Quotes About Perception

KUBLAI: I do not know when you have had time to visit all the countries you describe to me. It seems to me you have never moved from this garden. POLO: Everything I see and do assumes meaning in a mental space where the same calm reigns as here, the same penumbra, the same silence streaked by the rustling of learn. At the moment when I concentrate and reflect, I find myself again, always, in this garden, at this hour of the evening, in your august presence.

Reality, ugly or beautiful as it may be, is something I cannot change

Si una noche de invierno un viajero, fuera del poblado de Malbork, asomándose desde la abrupta costa sin temor al viento y al vértigo, mira hacia abajo donde la sombra se adensa en una red de líneas que se entrelazan, en una red de líneas que se intersecan sobre la alfombra de hojas iluminadas por la luna en torno a una fosa vacía, «¿Cuál historia espera su fin allá abajo?», pregunta, ansioso de escuchar el relato.

Erst wenn man die Oberfläche der Dinge kennen gelernt hat, kann man sich aufmachen, um herauszufinden, was darunter sein mag. Doch die Oberfläche der Dinge ist unerschöpflich.

If there is nothing that needs correcting in the world memory, the only thing left to do is to correct reality where it doesn't agree with that memory.

La Ciudad es una para el que pasa sin entrar, y otra para el que está preso en ella; una es la ciudad a la que se llega la primera vez, otra la que se deja para no volver, cada una merece un nombre diferente.

I have finally come around to asking myself what is expressed in that sand of written words which I have strung together throughout my life, that sand that seems to me to be so far away from the beaches and desert of living. Perhaps by staring at the sand as sand, words as words, we can come close to understanding how and to what extent the world that has been ground down and eroded can still find in sand a foundation and model.

Gerçek ?u ki gündüzün ?????nda, bu yay?lm??, soluk, hemen hemen gölgesiz ayd?nl?kta geceninkinden de daha koyu bir karanl?k buluyorum.

An invisible landscape conditions the visible one

We can know nothing about what is outside us if we overlook ourselves, he thinks now. The universe is the mirror in which we can contemplate only what we have learned to know in ourselves.

If one starts to draw comparisons between what is and what is not, it is the poorer qualities of the former that strike you, the impurities, the flaws; in short, you can only really feel safe with nothingness.

Night fell, the first I had spent not embracing a rock, and perhaps for this reason it seemed cruelly shorter to me. The light tended at every moment to erase Ayl, to cast a doubt on her presence, but the darkness restored my certainty she was there.

Nella forma che il caso e il vento dànno alle nuvole l'uomo è già intento a riconoscere figure.

The difference between the true and the false is only a prejudice of ours.

But who can say that the clock's numbers aren't peeping from rectangular windows, where I see every minute fall on me with a click like the blade of a guillotine?

The proper use of language, for me personally, is one that enables us to approach things (present or absent) with discretion, attention, and caution, with respect for what things (present or absent) communicate without words.

The book should be the written counterpart of the unwritten world; its subject should be what does not exist and cannot exist except when written, but whose absence is obscurely felt by that which exists, in its own incompleteness.

It's all very well for me to tell myself there are no provincial cities any more and perhaps there never were any: all places communicate instantly with all other places, a sense of isolation is felt only during the trip between one place and the other, that is, when you are in no place.

Irene is a name for a city in the distance, and if you approach, it changes. For those who pass it without entering, the city is one thing; it is another for those who are trapped by it and never leave. There is the city where you arrive for the first time; and there is another city which you leave never to return. Each deserves a different name; perhaps I have already spoken of Irene under other names; perhaps I have spoken only of Irene. — Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino

As soon as I set foot there, everything I had imagined was forgotten; Pyrrha had become what is Pyrrha; and I thought I had always known

Each second is a universe, the second I live is the second I live in

Il libro dovrebb'essere la controparte scritta del mondo non scritto; la sua materia dovrebbe essere ciò che non c'è né potrà esserci se non quando sarà scritto, ma di cui ciò che c'è sente oscuramente il vuoto nella propria incompletezza.

In short, what you are doing is very beautiful but grammatically it doesn't change a thing. At the moment when you most appear to be a united voi, a second person plural, you are two tu's, more separate and circumscribed than before.

Brzask] jest to pora, kiedy przedmioty trac? konsystencj? cienia, jak? darzy?a je noc, i odzyskuj? po trochu w?a?ciwe sobie barwy; ale najpierw przechodz? jeszcze przez co? niby stref? po?redni?, niejasn?, zaledwie mu?ni?te czy raczej otoczone doko?a ?wiat?em: o tej porze mniej ni? kiedykolwiek ma si? pewno?? istnienia ?wiata.