Quotes About Perception

and asked the I Ching: Should I be here doing this, or should I go on somewhere else and keep searching? The reply came: Keeping still, so that restlessness dissolves; then, beyond the tumult, one can perceive the great laws.

and asked the I Ching: Should I be here doing this, or should I go on somewhere else and keep searching? The reply came: Keeping still, so that restlessness dissolves; then, beyond the tumult, one can perceive the great laws. It went on: As a mountain keeps still within itself, thus a wise man does not permit his will to stray beyond his situation.

The intentions of a tool are what it does. A hammer intends to strike, a vise intends to hold fast, a lever intends to lift. They are what it is made for. But sometimes a tool may have other uses that you don't know. Sometimes in doing what you intend, you also do what the knife intends, without knowing. Can you see the sharpest edge of that knife?

Lyra was bursting to interrupt, because she knew this process. So did Dr Malone, and so did the poet Keats, whoever he was, and all of them knew you couldn't get it by straining towards it.

When we are born we are magical and loving and full of wonder. But darkness and ignorance surround us at every corner. Until the day someone calls us a monster or a devil and we believe them.

When we are born we are all wonderful. But, gradually, masks and streets are erected around us, walls and lies fence us in, make us prisoners, trap us inside our skulls, turn hearts to stone, until the magic—once bright and sparkling—turns black and blistered in our minds.

There is truth and then again there is truth. For all that the world is full of people who go around believing they've got you or your neighbor figured out, there really is no bottom to what is not known. The truth about us is endless. As are the lies.

Dreams? If only they had been! But I don't need dreams, Doctor, that's why I hardly have them—because I have this life instead. With me it all happens in broad daylight!

Who are the new people when you do meet them? They're the same old people in masks. There's nothing new about them at all. They're people.

Is everyone to go off and lock the door and sit secluded like the lonely writers do, in a soundproof cell, summoning people out of words and then proposing that these word people are closer to the real thing than the real people that we mangle with our ignorance every day? The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful consideration, getting them wrong again.

Everybody who flashed the signs of loyalty he took to be loyal. Everybody who flashed the signs of intelligence he took to be intelligent. And so he had failed to see into his daughter, failed to see into his wife, failed to see into his one and only mistress—probably had never even begun to see into himself

The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget about being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that—well, lucky you.

You had to be there to see what it looked like. They live in a dream, and we live in a nightmare.

Doctor, I had never had anybody like her in my life, she was the fulfillment of my most lascivious adolescent dreams– but marry her, can she be serious? You see, for all her preening and perfumes, she has a very low opinion of herself, and simultaneously– and here is the source of much of our trouble-a ridiculously high opinion of me. And simultaneously, a very low opinion of me! She is one confused Monkey, and, I'm afraid, not too very bright.

I couldn't imagine anything that could have made Coleman more of a mystery to me than this unmasking. Now that I knew everything, it was as though I knew nothing

everything you say says either more than you wanted it to say or less than you wanted it to say; and everything you do does either more than you wanted it to do or less than you wanted it to do.

What is astonishing is that we, who had no idea how anything was going to turn out, now know exactly what happened.

There was always something about our family, and I don't mean color--there was something about us that impeded you. You think like a prisoner. You do, Coleman Brutus. You're white as snow and you think like a slave.

Noi siamo, dopotutto, la somma delle nostre esperienze, e l'esperienza comprende non soltanto ciò che facciamo concretamente, ma anche ciò che privatamente immaginiamo.

She thinks, I'm telling him who I am. He's interested in who I am. That is true, but I am curious about who she is because I want to fuck her.

It's no picnic up there in the egosphere.

Memoirs lie, but fiction tells the truth.

All that we don't know is astonishing. Even more astonishing is what passes for knowing. As

I can't really tell objectively how sorry I should feel for myself. I don't give the same credibility to my being that other people give to theirs. Everything feels acted." "Everything is acted." "Whatever. With me there's some glue missing, something fundamental to everyone else that I don't have. My life never seems real to me.