1,271 Perception Quotes

I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.

The Mediterranean has the color of mackerel, changeable I mean. You don't always know if it is green or violet, you can't even say it's blue, because the next moment the changing reflection has taken on a tint of rose or gray.

In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.

I have spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, helping them have a good time, and all I get is abuse, the existence of a hunted man.

Ideas, unlike solid structures, do not perish. They remain immortal, immaterial and everywhere, like all Divine things. Ideas are a golden, savage landscape that we wander unaware, without a map. Be careful: in the last analysis, reality may be exactly what we think it is.

Because our entire universe is made up of consciousness, we never really experience the universe directly we just experience our consciousness of the universe, our perception of it, so right, our only universe is perception.

The entire universe - for one thing - only exists in your perceptions. That's all you're gonna see of it. To all practical intents and purposes this is purely some kind of lightshow that's being put on in the kind of neurons in our brain. The whole of reality.

Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations.

Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories - and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.

I believe in low lights and trick mirrors.

I'm afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning.

A thought is a screen, not a mirror; that is why you live in a thought envelope, untouched by Reality.

The genius of a composer is found in the notes of his music; but analyzing the notes will not reveal his genius. The poet's greatness is contained in his words; yet the study of his words will not disclose his inspiration. God reveals himself in creation; but scrutinize creation as minutely as you wish, you will not find God, any more than you will find the soul through careful examination of your body.

Thought can organize the world so well that you are no longer able to see it.

No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself.

If you cross the Atlantic with an American lady you invariably fall in love with her before the journey is over. Travel with the same woman in a railway car for twelve hours, and you will have written her down in your own mind in quite other language than that of love.

Life in the true sense is perceiving or thinking.

Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference.

To perceive is to suffer.

Some changes are so slow, you don't notice them, others are so fast, they don't notice you.

Why does it so often take a genius to see the obvious?

You will never know the feeling of a driver when winning a race. The helmet hides feelings that cannot be understood.

Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.

I now think, Love is rather deaf, than blind, For else it could not be, That she, Whom I adore so much, should so slight me, And cast my love behind.

If art reflects life, it does so with special mirrors.

The headlong stream is termed violent But the river bed hemming it in is Termed violent by no one.

When we look at a rock what we are seeing is not the rock, but the effect of the rock upon us.

My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose.

Rap is poetry set to music. But to me it's like a jackhammer.

Genius. It's a word. What does it really mean? If I win I'm a genius. If I don't, I'm not.

I think I'm still clean living. That's - I mean I don't go home and have orgies or anything like that. I'm still the same person I've always been.

Truth has no path. Truth is living and, therefore, changing. Awareness is without choice, without demand, without anxiety; in that state of mind, there is perception. To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person. Awareness has no frontier; it is giving of your whole being, without exclusion.

Influence: 'As you grow older you will realize something very important. And that is, you have more influence on people's lives than you may first imagine. People feed off of their friends and associates for guidance and support. So what I am getting to here is that before you deem a person as 'bad' be sure that your sphere of influence or rejection does not help tip them over the edge of becoming your perception.'

Success: 'The successful often expect others to esteem their accomplishments as they do, but find contempt in its place. This is because success is hard for many to relate to. For some, longsuffering is easier to respect because it reminds them of their own lives.'

It's said that Chaplin wanted you to like him, but Keaton didn't care. I think he cared, but was too proud to ask.

He thought I was aloof and I thought he was arrogant. It just shows you how wrong you can be. But once he kissed me that was that.

'Did you ever taste beer?' 'I had a sip of it once,' said the small servant. 'Here's a state of things!' cried Mr Swiveller, raising his eyes to the ceiling. 'She never tasted it - it can't be tasted in a sip!'

What is exaggeration to one class of minds and perceptions, is plain truth to another. That which is commonly called a long-sight, perceives in a prospect innumerable features and bearings non-existent to a short-sighted person. I sometimes ask myself whether there may occasionally be a difference of this kind between some writers and some readers; whether it is ALWAYS the writer who colours highly, or whether it is now and then the reader whose eye for colour is a little dull?

I accept this decision. That's cool. What I'd like for you to do in your own minds personally, everybody that has a personal mind of their own, could possibly consider that the longer that you let this conviction stand, and this little Helter Skelter scheme of the District Attorney to give his particular reality over into the play, that's going to be the reality that they're perpetuating. That's not the reality that I'm perpetuating. I'm not saying that I wasn't involved. I'm saying that I did not break man's law nor did I break God's law. Consider that in the judgments that you have for yourselves. Good day. Thank you.

Note for the record. In the all that was said about me, it was not me saying it, and if you see a false prophet, it is only a reflection of your judgments, for in truth, it is motions, not words, that speak for the Manson family. We each have our own worlds and judgments. I have no judgments outside of what you all have set for yourselves. I'm content wherever I am. Whatever you do or say does not touch my inner circle. I have peace within myself. Peace of mind.

