Not Seeing The Light Quotes & Sayings

But perhaps there are insensitive hearts, still incapable of receiving this Light because the weight of their sins prevents them from seeing it. Let them not imagine that they Light is absent because they do not see it, for on account of their sins they are in darkness. 'And the Light shone in the darkness, and the darkness understood it not' (Jn 1:5). Therefore, Brothers, like the blind man exposed to the sun, the sun being present to him but he being absent from the sun, so the insensitive one, the sinner, the impious has a blind heart. — Augustine Of Hippo

Franny looked at them up on the porch, everyone softened by the veil of the screen, by the light that was slanting in behind them, by the bank of yellow lilies that separated them from her. It was not unlike seeing tigers at the zoo. — Ann Patchett

When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out. — Matthew Quick

It's nothing but a matter of seeing, thinking, and interest. That's what makes a good photograph. And then rejecting anything that would be bad for the picture. The wrong light, the wrong background, time and so on. Just don't do it, not matter how beautiful the subject is. — Andreas Feininger

The telescope, in enabling us to look far out into space, also allows us to look back in time. Light travels at about 186,000 miles per second. When we look up into the daylight sky, we are not seeing the sun as it currently is but as it was about eight minutes ago, since it takes that long for the light radiating from this familiar star to travel 93 million miles to Earth. Similarly, when the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) receives light waves from the depths of the universe, those waves will have originated from points as far as 76 sextillion (76,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) miles away. It will have taken those waves some 13 billion years to arrive on earth, meaning they left their source about a million years after the big bang, and roughly nine to ten years before Earth even formed. — Richard Kurin

The archaeology of grief is not ordered. It is more like earth under a spade, turning up things you had forgotten. Surprising things come to light: not simply memories, but states of mind, emotions, older ways of seeing the world. — Helen Macdonald

It is the eye that discovers the mystery of light, not only the moon and the stars and the vast splendours of the Aurora, but the endless changes the earth undergoes under changing lights. — Nan Shepherd

(Of the main character seeing a new world for the first time.) The air was cold but not bitterly so, and it seemed a bit rough at the back of his throat. He gazed about him, and the very intensity of his desire to take in the new world at a glance defeated itself. He saw nothing but colours - colours that refused to form themselves into things. Moreover, he knew nothing yet well enough to see it: you cannot see things till you know roughly what they are. His first impression was of a bright, pale world - a watercolour world out of a child's paint-box, a moment later he recognised the flat belt of light blue as a sheet of water, or of something like water, which came nearly to his feet. They were on the shore of a lake or river. — C.S. Lewis

Happy man, who is dead to the world, and alive to God! separated from the world, and collected into Christ! Blessed is the man into whose heart such Divine graces are infused, as withdraw it wholly from every tendency to inferior things, and exalt it to the supernal light and glory in the heavens. To obtain which, it is needful to pray daily and instantly to God: seeing it is not possible for a Christian to live without it, — Johann Arndt

Once time is lit, it will burn whether or not you're breathing it in. Even after smoke becomes air, there is the memory of smoke. I am seeing as if by the light of a match, a glimpse of my life and having it feel right. — David Levithan

They were different colors: the right one blue, the left green. And her face in the light of the candle on the table startled me at first, just as it had in the icy night air. After seeing it on the street, I was afraid I had only imagined it: a still, luminous face with a silvery sheen. Finely hewn, with a long, straight nose and a wide mouth, it was nearly identical to another face, which I had photographed years before. Not on a person, bu on the fragment of a frieze I found in some ruins near Verona, The frieze, which depicted a band of musicians, had once been shadowed beneath a cornice high on the temple of Mercury, god of magic. Belonging to one of the musicians, it was a riveting face - like a puzzle that could not be solved - which I had never found, or expected to find, on a living woman. — Nicholas Christopher

He who knows he is a fool is not the biggest fool; he who knows he is confused is not in the worst confusion. The man in the worst confusion will end his life without ever getting straightened out; the biggest fool will end his life without ever seeing the light. If three men are traveling along and one is confused, they will still get where they are going - because confusion is in the minority. But if two of them are confused, then they can walk until they are exhausted and never get anywhere - because confusion is in the majority. — Zhuangzi

Seeing is itself touched with elegy. Reality seems to press its light into us, it is happening, but that's not the way things are. The eye can process only so many images per second, taking in sights the way a camera takes a series of stills. The reality we see is the sketchpad comics we made as kids, me and my brothers and sister. Draw a stickman taking a step on one page, and on the next draw that same figure, only his foot is slightly further ahead, and again on the next page, draw this figure, but with his foot on the ground. Flip through them quickly, and he appears to walk. That's the mechanics of the eye, too. We think we are seeing life as it happens, but pictures are missing. Moments disappear between the stills and make up our unwitnessed lives. To see is to miss things. Loss is always with us. — Ryan Knighton

Since he died some of the colours have disappeared. I have lost the violet of seeing him, the indigo of touching him, the blue of talking to him and the green of smelling him. But I can still see some of his colours. I still have the red of the feelings in my heart, the orange of his possessions, and the yellow of our memories.

