Quotes about sight (1227 quotes, page 13)

“We have to face the fact that we are the descendants of apelike ancestors. The truth, at first sight, is often ugly and repulsive to our personal feelings, but when it is the truth, its ultimate effects on us are always salutary. ...
... Man's brain does not stand as a thing apart; it is the culmination of an ascending series. There is no part of it and no function manifested by it that cannot be traced to humble beginnings lower in the animal scale. And what we postulate for man's brain we must in all justice apply to that of the ape, the dog, and all other beasts.”

Arthur Keith (1866–1955) anatomy, anthropology, geologist

[Chapter X, Living Philosophies, 149, 1931, Simon & Schuster]

Justice , Personality , Dogs , Animals

“Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll;
Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.”

Alexander Pope The Rape of the Lock

Canto V, line 33
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)

Soul , Beauty

“We must stop setting our sights by the light of each passing ship; instead we must set our course by the stars.”

George Marshall (1880–1959) US military leader, Army Chief of Staff

Many attribute this quote to Marshall, however, General Omar Bradley is the correct author. Statement by Bradley (31 May 1948), quoted in An Inconvenient Truth : The Planetary Emergency Of Global Warming And What We Can Do About It (2006) by Al Gore.
Misattributed

Light , Star , Relation ships

“The moral ideal would embrace the whole of life. In its sight nothing is petty or indifferent. It touches the veriest trifles and turns them into shining gold. We are royal by virtue of it, and like the kings in the fairy tale, we may never lay aside our crowns.
The moral order never is, but is ever becoming. It grows with our growth.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 4 : Moral Ideals
Life and Destiny (1913)

Indifference , Life

“In society, we do horrible things to one another because we don't see the person it affects. We don't see their face. We don't see them as people. Which was the whole reason the hood was built in the first place, to keep the victims of apartheid out of sight and out of mind. Because if white people ever saw black people as human, they would see that slavery is unconscionable. We live in a world where we don't see the ramifications of what we do to others, because we don't live with them. It would be a whole lot harder for an investment banker to rip off people with subprime mortgages if he actually had to live with the people he was ripping off. If we could see one another's pain and empathize with one another, it would never be worth it to us to commit the crimes in the first place.”

Trevor Noah book Born a Crime

page 222
Born a Crime

World , Personality , Pain , People

“Friendship at first sight, like love at first sight, is said to be the only truth.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Truth , Friendship , Love , Friendship

“The worth of man lies in his consciousness of the Absolute, and consequently in the integrality and depth of this consciousness; having lost sight of it by plunging himself into the world of phenomena viewed as such, man needs to be reminded of it by the celestial Message. This Message comes finally from "himself", not of course from his empirical "I" but from his immanent Selfhood, which is that of God and without which there would be no "I", whether human, angelic or other; the credibility of the Message results from the fact that it is what we are, both within ourselves and beyond ourselves. In the depths of transcendence is immanence, and in the depths of immanence, transcendence.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2013, From the Divine to the Human, World Wisdom, 127-128, 978-1-936597-32-1]
Miscellaneous, Revelation

God , World , Angels

“In reading authors, when you find
Bright passages that strike your mind,
And which perhaps you may have reason
To think on at another season,
Be not contented with the sight,
But take them down in black and white;
Such a respect is wisely shown
That makes another's sense one's own.”

John Byrom (1692–1763) Poet, inventor of a shorthand system

"A Hint to a young Person, for his better Improvement by Reading or Conversation"
Miscellaneous Poems (1773)

Reading , Season , Thinking , Sense

“When the lights go out
come and hunt me down,
keep me in your line of sight
Be my predator, I'll give in to ya
Take a taste, do what you like
Show me how to love ya
Show me how to get you high
Show me how to love ya
I just wanna rock you right”

Example (musician) (1982) English rapper and singer

"Show me how to Love" (song), feat. Hayla
("Show me how to Love" on YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLTcHyuKAb0
Mixtapes, Bangers & Ballads (2018)

Light , Love

“Stoicism will teach you to smile at pain and frown at the sight of too much pleasure.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Pleasure , Pain , Smile

“I don't fear being outspoken. The only thing I fear is losing my sense of integrity or losing sight of the values on which I guide my life. So I don't think it's particularly brave or unusual for me to speak out.”

Constance Wu (1982) American actress

As quoted in "Constance Wu Opens Up About Activism and Speaking Up For What’s Right" in Teen Vogue (27 February 2017) https://www.teenvogue.com/story/constance-wu-activism-speaking-up-whats-right-big-hundred-mirys-list

Life , Fear , Thinking , Sense

“With the eye in a natural state sight follows necessarily ... In the same way the life of blessedness is as a familiar second nature to those who have kept clear the senses of the soul.”