They're looking for something dirty in everything, and if you're looking for something, you'll find it. You have to put up some kind of face for them, and that's the only face they understand.

'They called her the diva.' (Matt Cassella, about Christina's mouseketers mates)

People come up to me and ask me to autograph their guns.

From some, the light was scarcely more than a gloom: From some, a dazzling desire.

We won't be deceived by words such as Indispensable, Unique, and Great. Someone else indispensable and unique and great can always be found at a moment's notice.

Even though they, themselves, were material beings, they could show themselves to us only by taking on bodies that our senses were able to perceive.

You imagine that what you can't understand is either spiritual or does not exist. The conclusion is quite wrong; rather there are obviously a million things in the universe that we would need a million quite different organs to understand. For example, I perceive by my senses what makes a magnet point north, what makes tides rise and fall, and what becomes of an animal after death. Your people are not proportioned to perceive such miracles, just as someone blind from birth cannot imagine the beauty of a landscape, the colors of a painting or the shadings of an iris. He will imagine them as something palpable, edible, audible or olfactory. Likewise, if I were to explain to you what I perceive by the senses you do not have, you would interpret it as something that could be heard, seen, touched, smelled or tasted; but it is not like that.

I was once told I was a powerful wizard by a homeless person.

Difference exist because thought develops like a stream that happens to go one way here and another way there. Once it develops it produces real physical results that people are looking at, but they don't see where these results are coming from - that's one of the basic features of fragmentation. When they have produced these divisions they see that real things have happened, so they'll start with these real things as if they just suddenly got there by themselves, or evolved in nature by themselves.

Laugh if you want to / Or say you don't care / If you cannot see it / You think it's not there / It doesn't work that way.

Mrs. Lessing's view of recent politics is not everyone's. Her view of the future (inevitably brutish and painful) is that it is the present: that we are all hypnotized, awaiting cataclysms which we are in fact living through now; that we are now - as we run and read - in the process of a rapid evolution; that we are mutating fast but can't see it, the chief characteristic of our race being its inability to see what is under its nose; that historians and scientists, in their timid traditionalism, feed our fantasy view of ourselves - suppressing truths about the human condition, about madness, about sanity, about the essential nature of the mind.

Do you smell it, Jabroni?

Vodka is a very deceptive drink, because you drink it and you say 'Why are we drinking this? This is nothing, it has no smell, no taste! Why are we- W-why are we on a traffic island?'

Everything (he kept saying) is something it isn't. And everybody is always somewhere else.

they flock and they flee through the thunder of seem though the stars in their silence say Be.

Had the routine of our life at this place been known to the world, we should have been regarded as madmen -; although, perhaps, as madmen of a harmless nature.

C'est tres bien de copier ce qu'on voit, c'est beaucoup mieux de dessiner ce que l'on ne voit plus que dans son memoire. C'est une transformation pendant laquelle l'ingeniosite collabore avec la memoire. Vous ne reproduisez que ce qui vous a frappe, c'est-a-dire le necessaire.

Le dessin n'est pas la forme, il est la maniere de voir la forme.

But it's true, isn't it Pauline, that people imagine that the artists and their models spend their time getting up to all sorts of obscenities? As far as work goes, well, they paint or sculpt when they are tired of enjoying themselves.

Man, the two-fold creature, apprehends The two-fold manner, in and outwardly, And nothing in the world comes single to him. A mere itself,-cup, column, or candlestick, All patterns of what shall be in the Mount; The whole temporal show related royally, And build up to eterne significance Through the open arms of God.

'I don't really think Elvis' voice was significantly lower than those of any other baritones. The colour of the voice and the sense of warmth and richness of tone gave the sense that the voice was much deeper. Elvis, in fact, did not force his lower register, comfortable as he was with it, which in turn gave the impression that it was lower than those of other baritones.'

To Whom the Mornings stand for Nights, What must the Midnights - be!

Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things. (5)

'Excellence,' besought Kai Lung, not without misgivings,'how many warriors, each having some actual existence, are there in your never-failing band?' 'For all purposes save those of attack and defence there are fifteen score of the best and bravest, as their pay-sheets well attest,' was the confident response. 'In a strictly literal sense, however, there are no more than can be seen on a mist-enshrouded day with a resolutely closed eye.'

When I saw the newspaper headline 'Gas Chamber Expert Captured' and an American lieutenant explained it to me, I was pale in amazement. How can they say such things about me? I told you I was only in charge of the Intelligence Service from 1943 on. The British even admitted that they tried to assassinate me because of that, not because of having anything to do with atrocities, you can be sure of that.

In the courtroom, the defendants were at their best. They had to be, because the whole world was watching this trial. When they came back to the cells, then they acted normal; they were normal people. Some of them cried in there. As a matter of fact, Ernst Kaltenbrunner... a notorious man, he was probably... big, tall fellow, about six foot seven, with scars on his face. We gave him a nickname, Scarface. But he was probably the biggest crybaby in there. We caught him many times, quite a few times, crying.

