Quotes & Sayings About What The Eye Sees

We see things based on autopilot. Our mind identifies something in a certain way, no matter what the eye sees. The eye tells you one thing and the brain tells you another. — Jerry Andrus

The concrete, physical reality of inequality is visible to the naked eye and naturally inspires sharp but contradictory political judgments. Peasant and noble, worker and factory owner, waiter and banker: each has his or her own unique vantage point and sees important aspects of how other people live and what relations of power and domination exist between social groups, and these observations shape each person's judgment of what is and is not just. Hence there will always be a fundamentally subjective and psychological dimension to inequality, which inevitably gives rise to political conflict that no purportedly scientific analysis can alleviate. — Thomas Piketty

What the Londoner sees in his mind's eye is that cluster of towers and pinnacles seen from Pentonville Hill and outlined against a foggy sunset, and the great arc of Barlow's train shed gaping to devour incoming engines, and the sudden burst of exuberant Gothic of the hotel seen from gloomy Judd Street ... — John Betjeman

Perception is a clash of mind and eye, the eye believing what it sees, the mind seeing what it believes. — Robert Breault

Only
but this is rare
When a beloved hand is laid in ours,
When, jaded with the rush and glare
Of the interminable hours,
Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear,
When our world-deafen'd ear
Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd
A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.
The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,
And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.
A man becomes aware of his life's flow,
And hears its winding murmur; and he sees
The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze. — Matthew Arnold

The novelist is required to open his eyes on the world around him and look. If what he sees is not highly edifying, he is still required to look. Then he is required to reproduce, with words, what he sees. — Flannery O'Connor

Heav'n from all creatures hides the book of Fate,
All but the page prescrib'd, their present state;
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know:
Or who could suffer Being here below?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy Reason, would he skip and play?
Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flow'ry food,
And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood.
Oh blindness to the future! kindly giv'n,
That each may fill the circle mark'd by Heav'n;
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall. — Alexander Pope

It's only with the heart one sees clearly, for what's essential is invisible to the eye. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

The eye sees what it brings the power to see. — Thomas Carlyle

What else did he say?"
"Just that. He's going to The Eye, and he's sorry." She screwed up her face. "Oh, and some weird thing about telling you that he still feels the same way about that tent, and he promises to say it to you in person next time he sees you."
I gave a bark of laughter that was more of a sob, "That asshat," I blubbered.
Elodie nodded in sympathy. "Such an asshat."
When I'd left Thorne Abbey, I'd held Archer's sword and had a sense that somehow things would turn out all right. Please, I thought. The rest of my magic is back, so let me have that power, too.
But there was no reply except the whistling of the wind. — Rachel Hawkins

In every art we are always obliged to return to the accepted means of expression, the conventional language of the art. What is a black-and-white drawing but a convention to which the beholder has become so accustomed that with his mind's eye he sees a complete equivalent in the translation from nature? — Eugene Delacroix

I did television for a very long time, but if you're on television, words don't count. What the eye sees beats the words. If you switch sides, from radio to television, you learn that the wordiness that you learn on the radio is useless or not nearly as powerful, and you have to learn to trust that the eye will just beat the ear. — Robert Krulwich

Literally, no man ever sees himself as others see him. No photograph or reflection ever gives us the same slant on ourselves that others see. It has often been proved on the witness stand that no two people ever see the same accident precisely the same way. We see through different eyes and from different angles. But if we could see things as other people see them, we could come closer to knowing why they do what they do and why they say what they say. — Richard L. Evans

When a person seeks," Siddhartha said, "it can easily happen that his eye sees only the thing he is seeking; he is incapable of finding anything, of allowing anything to enter into him, because he is always thinking only of what he is looking for, because he has a goal, because he is possessed by his goal. Seeking means having a goal. Finding means being free, being open, having no goal. You, Venerable One, are perhaps indeed a seeker, for, striving to reach your goal, you overlook many things that lie close before your eyes. — Hermann Hesse

With today's fast films, you can light the way your eye sees the scene. You can abuse the film and create subtleties in contrast with light and exposure, diffusion and filters. That's what makes it an art. — Conrad Hall

What I am after is the first impression - I want to show all one sees on first entering the room - what my eye takes in at first glance. — Pierre Bonnard

Any fool can turn a blind eye but who knows what the ostrich sees in the sand. — Samuel Beckett

I feel it is the heart, not the eye, that should determine the content of the photograph. What the eye sees is its own. What the heart can perceive is a very different matter. — Gordon Parks

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend. — Robertson Davies

Listen to me, maggots. Listen for your lives, for that's what it could mean some day. You never see all that you see. One of the things they send you to me for is to show you what you don't see in what you see
what you don't see when you're scared, or fighting or running or fucking. No man sees al that he sees, but before you're gunslinger
those of you who don't go west, that is,
you'll see more in one single glance than some men see in a lifetime. And some of what you don't see in that glance you'll see afterwards, in the eye of your memory
if you live long enough to remember, that is. Because the difference between seeing and not seeing can be the difference between the living and dying. — Stephen King

ALIF: Painting brings to life what the mind sees, as a feast for the eyes.
LAM: What the eye sees in the world enters the painting to the degree that it serves the mind.
MIM: Consequently, beauty is the eye discovering in our own world what the mind already knows. — Orhan Pamuk

To ensure that our views are credible, our brain accepts what our eye sees. To ensure that our views are positive, our eye looks for what our brain wants. The conspiracy between these two servants allows us to live at the fulcrum of stark reality and comforting illusion. — Daniel Gilbert

Our perceptions take on richness and depth as a result of all the things that we learn. The eye is not a camera that objectively takes a photo of the "world out there." Rather, what the eye sees is determined by what the brain has learned. This suggests a short mantra: learn more, see more. — Richard Restak