Gregory of Nyssa (335–395) bishop of Nyssa

On Infants' Early Deaths

Soul , Nature , Way , Sense

“The most beautiful gift of nature is a pleasant morning whenever I see this beautiful sight of nature I fall in love with nature. A pleasant morning brings with it different colors of nature. Just like the green trees and plants that make my eyes feel relaxed, the blue color of the sky signifies ambition, the yellow color of the sun lights the lamp of hope in me, the red and pink colors of flowers fill me with love, these I am surprised to see all the colours. The scent of the wet soil in the morning along with the cool breeze fills me with freshness. When i hear the sweet chirping of birds, my heart starts humming.”

Shabdon Ka Jahan

Flowers , Nature , Bird , Love

“The stars, like dust, encircle me
In living mists of light;
And all of space I seem to see
In one vast burst of sight.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Source: Empire novels (1950–1952), The Stars, Like Dust (1951), Chapter 3 “Chance and the Wrist Watch” (p. 30)

Light , Star

“It’s big, it’s broad…
It’s broad, it’s bright…
It fills the sky of All Hallow’s Night…
The strangest sight you’ve ever seen.
The Monster Tree on Halloween.”

Ray Bradbury book The Halloween Tree

Source: The Halloween Tree (1972), Chapter 5 (pp. 28-29)

Tree , Night

“Notwithstanding my grandmother's long and faithful service to her owners, not one of her children escaped the auction block. These God-breathing machines are no more, in the sight of their masters, than the cotton they plant, or the horses they tend.”

Harriet Jacobs book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Source: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself (1861), p. 16

God , Children , Faith , Horse

“Because of the nature of my work and because I was suffering from a grave ailment, my doctors advised me to take part in cultural activities to improve the balance of my sense of hearing and sense of sight. Thus, I came into contact with some literature and art.”

Jiang Qing (1914–1991) Chinese political figure and wife of Mao Zedong

Source: Speech at the Reception for the Representatives of the Beijing Workers Propaganda Team and the People's Liberation Army Propaganda Team (14 September 1968)

Suffering , Literature , Nature , Art

“Let us take off our life’s complex covering of rapacity and greed, since it is ugly in God’s sight and condemned, and let us put on, as the elect of God, compassion, humility, modesty and meekness.”

Gregory Palamas (1296–1359) Monk and archbishop

Source: Predestination? On Why God Made Those Who Would Perish

Life , God

“We have been so persistently taught that prayer consists in asking God for some human need that we have lost sight of our spiritual identity and have become a race of praying beggars.”

Charles Fillmore (1854–1948) American mystic

Source: Teach Us to Pray with Cora Fillmore (1941)

God

“I used to climb mountains in snow and ice, hanging onto the sides of great rocks. I was describing one of my adventures to an older friend once, and when I had finished he asked me, "Why do you want to kill yourself?" I protested. I told him that the rewards I wanted were of sight, of pleasure, of the thrill of pitting my body and my skills against nature. My friend replied, "When you are as old as I am you will see that you are trying to kill yourself."”

Heinz R. Pagels (1939–1988) American physicist

Source: The Cosmic Code (1982), p. 312

Mountain , Pleasure , Nature

“[…] there is no love,
That merits such high christening, but is built
Firm upon some foundation out of sight;
God, country, virtue, something not ourself,
To which ourself is nothing, save the proof
Of its invisible sureness.”

Alfred Austin (1835–1913) British writer and poet

Source: Candida to Valori in Act IV, sc. iv; p. 262, Savonarola (1881)

God , Love , Country

“Who was it that came to see you
when there was no one else in sight?
And who was it that stayed over an hour
(and not as I'd expected, overnight)?
It was me, and I'll tell you why:
Oh, I did it because of my
pure unabashed devotion to loving
(pure unabashed devotion to loving)
you, you, you, you.
Who was it that caught you falling?”

Gilbert O'Sullivan (1946) Irish singer-songwriter

"Who Was It?" (song)
(+ Cover version by Davy Jones on YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogzt6NntvrE
Song lyrics
Source: Gilbert O'Sullivan, "Who Was It?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FDzXcD1mDg (song on YouTube)

Love

“Now, […] the world is beginning to look like what it is—overcrowded, dirty, noisy, smelly, and rapidly running out of resources. We're nearing the end of the rainbow, with not a crock of gold in sight.”

Keith Waterhouse (1929–2009) British writer

The Daily Mirror, August 17, 1970, cited from Mondays, Thursdays (London: Michael Joseph, 1976), p. 168-169

World

“Nothing is more ingenious, more obstinate, nastier—indeed, in a sense, more clear sighted, than mediocrity harrying every form of superiority that offends it.”

Henri de Lubac (1896–1991) Jesuit theologian and cardinal

Source: Paradoxes of Faith (1987), Ch. X. "Man", p. 136

Sense