Quotes About Perception

It makes all the difference whether you hear an insect in the bedroom or in the garden. In the garden the voice of the insect soothes; in the bedroom it irritates. In the garden it is the hum of spring; in the bedroom it seems to belong to the same school of music as the buzz of the dentist's drill or the saw-mill.

W. B. Yeats has created, if not a new world, a new star. He is not a reporter of life as it is, to the extent that Shakespeare or Browning is. One is not quite certain that his kingdom is of the green earth. He is like a man who has seen the earth not directly but in a crystal.

Humor is such a wonderful thing, helping you realize what a fool you are but how beautiful that is at the same time.

I listen like mad to any conversation taking place next to me just trying to hear why this is funny. Women's restrooms are especially great. I wash my hands twice waiting for people to come in and start talking.

The thing I call 'my mind' seems to be kind of like a landlord that doesn't really know its tenants.

You keep seeing your picture on posters that you are missing but you're not. That'd be weird, right? Or say you look down at the sidewalk and earthworms are spelling your name. Or you open a peanut bag and the 'hello' is written in your writing on the inside of the shell. Would that weird ya?

something can only become an illusion after disillusionment. before that, it is something real. what caused the disillusionment? no one told me the print on the wall was just ink and paper and had no life of its own. at some point the cat stopped blinking, and i stopped thinking it could.

Langton, believing Anna's silence was due to distress about

Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant? I'm halfway through my fishburger and I realize, Oh my God. I could be eating a slow learner.

How can there be a true History, when we see no man living is able to write truly the History of the last week?', as Sir Will demands in Thomas Shadwell's play The Squire of Alsatia (1688)

When Judas Schariot hanged himself, so that his guts ripped, and as happens to those who are hanged, his bladder burst, then the Jews had their golden cans and silver bowls ready, to catch the Judas piss (as one calls it) with the other relics, and afterwards together they ate the shit and drank, from which they got such sharp sight that they are able to see such complex glosses in Scripture."38

the fragrant pinewoods on one side of the road; a blueberry patch on the other. It was as though the positions of each plant and each cloud in the sky pierced her consciousness

Mabel likened Lavinia's hand to a demented spider who has fallen into an inkwell.

Only when pressed did Mabel admit that they'd never met face to face. At most, she'd 'once' glimpsed her object 'flitting' away. 'Flitting' fits the legend of shyness, a shrinking creature, but the cutting edge of the Dickinson voice conveys the opposite: it's bared, at the ready.

The Russians feared Ike. They didn't fear me.

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read "President Can't Swim."

To conclude that women are unfitted to the task of our historic society seems to me the equivalent of closing male eyes to female facts.

Boys, I may not know much, but I know chicken shit from chicken salad.

If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read "President Can't Swim.

I may not know much, but I know chicken shit from chicken salad.

Gerry Ford is a nice guy, but he played too much football with his helmet off.

Open your eyes. It looks kind of creepy, and I think the lady at the nearest table wonders if you've got narcolepsy." I

The perceptive reader may notice small inconsistencies in the characters appearing in these stories. Their speech patterns, their accounts of certain events, and their observations on the town's pecking order vary from time to time These are not inconsistencies!

Belief in Yahweh doesn't come with your mind. It comes with your heart. When you only believe in things you can see with your eyes and touch with your hands, it is idolatry.