Quotes About Perception

The mere reading of words will not show you or give you the experience of truth.

Since you make them evil or good by your own thoughts about them, it is the ruling of your thoughts which proves to be your principal concern.

In fact, it is literally impossible to really think positively about a particular situation as long as you hold a negative concept of your "self.

Even impersonal events can be interpreted, and reacted to, as affronts to our self-esteem. The bus we wanted to catch had to be late; it had to go and rain when we had planned to play golf; traffic had to get into a snarl just when we needed to catch the plane. We react with anger, resentment, self-pity, or in other words, unhappiness.

I then suggested that he memorize a saying of Epictetus, which has always been a favorite of mine: "Men are disturbed not by the things that happen, but by their opinion of the things that happen.

Both experimental and clinical psychology have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the human nervous system cannot tell the difference between an actual experience and an experience imagined vividly and in detail.

It is no exaggeration to say that every human being is hypnotized to some extent, either by ideas he has uncritically accepted from others, or ideas he has repeated to himself or convinced himself are true.

Rumors were nothing more than blunted swords of simple minds and wagging tongues.

May we agree that private life is irrelevant? Multiple, mixed, ambiguous at best -- out of it we try to fashion the crystal clear, the singular, the absolute, and that is what is relevant; that is what matters.

My facea negative in the slatewindow,I sitin a litcorridor that racesthrough a darkone.Riding the "A" [1963]

October I sit with braided fingers and closed eyes in a span of late sunlight. The spokes are closing. It is fall: warm milk of light, though from an aging breast. I do not mean to pray. The posture for thanks or supplication is the same as for weariness or relief. But I am glad for the luck of light. Surely it is godly, that it makes all things begin, and appear, and become actual to each other. Light that's sucked into the eye, warming the brain with wires of color.

I guess I had all kinds of ideas about him, but they weren't really him, they were just what I made him in my head. The reality was not as attractive as the ideal.

Some people unable to go to school were more educated and even more intelligent than college professors.

There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth.

Blacks should be used to play whites. For centuries we had probed their faces, the angles of their bodies, the sounds of their voices, and even their odors. Often our survival had depended on the accurate reading of a white man's chuckle or the disdainful wave of a white woman's hand.

The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them.

We really are 15 countries, and it's really remarkable that each of us thinks we represent the real America. The Midwesterner in Kansas, the black American in Durham -- both are certain they are the real American.

When would he learn that women never stayed where you put them?

I try to give people a different way of looking at their surroundings. That's art to me.

It's funny, as you live through something you're not aware of it.

Out of the corner of his eye Wycliff saw the little maid's cheeks turn pink. He'd forgotten how adorably prudish and modest English women could be.

Like I am struck by my own brilliance?" "I was going to say maniacal," Harriet replied.

For you, Lady Copley, Lady Agatha wishes you to have her china set, since you complimented it." Blake bit back laughter at Lady Copley's expression. She had loathed the china set, obviously, and only complimented it as part of the games. But Agatha had known how to discern the truth from the lies.

What does wine do to men?" "It makes them more foolish at a higher volume.