Quotes About Perception

The Countess Olenska was the only young woman at the dinner; yet, as Archer scanned the smooth plump elderly faces between their diamond necklaces and towering ostrich feathers, they struck him as curiously immature compared with hers. It frightened him to think what must have gone to the making of her eyes.

In the thick of this meditation Archer suddenly felt himself looking at her with the startled gaze of a stranger

All these sights, sounds and sensations, so familiar in themselves, so unutterably strange and meaningless in his new relation to them, were confusedly mingled in his brain

I've no doubt the rabbit always thinks it is fascinating the anaconda.

It was as if all the latent beauty of things had been unveiled to her. She could not imagine that the world held anything more wonderful.

Its more real to me here than if I went up, he suddenly heard himself say; and the fear lest that last shadow of reality should lose its edge kept him rooted to his seat as the minutes succeeded each other

Ah, no, he did not want May to have that kind of innocence, the innocence that seals the mind against imagination and the heart against experience...

Mrs. Fairford smiled. "I've sometimes thought," she mused, "that Mr. Popple must be the only gentleman I know; at least he's the only man who has ever told me he was a gentleman—and Mr. Popple never fails to mention it.

He started to walk across the Common, and on the first bench, under a tree, he saw her sitting. She had a gray silk sunshade over her head—how could he have ever imagined her with a pink one?

If May had spoken out her grievances (he suspected her of many) he might have laughed them away; but she was trained to conceal imaginary wounds under a Spartan smile

Una de las mejores intuiciones del cochero de alquiler fue descubrir que los norteamericanos desean alejarse de sus diversiones aún con mayor prontitud que llegar a ellas.

Pero, en primer lugar, Nueva York era una metrópolis perfectamente consciente de que en las grandes capitales no era bien visto llegar temprano a la ópera; y lo que era o no era bien visto jugaba un rol tan importante en la Nueva York de Newland Archer como los inescrutables y ancestrales seres terroríficos que habían dominado el destino de sus antepasados miles de años atrás.

In this interpretative light Mrs. Grancy acquired the charm which makes some women's faces like a book of which the last page is never turned. There was always something new to read in her eyes.

You might as well tell me there was nobody but Adam in the garden when Eve picked the apple. You say your wife was discontented? No woman ever knows she's discontented till some man tells her so. My God! I've seen smash-ups before now; but I never yet saw a marriage dissolved like a business partnership.

But least is he who, with enchanted eyes Filled with high visions of fair shapes to be, Muses which god he shall immortalize In the proud Parian's perpetuity, Till twilight warns him from the punctual skies That the night cometh wherein none shall see.

The one thing that astonished him now was that he should have stood for five minutes arguing with her across the width of the room, when just touching her made everything so simple.

In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented by a set of arbitrary signs; as

That man touch a hundred? He looks as if he was dead and in hell now!

It's waiting for us: it seems to know.

Though Harmon Gow developed the tale as far as his mental and moral reach permitted there were perceptible gaps between his facts, and I had the sense that the deeper meaning of the story was in the gaps.

Every one in polite circles knew that, in America, a gentleman couldn't go into politics. But

They say New Yorkers are always in a hurry; but I can't say as they've hurried much to make our acquaintance.

Archer looked down with wonder at the familiar spectacle. It surprised him that life should be going on in the old way when his own reactions to it had so completely changed.

Society is a revolving body which is apt to be judged according to its place in each man's heaven; and at present it was turning its illuminated face to Lily.