What a man enjoys about a woman's clothes are his fantasies of how she would look without them.

There is a sort of waking nightmare that sets in sometimes when one has missed a sleep or two, a feeling that comes with extreme fatigue and a new sun, that the quality of the life around has changed. It is a fully articulate conviction that somehow the existence one is then leading is a branch shoot of life and is related to life only as a moving picture or a mirror-that the people, and streets, and houses are only projections from a very dim and chaotic past.

Though he made a joke when asked to do the right thing, he always did it. He was so much more in earnest than he appeared. He did not do himself justice.

The Idols of the Cave are the idols of the individual man. For everyone (besides the errors common to human nature in general) has a cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolors the light of nature, owing either to his own proper and peculiar nature; or to his education and conversation with others; or to the reading of books, and the authority of those whom he esteems and admires; or to the differences of impressions, accordingly as they take place in a mind preoccupied and predisposed or in a mind indifferent and settled; or the like. So that the spirit of man (according as it is meted out to different individuals) is in fact a thing variable and full of perturbation, and governed as it were by chance. Whence it was well observed by Heraclitus that men look for sciences in their own lesser worlds, and not in the greater or common world.

Mistress of the Indies, Spain swarmed with beggars. Yet, verging to decay, she had an ominous and appalling strength. Her condition was that of an athletic man penetrated with disease, which had not yet unstrung the thews and sinews formed in his days of vigor.

(21 November 1917) Variant translation: Anyone who believes cannot experience miracles. By day one cannot see any stars.

A very distinguished colleague began his criticism of this show by asking what is Mr Astaire's secret. May I suggest that the solution hangs on a little word of three letters? Mr Astaire's secret is that of the late Rudolph Valentino and of Mr Maurice Chevalier - sex, but sex so bejewelled and be-pixied that the weaker vessels who fall for it can pretend that it isn't sex at all but a sublimated projection of the Little Fellow with the Knuckles in His Eyes. You'd have thought by the look of the first night foyer that it was Mothering Thursday, since every woman in the place was urgent to take to her bosom this waif with the sad eyes and the twinkling feet.

Hoyle: A star is basically a pretty simple object. Voice from Audience: You'd look pretty simple too, Fred, from a distance of ten parsecs.

You say it as you understand it.

It is base to filch a purse, daring to embezzle a million, but it is great beyond measure to steal a crown. The sin lessens as the guilt increases.

Don't judge a man by the tales of others.

If an angel were ever to tell us anything of his philosophy I believe many propositions would sound like 2 times 2 equals 13.

A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out. We have no words for speaking of wisdom to the stupid. He who understands the wise is wise already.

Concerning the body, there are at least as many, if not more, imaginary sick as really sick people. Concerning the mind, there are as many, if not more, imaginary sane people as really sane ones.

'There are some men who are considered quite ugly, but who are more remarkable than pretty people. You often see that in artists.'

Medieval ecclesiastics, either through ignorance of bigotry, painted Mohammadanism in the darkest colors. They were in fact; trained to hate both the man Muhammad and his to them was anti-Christ.[7]

No one is 'openly' black. Well, maybe James Brown. Or Louis Farrakhan. Louis Farrakhan is openly black. Colin Powell is not openly black. Colin Powell is openly white. He just 'happens to be' black.

When you sneeze, all the numbers in your head go up by one.

I said that wherever these people, meaning the Soviet leadership, confronted us with dangerous hostility anywhere in the world, we should do everything possible to contain it and not let them expand any further. I should have explained that I didn't suspect them of any desire to launch an attack on us. This was right after the war, and it was absurd to suppose that they were going to turn around and attack the United States. I didn't think I needed to explain that, but I obviously should have done it.

Enter these enchanted woods, You who dare. Nothing harms beneath the leaves More than waves a swimmer cleaves. Toss your heart up with the lark, Foot at peace with mouse and worm, Fair you fare. Only at a dread of dark Quaver, and they quit their form: Thousand eyeballs under hoods Have you by the hair. Enter these enchanted woods, You who dare.

Like the use of the word 'concupiscence' in an earlier age to describe sexual desire, the use of the word 'pollution' to describe essential aspects of the productive activities of an industrial society represents an attempt to defame an entirely proper human capacity by means of using an evil sounding name for it.

I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower - the TV was obviously on. And I used to fly, myself, and I said, well, there's one terrible pilot. I said, it must have been a horrible accident.

I think we are welcomed. But it was not a peaceful welcome.

I've heard he's been called Bush's poodle. He's bigger than that.

It's viewed as an anti-Russian device. Well, it's not.

Pigeons on the grass alas. Pigeons on the grass alas. Short longer grass short longer longer shorter yellow grass. Pigeons large pigeons on the shorter longer yellow grass alas pigeons on the grass.