Which is why it feels so confusing. He is gone, but not entirely. The white light is no longer with me, but a few of his colours remain; vibrant, illuminating. Sometimes I lose sight even of these colours. I search in the shadows, hungry for another glimpse, desperate that I may have lost them forever. This is my darkness. — Thomas Harding

For me, seeing our history told in this light, the ones who did rebel, the ones who did revolt, the revolutionaries, excited me. Seeing this story of the Underground Railroad ... and that is such a proud part of our history that not a lot of us know about, where these brave men and women, they were heroes, really helped tear down the system of slavery just by running. — Jurnee Smollett

There is no one for spying on people's actions like those who are not concerned in them ... They will follow up such and such a man or woman for whole days; they will do sentry duty for hours at a time on the corners of the streets, under alley-way doors at night, in cold and rain; they will bribe errand-porters, they will make the drivers of hackney-coaches and lackeys tipsy, buy a waiting-maid, suborn a porter. Why? For no reason. A pure passion for seeing, knowing, and penetrating into things. A pure itch for talking. And often these secrets once known, these mysteries made public, these enigmas illuminated by the light of day, bring on catastrophies, duels, failures, the ruin of families, and broken lives, to the great joy of those who have "found out everything," without any interest in the matter, and by pure instinct. A sad thing. — Victor Hugo

Light Breeze

As regards feeling pain,
like a hand cut in battle,
consider the body a robe you wear.


When you meet someone you love,
do you kiss their clothes?
Search out who's inside.


Union with God is sweeter
than body comforts.

We have hands and feet
different from these.
Sometimes in dream we see them.
That is not illusion.
It's seeing truly.
You do have a spirit body;

don't dread leaving the physical one. Sometimes someone feels this truth so strongly that he or she can live in mountain solitude totally refreshed.


The worried, heroic doings of men and women seem weary and futile to dervishes enjoying the light breeze of spirit. — Jalaluddin Rumi

My work is about your seeing. There is a rich tradition in painting of work about light, but it is not light
it is the record of seeing. My material is light, and it is responsive to your seeing. — James Turrell

The present generation sees everything clearly, marvels at the errors and laughs at the follies of its forefathers, not seeing that there are streaks of heavenly light in that history, that every letter in it cries aloud to them, that on all sides a pointing finger is turned upon it, upon the present generation. But the present generation laughs and proudly, self-confidently, enters upon a series of fresh errors at which their descendants will laugh again in their turn. — Nikolai Gogol

All his life, at every moment, Tolstoy possessed the faculty of seeing phenomena in the detached finality of each separate instant, in perfectly distinct outline, as we see only on rare occasions, in childhood, or on the crest of an all-renewing happiness, or in the triumph of a great spiritual victory.

To see things like that, our eye must be directed by passion. For it is passion that by its flash illuminates an object, intensifying its appearance.

Such passion, the passion of creative contemplation, Tolstoy constantly carried with him. It was precisely in its light that he saw everything in its pristine freshness, in a new way, as if for the first time. The authenticity of what he saw differs so much from what we are used to that it may appear strange to us. But Tolstoy was not seeking that strangeness, was not pursuing it as a goal, still less did he apply it to his works as a literary method. — Boris Pasternak

Your beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see and they will not be a substitute for seeing. — Flannery O'Connor

Parted lovers beguile absence by a thousand chimerical devices, which possess, however, a reality of their own. They are prevented from seeing each other, they cannot write to each other; they discover a multitude of mysterious means to correspond. They send each other the song of the birds, the perfume of the flowers, the smiles of children, the light of the sun, the sighings of the breeze, the rays of stars, all creation. And why not? All the works of God are made to serve love. Love is sufficiently potent to charge all nature with its messages.
Oh Spring! Thou art a letter that I write to her. — Victor Hugo

Of course the Curies died. They identified ionizing radiation while bathing in it. There were risks involved in being your own guinea pig. But there was a long tradition of scientists doing just that: of paying for the expansion of human knowledge with their lives. I didn't deserve to be categorized with them, because honestly, I wasn't interested in the greater good. I just wanted to make myself better legs. I didn't mind other people benefiting in some long-term indirect way but it wasn't what motivated me. I felt guilty about this for a while. Every time a lab assistant looked at me with starstruck eyes, I felt I should confess: Look, I'm not being heroic. I'm just interested in seeing what I can do. Then it occured to me that maybe they all felt this way. All these great scientists who risked their themselves to bring light to darkness, maybe they weren't especially altruistic either. Maybe they were like me, seeing what they could do. — Max Barry

He says, Love yourself ... This can become the foundation of a radical transformation. Don't be afraid of loving yourself. Love totally, and you will be surprised: The day you can get rid of all self-condemnation, self-disrespect - the day you can get rid of the idea of original sin, the day you can think of yourself as worthy and loved by existence - will be a day of great blessing. From that day onward you will start seeing people in their true light, and you will have compassion. And it will not be a cultivated compassion; it will be a natural, spontaneous flow. — Osho

