Quotes About Perception

Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism; they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings.

Look, the trees are; the houses we live in still stand. We alone go past them like an exchange of vapors. And things conspire to tell us nothing, half in shame, perhaps, half in unspoken hope.

Nothing can touch a work of art less than critical words; all that comes of that are more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Things are not as easy to understand and say as we might prefer to believe; most events are inexpressible, happening in a space where no word has ever set foot, and most inexpressible of all are works of art, mysterious existences, whose life continues as ours passes away.

Aber das Wehende höre, die ununterbrochene Nachricht, die aus Stille sich bildet.

So much has been written (both well and poorly) about things that the things themselves no longer hold an opinion but appear only to mark the imaginary point of intersection for certain clever theories. Whoever wants to say anything about them speaks in reality only about the views of his predecessors and lapses into a semipolemical spirit that stands in exact opposition to the naïve productive spirit with which each object wants to be grasped and understood.

A ella sólo nosotros la vemos; el animal libre tiene siempre su ocaso detrás de si y ante sí tiene a Dios, y cuando anda, anda en la eternidad, como andan las fuentes. Nosotros nunca tenemos, ni siquiera un solo día, el espacio puro ante nosotros, al que las flores se abren infinitamente.

But the living are wrong in the sharp distinctions they make. Angels, it seems, don't always know if they're moving among the living or the dead.

Yo creo que casi todas nuestras tristezas son momentos de tensión que experimentamos como si se tratara de una parálisis. Porque ya no percibimos el vivir de nuestros sentidos enajenados, y nos encontramos solos con lo extraño que ha penetrado en nosotros. Porque se nos arrebata por un instante todo cuanto nos es familiar, habitual. Y porque nos hallamos en medio de una transición, en la cual no podemos detenernos.

Aprendo a ver. No sé por qué, todo penetra en mí más profundamente, y no permanece donde, hasta ahora, todo terminaba siempre. Tengo un interior que ignoraba. Así es desde ahora. No sé lo que pasa.

If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches

Man's hope can paint a purple picture, can transform a soaring vulture into a noble eagle or moaning dove.

But we are all human, I thought, wondering what I meant.

Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination—indeed, everything and anything except me.

It was unbelievable, but perhaps only the unbelievable could be believed. Perhaps the truth was always a lie.

But what a feeling can come over a man just from seeing the things he believes in and hopes for symbolized in the concrete form of a man. In something that gives a focus to all the other things he knows to be real. Something that makes unseen things manifest and allows him to come to his hopes and dreams through his outer eye and through the touch and feel of his natural hand.

And I love light. Perhaps you'll think it strange that an invisible man should need light, desire light, love light. But maybe it is exactly because I am invisible. Light confirms my reality, gives birth to my form.

You're a Black educated fool, son. These white folk have newspapers, magazines, radios, spokesmen to get their ideas across. If they want to tell the world a lie, they can tell it so well that it becomes the truth; and if I tell them you're lying, they'll tell the world even if you prove you're telling the truth. Because it's the kind of lie they want to hear.

Yes, they think we're dumb. They call us the common people. But I've been sitting here listening and looking and trying to understand what's so common about us. I think they're guilty of a gross mis-statement of fact-we are the uncommon people-

I felt that even when they were polite they hardly saw me, that they would have begged the pardon of Jack the Bear, never glancing his way if the bear happened to be walking along minding his business. It was confusing. I did not know if it was desirable or undesirable...

Who am I? But it was like trying to identify one particular cell that coursed through the torpid veins of my body. Maybe I was just this blackness and bewilderment and pain, but that seemed less like a suitable answer than something I'd read somewhere.

I'd been so fascinated by the notion, that I'd forgotten to measure what it was bringing forth. I'd been asleep, dreaming.

These white folk have newspapers, magazines, radios, spokesmen to get their ideas across. If they want to tell the world a lie, they can tell it so well that it becomes the truth; and if I tell them that you're lying, they'll tell the world even if you prove you're telling the truth. Because it's the kind of lie they want to hear …

I am standing puzzled, unable to decide whether the veil is really being lifted, or lowered more firmly in place; whether I am witnessing a revelation or a more efficient blinding.

For now I had begun to believe, despite all the talk of science around me, that there was a magic in spoken words.