Quotes About Perception

Erica says she has told everybody to come; she doesn't think they'll dare not to. I feel sure she is right for her guests stand in such awe of her that they accede to her requests meekly. They are frightened of her—and no wonder; they don't know how to take her; they are never sure whether her rudeness is meant to be amusing or not.

But the next time they met the friendship had always cooled off, and Mrs. Dance had to start all over again. What Mrs. Dance did not realize was that the person in question had been willing enough to listen to the anecdotes and tidbits, but had afterward reflected, consciously or unconsciously, I wonder what Mrs. Dance says to other people about me.

Oh yes," agreed Tom. "But he saw you arrive. He saw you walk into the hotel with a knapsack on your back so he didn't know you were an important person until I told him. If you had arrived in a big automobile with a great deal of luggage he would have been nice to you from the beginning." This was not what Will meant, but he had to leave it.

Peter's sensitiveness of perception was acute. He knew exactly what the independent old farmer-ferryman was thinking; he understood and in a measure sympathised with his feelings. Peter was like that — he could always see the other fellow's point of view. His mother had been immensely large-hearted and tolerant, and she had brought up her son to loathe intolerance as one of the deadly sins.

If strangers see you behaving like lunatics, it doesn't matter, because they don't know who you are. And if your friends see you behaving like lunatics, it doesn't matter, because they know who you are.

His fellow travellers took him for an Englishman and did not mince their words, and their words were all the more weighty and significant because they were perfectly calm. They did not rant and rave against Germany, they did not hate her, they merely judged her and condemned her as they would have judged and condemned any thief or any murderer of innocent men. They discussed the whole affair sanely and dispassionately in a manner that made his blood run cold.

Query – Why do people with no children of their own seem to think the shocking behaviour of other people's offspring a fit subject for mirth?)

I can't be doing with people that are not exactly what they seem.' Mamie was

They don't understand anything," declared Mother smiling at me rather sadly. "They don't even know that there's anything to understand. They're like horses with blinkers —they just see what's in front of their noses and nothing more. I'm always terribly sorry for horses with blinkers," added Mother with a sigh.

Mrs. Ayrton was equally bewildered. She picked up the book and began to turn over the pages and in a very few moments her idea that Shakespeare's Plays were suitable reading for the young received a severe shock. She replaced the book in her husband's library and informed her daughters that they were not to read Shakespeare's Plays.

I had been watching the porters and it had looked easy; they swung the crates as if they were full of feathers, but I discovered that the crates were very heavy indeed, it took me all my time to lift them. I was soft, of course, for I had had very little exercise all the winter and I was unskilled into the bargain. The porters were amused at my attempts to help them but they were quite decent about it; probably they thought I was doing it for a joke.

But is it?' Guthrie says, waving his hands in the effort to explain. 'We're living in the twentieth century, of course, but are they?

When you're very young you take people as you find them. It's only when you've had experience that you begin to measure and weigh.

Of course they all have the radio now and listen to it in their homes so they understand English—or what they are pleased to call Oxford English," said Mr. Semple with scorn. " Oxford English—that's what they call it, Mr. Kirke. Did you ever hear the like of that?

She had made a fool of the whole thing by asking old Durnet and Mrs. Goldsmith. The former was practically an imbecile in Mr. Bulmer's opinion—a good many people were practically imbeciles in Mr. Bulmer's opinion.

Other children had brothers and sisters and sometimes they said to me it must be dull being an only child. " What do you do? " they asked. " Fancy having nobody to play with! " I was never dull; there was plenty to do and I had Mother to play with. I never thought of Mother as being " old " or " young." In fact I never really thought of her at all. She was just Mother.

But Father took no notice. Perhaps he had never played tip-and-run when he was a boy. As a matter of fact I could not imagine Father as a boy. I could not believe he had ever been young and small with dirty hands and untidy hair—it was incredible.

Qué tonto era el público! Era exactamente un rebaño de ovejas —pensó, adormilado—. Van uno detrás de otro como tontos, no reparan en tal libro, pero compran el de al lado solo porque lo compran los demás, aunque no hay manera de saber qué ven en el uno o dejan de ver en el otro. Pero este libro… éste tiene que salir. Hay que publicarlo»

It was nothing, really; just a straw in the wind! But a straw in the wind shows which way the wind is blowing

For, no matter how often or how well a person is described, a verbal description can never convey an accurate picture of the lineaments, and the pigment, and the aura that make up the whole personality of a human being.

We don't exist unless we are deeply and sensually in touch with that which can be touched but not known.

Oh the innocent girl in her maiden teens knows perfectly well what everything means.

For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken. It is so lovely, dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack.

Nobody knows you. You don't know yourself. And I, who am half in love with you, What am I in love with? My own imaginings?