Of all forms of mental activity, the most difficult to induce even in the minds of the young, who may be presumed not to have lost their flexibility, is the art of handling the same bundle of data as before, but placing them in a new system of relations with one another by giving them a different framework, all of which virtually means putting on a different kind of thinking-cap for the moment. It is easy to teach anybody a new fact ... but it needs light from heaven above to enable a teacher to break the old framework in which the student is accustomed to seeing. — Arthur Koestler

Essentially, this extra structure covering our life has no reality. It has come to be there because of the misuse of our minds. It's not a question of getting rid of it, since it has no reality; but it is a question of seeing its nature. And as we see its nature, instead of it being so thick and dark, the covering becomes more transparent: we see through it. Enlightenment (bringing in more light) is what happens in practice. Actually we're not getting rid of a structure, we're seeing through it as the dream it is, and as we realize its true nature its whole function in our life weakens; and at the same time we can see more accurately what is going on in our daily life. It's as if we have to go full circle. Our life is always all right. There's nothing — Charlotte Joko Beck

Everything that you see before you with your physical eyes is an illusion. In other words, you are not seeing correctly. Life is made up of light. But if you are only looking through the senses, it seems solid and physical. — Frederick Lenz

Heavy ships are so graceful in the water' Anna said at last, looking away. 'Compared to lighter crafts, I mean. If a boat is too light - if it bobs about on the waves - there's no grace to its motion. I believe that it's the same with birds. Large birds are not buffeted about by the wind. They always look so regal on the air. This fellow. Seeing him fly is like seeing a heavy ship cut through a wave. — Eleanor Catton

Contemplating the goodness within ourselves is a classical meditation, done to bring light, joy, and rapture to the mind. In contemporary times this practice might be considered rather embarrassing, because so often the emphasis is on all the unfortunate things we have done, all the disturbing mistakes we have made. Yet this classical reflection is not a way of increasing conceit. It is rather a commitment to our own happiness, seeing our happiness as the basis for intimacy with all of life. It fills us with joy and love for ourselves and a great deal of self-respect. Significantly, when we do metta practice, we begin by directing metta toward ourselves. This is the essential foundation for being able to offer genuine love to others — Sharon Salzberg

With fame, all of a sudden you're seeing yourself through the eyes of a world of men, and that's ... Look, it's very weird to have part and parcel of a job to feel like you're a lure for men to come into the theater. Some people do have a very innate sexuality to them. I may or may not have it, but it makes people see you in a certain light that has nothing to do with me. — Rose McGowan

I'd forgotten how enlivening it could feel, seeing clearly and far. Aridity frees light. It also unleashes grandeur. The earth here wasn't cloaked in forest, nor draped in green. Green was pastoral, peaceful, mild. Desert beauty was "sublime" in the way that the romantic poets had used the word- not peaceful dales but rugged mountain faces, not reassuring but daunting nature, the earth's skin and haunches, its spines and angles arching prehistorically in sunlight. — Julene Bair

Tantra is the perception of the oneness and the perfection of all things. Not just the perception of light, but the perception of darkness, seeing God in both beauty and horror. — Frederick Lenz

How solemn is this fact: nothing can be concealed from God! "For I know the things that come into your mind, every one of them" (Ezek. 11:5). Though he be invisible to us, we are not so to him. Neither the darkness of night, the closest curtains, nor the deepest dungeon can hide any sinner from the eyes of Omniscience. The trees of the garden were not able to conceal our first parents. No human eye beheld Cain murder his brother, but his Maker witnessed his crime. Sarah might laugh derisively in the seclusion of her tent, yet was it heard by Jehovah. Achan stole a wedge of gold and carefully hid it in the earth, but God brought it to light. David was at much pains to cover up his wickedness, but ere long the all-seeing God sent one of his servants to say to him, "Thou art the man!" And to writer and reader is also said, "Be sure your sin will find you out" (Num. 32:23). — Arthur W. Pink

And I have always had an especially great desire to learn to distinguish the true from the false, in order to see my way clearly in my actions, and to go forward with confidence in this life. It is true that, so long as I merely considered the customs of other men, I found hardly anything there about which to be confident, and that I noticed there was about as much diversity as I had previously found among the opinions of philosophers. Thus the greatest profit I derived from this was that, on seeing many things that, although they seem to us very extravagant and ridiculous, do not cease to be commonly accepted and approved among other great peoples, I learned not to believe anything too firmly of which I had been persuaded only by example and custom; and thus I little by little freed myself from many errors that can darken our natural light and render us less able to listen to reason. — Rene Descartes

My mother can make me feel good just by walking into the room. Her eyes sparkle and change color in the light. Her smile is as warm as a quilt. She's got a few gray streaks mixed in with her long brown hair, but I never think of her as old. When she looks at me, it's like she's seeing all the good things about me, none of the bad. I've never heard her raise her voice or say an unkind word to anyone, not even me or Gabe. — Rick Riordan

