Quotes About Insight

She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on.

Her pleasant brown eyes resembled Ralph's, save in expression, for whereas he seemed to look straightly and keenly at one object, she appeared to be in the habit of considering everything from many different points of view.

But who, save the nerve-worn and sleepless, or thinkers standing with hands to the eyes on some crag above the multitude, see things thus in skeleton outline, bare of flesh?

Now, the truth is that when one has been in a state of mind (as nurses call it)— and the tears still stood in Orlando's eyes — the thing one is looking at becomes, not itself, but another thing, which is bigger and much more important and yet remains the same thing.

There was a spectator in me who, even while I squirmed and obeyed, remained observant, note taking for some future revision.

Indeed he seemed to her sometimes made differently from other people, born blind, deaf and dumb to the ordinary things, but to the extraordinary things, with an eye like an eagle's. His understanding often astonished her. But did he notice the flowers? No. Did he notice the view? No.

how to see the truth is our great chance in this world.

Entonces cómo va a saber una esto o aquello de los demás, se había preguntado, si la gente se aísla de un modo tan hermético?

He's read nothing, thought nothing, felt nothing, he could hear her saying in that empathic voice which carried so much farther than she knew.

Indeed he seemed to her sometimes made differently from other people, born blind, deaf, and dumb, to the ordinary things, but to the extraordinary things, with an eye like an eagle's. His understanding often astonished her. But did he notice the flowers? No. Did he notice the view? No. Did he even notice his own daughter's beauty, or whether there was pudding on his plate or roast beef? He would sit at table with them like a person in a dream.

The weekly creak and screech of brains rinsed in cold water and wrung dry

One must strain off what was personal and accidental in all these impressions and so reach the pure fluid, the essential oil of truth.

Es curioso advertir que, en toda crisis, siempre aparece una frase incongruente que insiste en acudir en nuestro auxilio.

How, then, she had asked herself, did one know one thing or another thing about people, sealed as they were? Only like a bee, drawn by some sweetness or sharpness in the air intangible to touch or taste, one haunted the dome-shaped hive, ranged the wastes of the air over the countries of the world alone, and then haunted the hives with their murmurs and their stirrings; the hives which were people.

Knowledge comes through suffering.

I knew my cases and my genders; I could know everything in the world if I wished.

With twice his wits, she had to see things through his eyes—one of the tragedies of married life.

Ma Peter - non importa quanto fosse bella la giornata, e gli alberi e l'erba, e la fanciulla vestita di rosa - Peter non vedeva mai nulla. Se lei glielo chiedeva, si metteva gli occhiali; guardava. Ma era lo stato del mondo che gli interessava: Wagner, la poesia di Pope, il carattere della gente, e i difetti dell'anima di lei.

For the reading of these books seems to perform a curious couching operation on the senses; one sees more intensely afterwards; the world seems bared of its covering and given an intenser life.

What happened to the writer is not what matters; what matters is the large sense that the writer is able to make of what happened.

Penetrating the familiar is by no means a given. On the contrary, it is hard work.

A wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle...

The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book.

I know more than I can express in words, and the little I can express would not have been expressed, had I not known more.