Quotes About Perception

Romanistas priver?ia mus per vien? valand? išgyventi vis? galim? džiaugsm? ir sielvart? audr?, kai tikrov?je praeit? met? metai, kol patirtume kai kuriuos iš j?, o stipriausieji mums taip ir neatsiskleist? niekados, nes randasi jie iš l?to ir mes negalime to suvokti.

Com os prazeres, dá-se o mesmo que com as fotografias. O que apanhamos na presença da criatura amada não passa de um negativo; revelamo-lo mais tarde, uma vez em casa, quando encontramos à nossa disposição essa câmara escura interior cuja entrada é proibida enquanto há gente à vista.

O que chamamos nossa conduta permanece ignorado de nosso mais próximo vizinho; o que esquecemos haver dito, ou que até nunca dissemos, vai provocar hilaridade até num outro planeta, e a imagem que os outros formam de nossos gestos e atitudes tampouco se parece com a que nós próprios formamos, como um desenho, um decalque malfeito, e onde ora a um traço negro corresponde um espaço vazio, e a um branco, um contorno inexplicável.

How paradoxical it is to seek in reality for the pictures that are stored in one's memory, which must inevitably lose the charm that comes to them from memory itself and from their not being apprehended by the senses. The reality that I had known no longer existed.

L'habitude de penser empêche parfois d'éprouver le réel, immunise contre lui, le fait paraître de la pensée encore.

And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on chance whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves must die.

The Duc de Guermantes was not overpleased by these offers. Uncertain whether Ibsen and D'Annunzio were dead or alive, he could see in his mind's eye a tribe of authors, playwrights, coming to call upon his wife and putting her in their works. People in society are too apt to think of a book as a sort of cube one side of which has been removed, so that the author can at once 'put in' the people he meets

The truth is the most cunning of enemies. It launches its attacks upon the points of our heart at which we were not expecting them, and have prepared no defence.

Ogni lettore, quando legge, legge se stesso.

it was the moment in which a sane man who is talking to a lunatic has not yet perceived that his companion is mad

it was like what used to be called a panopticon but a panopticon of years, a view not of a monument but of a person situated in the modifying perspective of Time.

But one reads the papers as one wants to with a bandage over one's eyes without trying to understand the facts, listening to the soothing words of the editor as to the words of one's mistress. We are beaten and happy because we believe ourselves unbeaten and victorious

It seems that events extend further than the moments in which they happen, and cannot be completely contained within them. Certainly, they spill over into the future through the memories we retain of them, but they also demand space in the time that precedes them. Certainly you will say that at that time we do not see them as they will actually be, but are they not also changed in our memory of them?

It is plain that the object of my quest, the truth, lies not in the cup but in myself.

Thus I who from infancy, had lived from day to day, with a sort of fixed idea of myself derived from others as well as myself, perceived for the first time, after witnessing the metamorphosis of all these people, that the time which had gone by for them, had gone by for me also and this revelation threw me into consternation.

So that we always see as young those we knew young and those whom we knew as old people we embellish retrospectively with the virtues of old age,

Other people as a rule mean so little to us that, when we have invested one of them with the power to cause us so much suffering or happiness, that person seems at once to belong to a different universe, is surrounded with poetry, makes of one's life a sort of stirring arena in which he or she will be more or less close to one.

But the imagination goes beyond the reality in supposition.

Es ist unglaublich zu denken, dass jemand nicht begreifen kann, dass er sich, wenn er sich dazu herabwürdigt, über einen Mitmenschen zu lächeln, dem er eben noch die Hand gedrückt hat, in eine Gosse begibt, aus dem er sich beim besten Willen nicht wieder herausarbeiten kann.

There is nothing like desire for preventing the thing one says from bearing any resemblance to what one has in one's mind.

Albeit expression suffices to make us believe in enormous differences between things that are separated by infinitely little — albeit that infinitely little may by itself create an expression that is absolutely unique, an individuality — it was not only the infinitely little of its lines and the originality of its expression that made each of these faces appear irreducible to terms of any other.

Then it would begin to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of a former existence must be to a reincarnate spirit; the subject of my book would separate itself from me, leaving me free to choose whether I would form part of it or no; and at the same time my sight would return and I would be astonished to find myself in a state of darkness, pleasant and restful enough for the eyes, and even more, perhaps, for my mind, to which it appeared incomprehensible

For mental uncertainty is even more of an obstacle to clear visual perception than a physical defect of the eye would be.

Since railways came into existence, the necessity of not missing the train has taught us to take account of minutes whereas among the ancient Romans, who not only had a more cursory science of astronomy but led less hurried lives, the notion not of minutes but even of fixed hours barely existed.