The capacity to see and - equally so - blindness are not divisible. The critical faculty of the human mind is one: To believe one can be seeing internally but blind as far as the outside world is concerned is like saying that the light of a candle gives light only in one direction and not in all. The light of the candle is reason's capacity for critical, penetrating, uncovering thought. — Erich Fromm

The sensuous person is liquid, flowing, fluid. Each experience, and he becomes it. Seeing a sunset, he is the sunset. Seeing the night, dark night, beautiful silent darkness, he becomes the darkness. In the morning he becomes the light. He is all that life is. He tastes life from every nook and corner, hence he becomes rich. This is real richness. Listening to music he is music, listening to the sound of water he becomes that sound. And when the wind passes through a bamboo grove, and the cracking bamboos, and he is not far away from them: he is amidst them, one of them - he is a bamboo. — Osho

The history of the Bible is one of perpetual revolution. In that light, we might begin to think about the Bible not so much as a fixed thing but as a dynamic, vital tradition. In light of its history, the Bible looks less like a rock than a river, continually flowing and changing, widening and narrowing, as it moves downstream.

For some, thinking about the Bible as a river and not a rock is liberating. That rock has been a millstone around the neck and a tombstone that won't be rolled away. But for others, seeing it this way can be disorienting. That rock has promised solid foundation in a stormy world. Cling to it or be swept away. — Timothy Beal

So my approach to troubleshooting is I go into the plant. The first thing I do before we change anything on the equipment is make the people operate it correctly. Stop screaming, stop poking all the animals with electric prods, bring up smaller groups. And then I see how it works. Then I go, "Okay. He's balking at seeing a lady standing there writing down cattle IDs. All right, get a big piece of cardboard, I'll cover her up. He'll balking at the restrainer. I'll turn a light on the restrainer entrance. 'So I just do a lot of little things, a lot of modifications with lights and cardboard to see if I can get it to work. And then after I've done that I go, "Well this is hopeless. You're going to have to build a new system, or we can fix it with these changes." There's an awful lot of systems where it's certainly not a system I would want to copy, but I can make it work. The plant can live with it. — Robert Greene

With a truly tragic delusion," Carl Jung noted, "these theologians fail to see that it is not a matter of proving the existence of the light, but of blind people who do not know that their eyes could see. It is high time we realized that it is pointless to praise the light and preach it if nobody can see it. It is much more needful to teach people the art of seeing. — Carl Jung

Make a goal that is one that your neighbor won't understand: "My goal is to be where I belong with those who belong with me, and it may take me many unusual places. My goal is to be at peace in my heart with all of it. I am not worried about my future because I am not alone. I believe that there is spiritual logic in this, for it has to do with potentials I cannot know about now, but instead I trust that they are there and that therefore my pathway is illuminated with lights that I am not seeing yet. But I can see one ahead of me, and it is called spiritual logic, intuition, and the love of God. After I pass the one light, another one will show itself, I don't have to see them all. I don't have to know where I'm going. I am relaxed in the arms of Spirit. — Monika Muranyi

Her work failed her. She had reached a desperate, claustrophobic stage of being imprisoned halfway in a novel: there was too much behind her for her to retreat and not a glimmer of light ahead. She sat for hours without writing, staring at the last few wrods on the page, seeing no significance in them. Her characters fell into frozen poses, speech died on their lips: they had sat at a banquet for weeks and she had not the power to bring them to their feet again. — Elizabeth Taylor

I would not wish depression on anybody. And yet, it taught me a lot. I have not become suddenly mawkishly grateful for my life but I am more interested in it, more engaged you might say. When you have spent long years in the dark, there is joy in seeing the light and pleasure, above all, in the ordinary. — Sally Brampton

Thus, on the one hand, Spenser's thought is steeped in sensuous detail, so that for him there is no really abstract thinking; men, he thinks, 'should be satisfied with the use of these days, seeing all things accounted by their showes, and nothing esteemed of, that is not delightfull and pleasing to commune sense' ( Prefatory Letter). But on the other hand the details of the physical universe become translucent from the pulsing light of varied human experience which is seen behind it. His 'haunt and the main region of (his) song' is the inner life of man and it is described in the symbolism of human figures clothed in raiment iridescent with innumerable associations. His art is a development of the mediaeval. — Janet Spens

Sometimes I think that the point of birdwatching is not the actual seeing of the birds, but the cultivation of patience. Of course, each time we set out, there's a certain amount of expectation we'll see something, maybe even a species we've never seen before, and that it will fill us with light. But even if we don't see anything remarkable - and sometimes that happens - we come home filled with light anyway. — Lynn Thomson

It is the sense of mystery that, in my opinion, drives the true scientist; the same force, blindly seeing, deafly hearing, unconsciously remembering, that drives the larva into the butterfly. If he has not experienced, at least a few times in his life, this cold shudder down his spine, this confrontation with an immense, invisible face whose breath moves him to tears, he is not a scientist. The blacker the night, the brighter the light. — Erwin Chargaff

