Quotes & Sayings About Sight And Blindness

The Mutakallemim ... apply the term non-existence only to absolute non-existence, and not to absence of properties. A property and the absence of that property are considered by them as two opposites, they treat, e.g. , blindness and sight, death and life, in the same way as heat and cold. Therefore they say, without any qualification, non-existence does not require any agent, an agent is required when something is produced. — Maimonides

Finally he said that in his first years of darkness his dreams had been vivid beyond all expectation and that he had come to thirst for them but that dreams and memories alike had faded one by one until there were no more. Of all that once had been no trace remained. The look of the world. The faces of loved ones. Finally even his own person was lost to him. Whatever he had been he was no more. He said that like every man who comes to the end of something there was nothing to be done but to begin again. I can't remember the world of light, he said. It has been so long. The world is a fragile world. Ultimately, what can be seen is what endures. What is true ...
In my first years of blindness, I thought it was a form of death. I was wrong. Losing one's sight is like falling in a dream. You think there's no bottom to this abyss. You fall and fall. Light recedes. Memory of light. Memory of the world. Of your own face. Of the grim-faced mask. — Cormac McCarthy

To even begin to embrace the magnitude of God's vision, we must first embrace our vision as being nothing more than vision by definition. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

My volcano of compress anger was about to erupt in school, and it would take more than five years for my molten lava to be brought under control, which was through the loss of my sight. However, shouldn't there be a way of detecting and reaching out to kids like me before there is a massive problem? Why wait until there is a devastating eruption before we intervene? — Drexel Deal

There are poisons that blind you, and poisons that open your eyes. — August Strindberg

Discernment is first of all a habit, a way of seeing that eventually permeates our whole life. It is the journey from spiritual blindness (not seeing God anywhere or seeing him only where we expect to see him) to spiritual sight (finding God everywhere, especially where we least expect it). — Ruth Haley Barton

You collect art: you must know that the miniature artists, at the end of careers spent painting the tiniest, most exacting details that no one would ever look at, would often put their eyes out with needles. Too much beauty, yes, but also too much seeing. They were tired of seeing. The dark was safe and warm and comfortable. Blindness was a gift. I still have seeing to do. — Ian McDonald

The recovery of spiritual sight and the healing of physical blindness have much in common. Some of those whose bodily eyes were blind received their sight at once, like the man who heard and immediately saw and was healed (Lk. 18:35-43). Others recovered their sight gradually, as in the case of the man, who, before he was completely cured, said, 'I see men as trees, walking' (Mk. 8:22-26). It is the same with those whose spiritual eyes are healed. Whereas some recover instantly? others are healed in stages? — Gregory Palamas

Often eating took considerable extra time, since he could hardly see his food, groping with a fork or spoon, enforcedly omnivorous. "Blind men wear spotted pants," Dorothy teased, telling him to wash his... — Edward Hoagland

The blindness that opens the eye is not the one that darkens vision. Tears and not sight are the essence of the eye. — Jacques Derrida

Tilting her face back, he looked into her eyes. They were unfocused, unable to settle on his face. And the same terrifying feeling stole over him once again. An acute fear - a final, painful realization - that her world was one of utter blackness. At last he realized the magnitude
of her blindness. He couldn't imagine never seeing her again.
It was like a death, the inevitable conclusion when someone was gone. Why it should hit him now, after all these years, he could not fathom, but it was there, and finally he understood her private hell. He'd told her he would die without sight. Selfish, arrogant bastard, concerned
with his own needs, his own perversions to watch
himself pleasure her, to study her as she accepted him, to watch their bodies joined. How carelessly he had said that, not thinking of Elizabeth and what she would die for. What she wanted in this life. — Charlotte Featherstone

I have heard of the stars, of the play of light on the waves
these i would like to see
but far more than sight
i wish for my ears to be opened
the voice of a friend
the imaginations of mozart
life without these is darker by far
than blindness — Helen Keller

Blindness took away my sight but gave me clarity of vision. It took blindness to teach me the meaning of love and friendship. — Lisa Fittipaldi

Ay, on the shores of darkness there is a light, and precipices show untrodden green; there is a budding morrow in midnight; there is triple sight in blindness keen. — John Keats

The bible gives me a deep comforting sense that (things seen are temporal,and things unseen are eternal. — Helen Keller

