Quotes About Perception

Outside, among your fellows, among strangers, you must perceive appearances, a hundred things you cannot do; but inside, the terrible freedom!

The ruin or blank, that we see when we look at nature is in our own eye...Love is as much its demand, as perception. Indeed neither can be perfect without the other.

When the eyes say one thing, and the tongue another, a practical man relies on the language of the first.

The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population.

The learned and the studious of thought have no monopoly of wisdom. Their violence of direction in some degree disqualifies them to think truly. We owe many valuable observations to people who are not very acute or profound, and who say the thing without effort which we want and have long been hunting in vain.

Foolish people ask you, when you speak what they do not wish to hear, How do you know it is the truth, and not an error of your own? We know the truth when we see it, from opinion, as we know when we are awake that we are awake.

Reality is a sliding door.

I cannot marry the facts of William Shakespeare to his verse: Other men had led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought, but this man is in wide contrast.

We must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light.

He who knows that power is inborn, that he is weak because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works miracles; just as a man who stands on his feet is stronger than a man who stands on his head.

Every thing looks permanent until its secret is known.

Some men's words I remember so well that I must often use them to express my thought. Yes, because I perceive that we have heard the same truth, but they have heard it better.

Life will show you masks that are worth all your carnivals

There may be two or three or four steps, according to the genius of each, but for every seeing soul there are two absorbing facts, --I and the abyss.

We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are shining parts, is the soul.

There is no one who does not exaggerate. In conversation, men are encumbered with personality, and talk to much.

Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations.

Virtues are in the popular estimate rather the exception than the rule.

O, believe, as thou livest, that every sound that is spoken over the round world, which thou oughtest to hear, will vibrate on thine ear!

Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.

How cunningly nature hides every wrinkle of her inconceivable antiquity under roses and violets and monring dew

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood; and if there is any truth in him, if he rests at last on the divine soul, I see not how it can be otherwise. The last chamber, the last closet, he must feel, was never opened; there is always a residuum unknown, unanalyzable. That is, every man believes that he has a greater possibility.

The first and last lesson of religion is, 'The things that are seen are temporal; the things that are not seen are eternal.' It puts an affront upon nature.

We are born believing. A man bears belief, as a tree bears apples.