Naturally - and why should I not admit this - I have occasionally wondered to myself how things might have turned out in the long run ... I only speculate this now because in the light of subsequent events, it could well be argued that in making my decision ... I was perhaps not entirely aware of the full implications of what I was doing. Indeed, it might even be said that this small decision of mine constituted something of a key turning point; that that decision set things on an inevitable course towards what eventually happened.
But then, I suppose, when with the benefit of hindsight one begins to search one's past for such 'turning points', one is apt to start seeing them everywhere ... What would have transpired, one may ask, had one responded slightly differently ... ? And perhaps - occurring as it did around the same time as these events? — Kazuo Ishiguro

I was completely astonished by the beauty of nature. Our eyes see just a small fraction of the light in the world. It is a trick to make a colored world, which does not exist outside of human beings. — Albert Hofmann

For those of you who are seeing the spiritual life, I recommend these four daily practices: Spend time alone each day in receptive silence. When angry, or afflicted with any negative emotion, take time to be alone with God. (Do not talk with people who are angry; they are irrational and cannot be reasoned with. If you or they are angry, it is best to leave and pray.) Visualize God's light each day and send it to someone who needs help. Exercise the body, it is the temple of the soul. — Peace Pilgrim

That goes for old wounds, too, you know. I really wish we'd had the chance to talk before this," he says, cracking the window so the smoke can escape. "There's a Longfellow quote I have stuck on my bulletin board at the church office- 'There is no grief like the grief that does not speak'- and it's true. I've found that keeping pain inside doesn't give it a chance to heal, but bringing it out into the light, holding it right there in your hands and trusting that you're strong enough to make it through, not hating the pain, not loving it, just seeing it for what it really is can change how you go on from there. Time alone doesn't heal emotional wounds, Sayre, and you don't want to live the rest of your life bottled up with anger and guilt and bitterness. That's how people self-destruct. — Laura Wiess

It is not seeing straight to see him as an animal. It is not sane. It sins against the light; — G.K. Chesterton

If you are not proud of your cellar, there is no thrill of satisfaction in seeing your guest hold up his wineglass to the light and look judicial. — George Eliot

"You know you are seeing such a photograph if you say to yourself, "I could have taken that picture. I've seen such a scene before, but never like that." It is the kind of photography that relies for its strengths not on special equipment or effects but on the intensity of the photographer's seeing. It is the kind of photography in which the raw materials-light, space, and shape-are arranged in a meaningful and even universal way that gives grace to ordinary objects." — Sam Abell

Sin is to a nature what blindness is to an eye. The blindness is an evil or defect which is a witness to the fact that the eye was created to see the light and, hence, the very lack of sight is the proof that the eye was meant ... to be the one particularly capable of seeing the light. Were it not for this capacity, there would be no reason to think of blindness as a misfortune. — Augustine Of Hippo

Seeing the light is a choice, not seeing the light is no choice. — Douglas Horton

Before the Dawn
In the darkest night the sun may seem like an extinguished match or an ember drowned by rain.
A light forever lost.
The cold world grows steadily colder and shrinks like the abused, closing in on all sides. Laughter, smiles, the glimmer of dancing eyes, and all else indicative of human brightness is gone. Colors leeched from everything leave shadows and emotion dull-gray in their absence.
Time is a void. A moment feels eternal.
Hope does not blossom in the darkness but withers fast, starving for what only the sun can offer. As its petals turn to dust, fear blows in and sweeps the remnants away. The soul succumbs by degrees to nightmares emboldened by the dead of night.
All is lost! All is lost!
The wretched sun, repulsed by our nothingness,
has abandoned the lives in its care!
And then the eyes open wide,
seeing mountains take shape on the horizon. — Richelle E. Goodrich

TO MR. CYRIACK SKINNER UPON HIS BLINDNESS
Cyriack, this three years day these eys, though clear
To outward view, of blemish or of spot;
Bereft of light thir seeing have forgot,
Nor to thir idle orbs doth sight appear
Of Sun or Moon or Starre throughout the year,
Or man or woman. Yet I argue not
Against heavns hand or will, nor bate a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear vp and steer
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?
The conscience, Friend, to have lost them overply'd
In libertyes defence, my noble task,
Of which all Europe talks from side to side.
This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask
Content though blind, had I no better guide. — John Milton

If an object - a star, for instance, like our own sun - is eight hundred light years away from the Earth, it would take light leaving that object eight hundred years until it reached our eyes. So when you look at that object, you are seeing it as it appeared eight hundred light years ago, not as it looks today. It might not even exist anymore. Every time you look up at the stars, you are looking into the past. — Wendy Mass

