Quotes About Perception

The ugliness is what makes the beautiful things beautiful.

It was the brightest entry into darkness.

How do you know me? she says. He looks at her through his narrow eyes. I was, he says. You were what? she asks. I was, he says again. And now I'm not.

Vale, entonces un recuerdo. ¿Tiene que ser feliz? —No. Prefiero que sea verdadero a que sea feliz.

Maybe Helmund is an angel after all. Maybe that's who he's been all along.

Not everyone believes that I'm a fairy princess, but the sparkle I feel inside tells me that it's true.

Dancers can look at a mirror, a writer can look at a page, and a painter can look at a canvas and see their work reflected back at them. But singers can only hear and feel what they are doing. After all the training, technique, use of breath, and placement of sound, it boils down to an emotional response to music and lyrics---and the way they touch one's heart and soul

I know what you think of me, Miles. I know what you--have thought of me. But I have a heart. I do have a heart. I just cannot afford to use it. Don't you see? Why can't you see this? Whereas you--may play at all of this as much as you like. There will always be someone for you. And that is the difference. I cannot afford to use my heart. And you--you choose not to use yours.' - Cynthia Brightley to Miles Redmond

Do you think Kinkade is Welland-Dowd? she wondered Chase burst into laughter so booming that every head on the street rotated, startled. Oh,God. She'd just understood when she'd said it aloud. Welland-Dowd. Well-endowed.

I took a fall," he confirmed evenly. After a hesitation doubtless only Phoebe noticed. And Phoebe didn't know whether it was the sort of fall Lucifer took, or the sort poets wrote about when love struck, or even if it was an innuendo at all, because she suspected everything was destined to sound like an innuendo from now on.

Fear did rather play havoc with one's self of time.

One could tolerate an acid tongue for a time when the owner of it was so very pretty.

Now, here's a philosophical dilemma for a vicar … is it a lie if you don't know you're lying? Is it a lie if you're lying to yourself?" "Is it a sin if I tell my cousin to bugger off?

How had she ever thought his blue eyes placid as a lake? But there was untold power in any water: to buoy, to drown, to toss, to carry one to the safety of shore.

Plain girls who were also clever were a ha'pence a dozen.

Perhaps that's its strength. The flexibility. The fragility. Appearances…" He paused. "…are often deceiving.

The one thing she'd been able to count on her entire life was her cleverness. She was so often right. It was humbling and disorienting to realize that she in truth knew nothing at all. One only ever saw a fraction of someone, whatever it was they chose to show you, and extrapolated a whole person from that. And saw them through a prism of one's own prejudices.

Do the girls emerge quite ruined for marriage after you stuff them full of knowledge? I should imagine most of our girls emerge less tolerant of fools, if that's what you mean. - Dryden and Phoebe

One only ever saw a fraction of someone, whatever it was they chose to show you, and extrapolated a whole person from that. And saw them through a prism of one's own prejudices.

Yes, Miss Masters, but walking is also a way to announce who you are. Gideon waved one arm impassionedly. How you view yourself in the world. The way you hold yourself, the way you move, how you occupy a space, tells other people a good deal about you, ~from To Love a Thief

He wasn't at all what she expected. No: this wasn't true. He was everything she'd expected from everything she'd read about him—he was irritating, frivolous, arrogant, disconcertingly charming. It was just that she would not have suspected his intelligence had depth, that his wit was in part defense, that his charm was a result of, in part, startlingly acute perception and even…grace.

He wished for access to all the world's languages at once, for then he would have a better word for how he felt and what she was.

The line of Miss Eversea's spine seemed positively 'alive' with... something. Outrage? Horror? Hilarity? He noticed the very fine line of hair traveling up the fragile nape of her neck, and something about that intimate little trail made the back of his own neck tingle as though she'd brushed her fingers there. Something entirely unexpected was happening in the region of his solar plexus.

How had it never occurred to him the peril in which women walked every day, even the most pampered of them? How valiant the simple act of being a woman was in so many ways.