Quotes About Perception

Words are symbols representing things and ideas known to us; and these symbols do not and cannot convey the true nature of even ordinary things. Language is considered deceptive and misleading in the matter of understanding of the Truth.

Because Nirvana is thus expressed in negative terms, there are many who have got a wrong notion that it is negative, and expresses self-annihilation. Nirvana is definitely no annihilation of self, because there is no self to annihilate. If at all, it is the annihilation of the illusion, of the false idea of self.

Words are symbols representing things and ideas known to us; and these symbols do not and cannot convey the true nature of even ordinary things.

It is the vague feeling 'I AM' that creates the idea of self which has no corresponding reality, and to see this truth is to realize Nirvana[.]

[Being a celebrity] doesn't even seem to keep the fleas off our dogs - and if being a celebrity won't give me an advantage over a couple of fleas, then I guess there can't be much in being a celebrity after all.

Those things most listened for, certainly those are the things least said.

I say to mankind, Be not curious about God. For I, who am curious about each, am not curious about God - I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.

There was a child went forth every day,And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became.

The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on the walk in the street and the passage over the river.

What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.

I lie and am lied to, but the result of my lie is mental leaps, memory, knowledge.

You and I are not what we eat; we are what we think.

The being without an opinion is so painful to human nature that most people will leap to a hasty opinion rather than undergo it.

Public opinion... requires us to think other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.

We see but one aspect of our neighbor, as we see but one side of the moon; in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us. We all come down to dinner, but each has a room to himself.

A people never hears censure of itself.

I change over time and my perception of the poem also changes, hence endless revision. I sometimes worry that I spend more time revising than writing new poems.

No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.

Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars [translated from Trauerspiel, 1928].

Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away.

The world does not need the church to talk about what is already possible. The work of the church is to battle the world's definition of what is believable and unbelievable.

Jesus astonishes his contemporaries by his capacity to see and act beyond conventional assumptions.

paraphrasing 1 Cor. 1:25) that the fictions of God are truer than the facts of men.13

The poets speak only poetry, not program, not policy, not even advocacy, only poetry. But the poetry exists in order to make available what the ideologues are unable to see and what the policy makers are unable to grasp.