Each religion claims the future for its followers; or, at least, the good thereof. The evil is for those benighted ones who will have none of it; seeing the light the true believers worship, as the fishes see the stars, but dimly. The religions come and the religions pass, and the civilisations come and pass, and naught endures but the world and human nature. Ah! if man would but see that hope is from within and not from without - that he himself must work out his own salvation! He is there, and within him is the breath of life and a knowledge of good and evil as good and evil is to him. Thereon let him build and stand erect, and not cast himself before the image of some unknown God, modelled like his poor self, but with a bigger brain to think the evil thing, and a longer arm to do it. — H. Rider Haggard

But then he saw it, then he saw what he had known he was seeing and could not accept. There in the night, amid the mist, upon the flat of the plains, the shimmer of light from Allear was not right. The grasses were too flat, the mists curled awkwardly, as if impeded by some large mass and then the glamor was gone, the trick revealed.
And before Thorin's very eyes, a mass of soldiers appeared - thousands of them - wearing black and facing his camp. Doom settled around Thorin like some shroud for a watery grave.
"Ah, bloody hell. — Clifton Hill

Hey!" I exclaimed, seeing Khol standing beside my bed with my pillow in his hands. His tall frame seemed to take up more room in the light of day, and his dark auburn hair looked like fire in the morning sun. His mere physical presence in the same room as me still caused my body to shiver with excitement. Damn . . . not good. — D.T. Dyllin

The fact was, that the moment he began to love Alice, his eyes began to send forth light. What he thought came from Alice's face, really came from his eyes. All about her and her path he could see, and every minute saw better; but to his own path he was blind. He could not see his hand when he held it straight before his face, so dark was it. But he could see Alice, and that was better than seeing the way-- ever so much. — George MacDonald

I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe. At present I have to make the new settler Lydgate better known to any one interested in him than he could possibly be even to those who had seen the most of him since his arrival in Middlemarch. — George Eliot

He had his one life. In June 1942 he went to Lazarevo holding it in his hands. By the shores of the Kama, he found her gorgeous and restored, and not just restored to her original shining brilliance but enlarged and clarified. Light reflected off her, no matter which way she turned. They ran down to the almighty river. She never even looked back. She would never know what it meant to him, an unremitting sinner, after all the unsacred things he had seen and done, to have her innocence. He held her to him. He had dreamed of it too long, touching her. Dreamed of seeing her naked too long, beautiful, bare, ready for him. He was afraid to hurt her. He had never been with an untouched girl before; he wasn't sure if he was supposed to do something first. In the end, he did nothing first, but she baptized him with her body. There was no Alexander anymore; the man he knew had died and was reborn inside a perfect heart, given to him straight from God, to him and for him. — Paullina Simons

Pain, fear, humiliation, it turned his beautiful dark eyes into a window of hell. It was the first glimpse I'd had of the prison he lived in. A captive to the uncontrollable tics ravaging his body. I think it was then I understood the solace he found in the light. Just as it blinded the world to seeing what was there, it blinded Morgan. It tucked him away from the things he could not control and the things reminding him he was different. How he would never truly fit in. How he existed on the edge between here and wherever it was he went when the light spoke to him. — Adrienne Wilder

Ladislaw lingering behind while Naumann had gone into the Hall of Statues where he again saw Dorothea, and saw her in that brooding abstraction which made her pose remarkable. She did not really see the streak of sunlight on the floor more than she saw the statues: she was inwardly seeing the light of years to come in her own home and over the English fields and elms and hedge-bordered highroads; and feeling that the way in which they might be filled with joyful devotedness was not so clear to her as it had been. But in Dorothea's mind there was a current into which all thought and feeling were apt sooner or later to flow - the reaching forward of the whole consciousness towards the fullest truth, the least partial good. There was clearly something better than anger and despondency. — George Eliot

Taking off the masks, being real, and living in freedom - this is a process. After all, it takes some time to get to know the real you. This is not about loving yourself more and embracing the "you" that you were always meant to be. No, this is about seeing the real you in the real Light. It is a good thing to feel horrified by the real you and run to the only One who can save you from yourself. The gospel frees you to believe that there is no "making it" and therefore you can stop "faking it." You already have everything you need through the righteousness earned for you on the cross. If you believe these truths, the masks you wear will begin to melt away. Then, bit by bit, we can help one another become free as well. Allow other moms to be imperfect. Allow yourself to be imperfect. Be free! — Kimm Crandall

These eyes, tho' clear To outward view of blemish or of spot, Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot, Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year, Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not Against Heaven's hand or will, not bate a jot Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer Right onward. — John Milton

Today's photographers think differently. Many can't see real light anymore. They think only in terms of strobe - sure, it all looks beautiful but it's not really seeing. If you have the eyes to see it, the nuances of light are already there on the subject's face. If your thinking is confined to strobe light sources, your palette becomes very mean - which is the reason I photograph only in available light. — Alfred Eisenstaedt

I am not an advocate of Enlightenment. On the contrary, I see it as a form of light pollution, which prevents us from seeing the stars. — Roger Scruton

