Stark - Hunted”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

“Quick, someone's coming! Look real!”

Terry Pratchett book The Wee Free Men

Source: The Wee Free Men

“To my thinking, a great librarian must have a clear head, a strong hand, and, above all, a great heart. And when I look into the future, I am inclined to think that most of the men who achieve this greatness will be women.”

Melvil Dewey (1851–1931) American librarian and educator

Women, Men, Thinking, Strong

“He looked at her the way all women want to be looked at by a man.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

love, Women, Way

“Oh, for crap's sake, I can barely look at it," Aphrodite said, turning her head from the archway and averting her eyes. "And I usually love sparkly things.”

P. C. Cast book Burned

Source: Burned

Love

“Never before had she seen such creatures, though they looked much live very large, very shaggy white goats. Thin black horns punctuated the top of their long faces.

You look like a collection of grandfathers, she thought, amused.”

Tamora Pierce book Daja's Book

Source: Daja's Book

“The life of faith is lived one day at a time, and it has to be lived - not always looked forward to as though the "real" living were around the next corner. It is today for which we are responsible. God still owns tomorrow.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: Let Me be a Woman

Life, God, Faith, Time

“An Assassin, a real Assassin, had to look like one - black clothes, hood, boots, and all. If they could wear any clothes, any disguise, then what could anyone do but spend all day in a small room with a loaded crossbow pointed at the door?”

Terry Pratchett book Night Watch

Source: Night Watch

Clothes

“Your face, my thane, is as a book where men
May read strange matters. To beguile the time,
Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye,
Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,
But be the serpent under't.”

William Shakespeare Macbeth

Source: Macbeth

Men, Books, Flowers, Time

“When in the end, the day came on which I was going away, I learned the strange learning that things can happen which we ourselves cannot possibly imagine, either beforehand, or at the time when they are taking place, or afterwards when we look back on them.”

Karen Blixen (1885–1962) Danish writer

Source: Out of Africa / Shadows on the Grass

Imagination, Learning, Time

“The holy grail is to spend less time making the picture than it takes people to look at it.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

People, Time

“You don't look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away.”

Margaret Atwood book Cat's Eye

Source: Cat's Eye

Water, Time

“Nobody looks good in their darkest hours. But it's those hours that make us what we are.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Faefever

“have you ever seen a genius out there looking for a job? it's the saddest thing in the world. no one will hire him. there is only one place where he is always welcome- at the bottom.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

World

“Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“Alas, that love, so gentle in his view,
Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof!

*It’s sad. Love looks like a nice thing, but it’s actually very rough when you experience it.”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Source: Romeo and Juliet

Love, Sadness

“Love is not love
Which alters when alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
Oh, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark,
that looks on tempests and is never shaken.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Source: The Complete Sonnets and Poems

Love

“Don't you get tired of seeing so many "non-conformists" with the same non-conformist look?”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

Source: Ever Wonder Why? and Other Controversial Essays

“Fairy Song
Shed no tear! oh, shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Weep no more! oh, weep no more!
Young buds sleep in the root’s white core.
Dry your eyes! oh, dry your eyes!
For I was taught in Paradise
To ease my breast of melodies,—
Shed no tear.

Overhead! look overhead!
‘Mong the blossoms white and red—
Look up, look up! I flutter now
On this fresh pomegranate bough.
See me! ’tis this silvery bill
Ever cures the good man’s ill.
Shed no tear! oh, shed no tear!
The flower will bloom another year.
Adieu, adieu—I fly—adieu!
I vanish in the heaven’s blue,—
Adieu, adieu!”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Flowers, Tear, Sleep, Flying

“you find magic wherever you look. sit back and relax. all you need is a book”

Dr. Seuss book The Cat in the Hat

Variant: You can find magic
wherever you look.
Sit back and relax,
all you need is a book.
Source: The Cat in the Hat

Books

“Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?”

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

Relationship

“Do you really believe that the moon isn’t there when nobody looks?”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“Science can teach us, and I think our hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supporters, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make the world a fit place to live.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

"Fear, the Foundation of Religion"
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
Source: Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
Context: Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing – fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by the help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts. Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. Science can teach us, and I think our own hears can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it.

World, Support, Thinking, Effort

“I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn't flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

World, Water

“We are always looking for the book it is necessary to read next.”

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

Books, Reading

“We're so special, when you look in the dictionary under short bus, there's a group picture of us,'' Stevie Rae said, sounding weak but definately alive.”

Kristin Cast book Untamed

Source: Untamed

“Nanny Ogg looked under her bed in case there was a man there. Well, you never knew your luck.”

Terry Pratchett book Lords and Ladies

Source: Lords and Ladies

“Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Journal entry (13 October 1914), also in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (§ 5.47)
1910s, Notebooks 1914-1916

“Never let yourself be diverted, either by what you wish to believe, or what you think could have beneficent social effects if it were believed; but look only and solely at what are the facts.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Response to the question "Suppose Lord Russell, this film were to be looked at by our descendants, like a dead sea scroll in a thousand years time. What would you think it's worth telling that generation about the life you've lived and the lessons you've learned from it?" in a BBC interview on "Face to Face" (1959) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3aPkzHpT8M <br class="br">1950s <br class="br">Context: When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only: What are the facts, and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted, either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed; but look only and solely at what are the facts. <br class="br">Context: I should like to say two things. One intellectual and one moral. The intellectual thing I should want to say to them is this: "When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only: What are the facts, and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted, either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed; but look only and solely at what are the facts." That is the intellectual thing that I should wish to say. The moral thing I should wish to say to them is very simple; I should say: "Love is wise – Hatred is foolish." In this world, which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other. We have to learn to put up with the fact, that some people say things we don't like. We can only live together in that way. But if we are to live together, and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance which is absolutely vital, to the continuation of human life on this planet.

Thinking