I've always been on the side of science that tries to help man. I play an active part with the foundations I'm involved in. Science gives hope. If it were offered to me? Never say never. But I wouldn't kill or steal to have my sight. My blindness doesn't define my life. — Andrea Bocelli

Some ancient oversight had nearly taken his sight, but this sad fuck was already blind inside. — Carla H. Krueger

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

Evil denotes the lack of good. Not every absence of good is an evil, for absence may be taken either in a purely negative or in aprivative sense. Mere negation does not display the character of evil, otherwise nonexistents would be evil and moreover, a thing would be evil for not possessing the goodness of something else, which would mean that man is bad for not having the strength of a lion or the speed of a wild goat. But what is evil is privation; in this sense blindness means the privation of sight. — Thomas Aquinas

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

My soul is full of whispered song,-My blindness is my sight;The shadows that I feared so longAre full of life and light. — Alice Cary

Doth God exact day-labor, light denied,'
I fondly ask; but patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, 'God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts, who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best, his state
Is kingly. Thousands at His bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.'
~Sonnet 19: On His Blindness (1655)~ — John Milton

Most people have the blindness of new-born things - a not-incurable blindness, the sight being there but its use not known. — Josephine Johnson

Losing my sight had nothing to do with my focus on music. My passion for music was already there, so it would be a mistake to give too much significance to my blindness. — Andrea Bocelli

I see blindness more as an ability and sight more as a disability because there are some people with sight who tend to judge others by what they see on the outside but I don't see that. I don't see the skin color, the hair style or the clothing people wear; I only see that which is within a person. — Patrick Henry Hughes

People often say that blindness sharpens hearing, but I don't think this is so. My ears were hearing no better, but I was making better use of them. Sight is a miraculous instrument offering us all the riches of physical life. But we get nothing in this world without paying for it, and in return for all the benefits that sight brings we are forced to give up others whose existence we don't even suspect. These were the gifts I received in such abundance. — Jacques Lusseyran

When you have once gained sight, it is impossible to feign blindness. — Svetlana Alliluyeva

I didn't realize it until now, but I don't really know anything about them, or what kind of people they are, really. You can't see inside a person's heart. — Koushun Takami

TEIRESIAS:
I tell you, king, this man, this murderer
(whom you have long declared you are in search of,
indicting him in threatening proclamation
as murderer of Laius)- he is here.
In name he is a stranger among citizens
but soon he will be shown to be a citizen
true native Theban, and he'll have no joy
of the discovery: blindness for sight
and beggary for riches his exchange,
he shall go journeying to a foreign country
tapping his way before him with a stick.
He shall be proved father and brother both
to his own children in his house; to her
that gave him birth, a son and husband both;
a fellow sower in his father's bed
with that same father that he murdered.
Go within, reckon that out, and if you find me
mistaken, say I have no skill in prophecy. — Sophocles

That was one thing about the Deaf community I always admired beyond belief - they were the most accepting lot I'd ever come across. It didn't matter what else you had to deal with, blindness, mental challenges, fetal alcohol syndrome, autism, whatever else you were dealing with, if you were culturally Deaf, they accepted you as one of their own. Even, apparently, if you had supernatural sight. — Darynda Jones

I don't think it had ever occurred to me that man's supremacy is not primarily due to his brain, as most of the books would have one think. It is due to the brain's capacity to make use of the information conveyed to it by a narrow band of visible light rays. His civilization, all that he had achieved or might achieve, hung upon his ability to perceive that range of vibrations from red to violet. Without that, he was lost. — John Wyndham

We need to 'go out,' then, in order to experience our own anointing, its power and its redemptive efficacy: to the 'outskirts' where there is suffering, bloodshed, blindness that longs for sight, and prisoners in thrall to many evil masters, — Pope Francis

There are many degrees of sight and many degrees of blindness. What senses do we lack that we cannot see another world all around us? — Frank Herbert

As Borges himself showed us in so many stories - "The Aleph", "The Garden of Forking Paths", "The Gift", "Blue Tigers", "Shakespeare's Memory" - a blessing is always a mixed blessing.
As Borges noted sadly, he inherited a library, and blindness; we who study Borges inherit great sight, yet the rest of the library somehow fades.

(pg 303, "What I Lost When I Translated Jorge Luis Borges") — Andrew Hurley