A stranger can see in an instant something in you that you might spend years learning about yourself. How awful we all are when we look at ourselves under a light, finally seeing our reflections. How little we know about ourselves. How much forgiveness it must take to love a person, to choose not to see their flaws, or to see those flaws and love the person anyway. If you never forgive you'll always be alone. — Stephen Elliott

The sad truths I've been taught by the families of the dead are these: seeing is believing; knowing is better than not knowing; to name the hurt returns a kind of comfort; the grief ignored will never go away. For those whose sons and daughters, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers and friends went off alive and never did return, the worst that can happen has already happened. The light and air of what is known, however difficult, is better than the dark. The facts of death, like the facts of life, are required learning. — Thomas Lynch

September laughed a little. She tried to make it sound light and happy, as though it were all over now and how funny it was, when you think about it, that simply not having another person by you could hurt so. But it did not come out quite right; there was a heaviness in her laughing like ice at the bottom of a glass. She still missed Saturday, yet he was standing right beside her! Missing him had become a part of her, like a hard, dark bone, and she needed so much more than a few words to let it go. In all this while, she had spent more time missing Saturday than seeing him. — Catherynne M Valente

Photography begins not in the camera but in the
mind and the eye. The real work is one of noticing and appreciating, seeing things clearly and differently, and
sharing that vision with others. I have developed my
vision and my photographic craft in order to bring
the beauty of nature to light in a fresh way that
can inspire and nourish people. — Bill Atkinson

Oh, it's mysterious lamplit evenings, here in the galaxy, one after the other. It's one of those nights when I wander from window to window, looking for a sign. But I can't see. Terror and a beauty insoluble are a ribband of blue woven into the fringes of garments of things both great and small. No culture explains, no bivouac offers real haven or rest. But it could be that we are not seeing something. Galileo thought that comets were an optical illusion. This is fertile ground: since we are certain that they're not, we can look at what scientists are saying with fresh hope. What if there are really gleaming castellated cities hung upside-down over the desert sand? What limpid lakes and cool date palms have our caravans passed untried? Until, one by one, by the blindest of leaps, we light on the road to these places, we must stumble in darkness and hunger. — Annie Dillard

Men and women are learning animals. If you do not see what they have learned, you're blind. They are creatures ever changing, ever improving, ever expanding their vision and the capacity of their hearts. You are not fair to them when you speak of this as the most bloody century; you are not seeing the light that shines ever more radiantly on account of the darkness; you are not. seeing the evolution of the human soul! ... ... True, what you say about war. Yes, and the cries of the dying, I too have heard them; we have all heard them, through all the decades; and even now, the world is shocked by daily reports of armed conflict. But it is the outcry against these horrors which is the light I speak of; it's the attitudes which were never possible in the past. It is the intolerance of thinking men and women in power who for the first time in the history of the human race truly want to put an end to injustice in all forms.
Marius to Akasha (The Vampire Chronicles) — Anne Rice

Her eyes bothered him most. Unlike the Kai, hers were layers of opaque white, blue ringed in gray and black pinpoint centers that expanded or contracted with the light. The first time he'd witnessed that reaction in a human, all the hairs on his nape stood straight up. That, and the way the contrasting colors made it easy to see the eyes move in their sockets gave the impression they weren't body parts but entities unto themselves living as parasites inside their hosts' skulls.

He was used to seeing the frantic eye-rolling in a frightened horse but not a person. If the parasite impression didn't repulse him so much, he'd think humans lived in a constant state of hysterical terror. — Grace Draven

We may be only one of millions of advanced civilizations. Unfortunately, space being spacious, the average distance between any two of these civilizations is reckoned to be at least two hundred light-years, which is a great deal more than merely saying it makes it sound. It means for a start that even if these beings know we are here and are somehow able to see us in their telescopes, they're watching light that left Earth two hundred years ago. So, they're not seeing you and me. They're watching the French Revolution and Thomas Jefferson and people in silk stockings and powdered wigs
people who don't know what an atom is, or a gene, and who make their electricity by rubbing a rod of amber with a piece of fur and think that's quite a trick. Any message we receive from them is likely to begin "Dear Sire," and congratulate us on the handsomness of our horses and our mastery of whale oil. Two hundred light-years is a distance so far beyond us as to be, well, just beyond us. — Bill Bryson

Mother." Alec's voice as he interrupted his mother was firm, implacable, and not
unkind. "Father. There's something I have to tell you." He smiled at them. "I'm seeing someone."
Robert Lightwood looked at his son with some exasperation. "Alec," he said.
"This is hardly the time."
"Yes, it is. This is important. You see, I'm not just seeing anyone." Words
seemed to be pouring out of Alec in a torrent, while his parents looked on in
confusion. Isabelle and Magnus were staring at him with expressions of nearly identical astonishment. "I'm seeing a Downworlder. In fact, I'm seeing a war - "
Magnus's fingers moved, quick as a flash of light, in Alec's direction. There was a faint shimmer in the air around Alec - his eyes rolled up - and he dropped to the floor, felled like a tree. — Cassandra Clare

The closest I'd ever got to seeing a naked woman before was black and white cleavage, and then Rosie tossed her clothes in a corner just like they were getting in the way and spun around in the dim light of Number 16, palms up, luminous, laughing, almost close enough to touch. The thought still knocks the wind out of me. I was too young even to know what I wanted to do about her, I just knew nothing in the World, not the Mona Lisa walking through the Grand Canyon with the Holy Grail in one hand and a winning lotto ticket in the other, was ever going to be that beautiful. — Tana French

I do not deny that he was eccentric; the mania he had for keeping that cat and teasing her until she flew at his face like a demon, was certainly eccentric. I never could understand why he kept the creature, nor what pleasure he found in shutting himself up in his room with this surly, vicious beast. I remember once, glancing up from the manuscript I was studying by the light of some tallow dips, and seeing Mr. Wilde squatting motionless on his high chair, his eyes fairly blazing with excitement, while the cat, which had risen from her place before the stove, came creeping across the floor right at him. Before I could move she flattened her belly to the ground, crouched, trembled, and sprang into his face. Howling and foaming they rolled over and over on the floor, scratching and clawing, until the cat screamed and fled under the cabinet, and Mr. Wilde turned over on his back, his limbs contracting and curling up like the legs of a dying spider. He was eccentric. — Robert W. Chambers

There's a difference between wanting to be looked at and wanting to be seen.
When you are looked at, your eyes can be closed. You suck energy, you steal the spotlight. When you are seen, your eyes must be open, and you are seeing and recognizing your witness. You accept energy and you generate energy. You create light.
One is exhibitionism, the other is connection.
Not everybody wants to be looked at.
Everybody wants to be seen. — Amanda Palmer

Would this make sense to the TV audience? That a thing like a protest expands and draws everything into it. He wants to tell his audience that the reality they are seeing on television is not Reality. Imagine a single drop of water: that's the protest. Now put that drop of water into a bucket: that's the protest movement. Now drop that bucket into Lake Michigan: that's Reality. But old Cronkite knows the danger of television is that people begin seeing the entire world through that single drop of water. How that one drop refracts the light becomes the whole picture. For many people, whatever they see tonight will cement in place everything they think about protest and peace and the sixties. And he feels, pressingly, that it's his job to prevent this closure. — Nathan Hill

Everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. Concealed sin keeps us from seeing the light of Christ. — John Piper

You're the sunset." "Oh." "Because I can't describe your beauty - and every day I see you, it's like seeing a new sunset, you're never the same. I always notice something different about the way the light reflects off your eyes. Or the way your hair feels when I run my fingers through it. You're not just pretty. You're indescribable. You're terrifying in your beauty - and I. Love. You. — Rachel Van Dyken

The smallest thing by the influence of eternity is made infinite and eternal. We pass through a standing continent or region of ages, that are already ebfore us, glorious and perfect while we come to them. Like men in a ship we pass forward, the shores and marks seeming to go backward, though we move and they stand still. We are not with them in our progressive motion, but prevent the swiftness of our course, and are present with them in our understandings. Like the sun we dart our rays before us, and occupy those spaces with light and contemplation which we move towards, but possess not with our bodies. And seeing all things in the light of Divine knowledge, eternally serving God, rejoice unspeakable in that service, and enjoy it all. — Thomas Traherne

First of all, I'll tell you who I'm not. I'm not your enemy, so you can put the sharp pointy objects away,' he responded in a light conversational tone, obviously not deterred by my abrasiveness, which only pissed me off more to know he didn't find me to be a threat at all.
'Well, first of all, I'll be the judge of that,' I cut him off before he could continue. 'And second of all, I'm not interested in who you're not,' I added.
'So you're saying you're interested in who I am?' He gave me a moment to process what he said before a smile broke on his face.
My cheeks flamed. 'Hardly. Just interested in whether or not I'll be seeing you around again,' I was seething and beginning to shake with indignation.
'So you want to see me again? — Alicia Deters

Perceptions are not reality. How you perceive your life, your value, and your destiny doesn't give you the whole picture. You may be seeing yourself and your significance dimly. But your self-perception determines in large measure the way your life will go ... It is vital that those deep questions at the core of your being are answered with truth. Dim or mistaken perceptions that aren't in keeping with reality must be challenged and corrected by the light of God's Word. — Chip Ingram

I imagine the dead waking, dazed, into a shadowless light in which they know themselves altogether for the first time. It is a light that is merciless until they can accept its mercy; by it they are at once condemned and redeemed. It is Hell until it is Heaven. Seeing themselves in that light, if they are willing, they see how far they have failed the only justice of loving one another; it punishes them by their own judgment. And yet, in suffering that light's awful clarity, in seeing themselves in it, they see its forgiveness and its beauty, and are consoled. In it they are loved completely, even as they have been, and so are changed into what they could not have been but what, if they could have imagined it, they would have wished to be. — Wendell Berry