What's a book? Everything or nothing. The eye that sees it all. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

You are one with the same force that provides the spiral arms of the galaxy. That universal creativity. It's also what you are as well. And when the mystic eye is open and sees that, a person is forever changed ! — Alex Grey

The bad economist sees only what immediately strikes the eye; the good economist also looks beyond. The bad economist sees only the direct consequences of a proposed course; the good economist looks also at the longer and indirect consequences. The bad economist sees only what the effect of a given policy has been or will be on one particular group; the good economist inquires also what the effect of the policy will be on all groups. — Henry Hazlitt

Basically it is your choice. No matter what spiritual path you have taken, no matter what experiences you have had, choice is still choice. Spiritual development doesn't happen automatically. It is choosing the eye of Tao that sees both the whole view of things from a distance and the core of reality from deep inside. — Ilchi Lee

See what a hidden life the life of a good Christian is, and how much it is concealed from the eye and observation of the world. The most important part of the business lies between God and our own souls, in the frame of our spirits and the working of our hearts, in our actions that no eye sees except the all-seeing God. Justly are the saints called God's hidden ones, and His secret is said to be with them. They have meat to eat and work to do that the world does not know of, as well as joys, griefs, and cares that a stranger does not share. — Matthew Henry

The eye of the intellect "sees in all objects what it brought with it the means of seeing." — Thomas Carlyle

I am as one
Who doth attempt some lofty mountain's height,
And having gained what to the upcast eye
The summit's point appear'd, astonished sees
Its cloudy top, majestic and enlarged,
Towering aloft, as distant as before. — Joanna Baillie

Fresh beauty opens one's eyes wherever it is really seen, but the very abundance and completeness of the common beauty that besets our steps prevents its being absorbed and appreciated. It is a good thing, therefore, to make short excursions now and then to the bottom of the sea among dulse and coral, or up among the clouds on mountain-tops, or in balloons, or even to creep like worms into dark holes and caverns underground, not only to learn something of what is going on in those out-of-the-way places, but to see better what the sun sees on our return to common every-day beauty. — John Muir

Then I noticed it. Red and oval-shaped with a white oval in the center, like the giant eye of a jinni. It sizzled and hissed, the white part expanding, moving closer. It horrified me to my very core. Must get out of here! I thought. Now! It sees me! But I didn't know how to move. Move with what? I had no body. The red was bitter venom. The white was like the sun's worst heat. I started screaming and crying again. Then I was opening my eyes to a cup of water. Everyone's face broke into a smile. "Oh, praise Ani," the Ada said. I felt the pain and jumped, about to get up and run. I had to run. From that eye. I was so mixed up that for a moment, I was sure that what I'd just seen was causing the pain. "Don't — Nnedi Okorafor

Sometimes the heart sees what's invisible to the eye. — Alfred Tennyson

What the human eye sees is an illusion of what is real. The black and white image transforms illusions into another reality. — Ruth Bernhard

The malcontent is neither well, full nor fasting; and though he abounds with complaints, yet nothing dislikes him but the present; for what he condemns while it was, once passed, he magnifies and strives to recall it out of the jaw of time. What he hath he seeth not, his eyes are so taken up with what he wants; and what he sees he careth not for, because be cares so much for that which is not. — Joseph Hall

I began to realise that film sees the world differently than the human eye, and that sometimes those differences can make a photograph more powerful than what you actually observed. — Galen Rowell

The eye doesn't see any shapes, it sees only what is differentiated through light and dark or through colors. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

We both belong to the race that knows Joseph, as Cornelia Bryant would say." "The race that knows Joseph?" puzzled Anne. "Yes. Cornelia divides all the folks in the world into two kinds - the race that knows Joseph and the race that don't. If a person sorter sees eye to eye with you, and has pretty much the same ideas about things, and the same taste in jokes - why, then he belongs to the race that knows Joseph." "Oh, I understand," exclaimed Anne, light breaking in upon her. "It's what I used to call - and still call in quotation marks 'kindred spirits. — L.M. Montgomery

For this reason a prince ought to take care that he never lets anything slip from his lips that is not replete with the above-named five qualities, that he may appear to him who sees and hears him altogether merciful, faithful, humane, upright, and religious. There is nothing more necessary to appear to have than this last quality, inasmuch as men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to everybody to see you, to few to come in touch with you. Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges by the result. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Each time I make a photograph I celebrate the life I love and the beauty I know and the happiness I have experienced. All my photographs are made like that responding to my intuition ... After all these years, I am still motivated by the radiance that light creates when it transforms an object into something magical. What the eye sees is an illusion of what is real. The black-and-white image is yet another transformation. What exactly exists, we may never know. — Ruth Bernhard

In so doing, I resisted the descent into what the school counselors called low self-esteem. Self-esteem is the dark, distorted shadow of self-possession. Self-esteem gazes inward and wills the inner eye to like what it sees; self-possession looks inward only long enough to take a measure then looks outward at the world in search of a fitting place - and settles for no less. — Karen Swallow Prior

The brain and the eye may have a contractual relationship in which the brain has agreed to believe what they eye sees, but in return the eye has agreed to look for what the brain wants. — Daniel M. Gilbert

Not what the mind sees, but what the mind imagines the eye must see. — Joyce Carol Oates

As the distinguished British philosopher Isaiah Berlin wrote as he reflected on the bitter lessons of the twentieth century, 'Few things have done more harm than the belief on the part of individuals or groups (or tribes or states or nations or churches) that he or she or they are in sole possession of the truth, especially about how to live, what to be and do - that those who differ from them are not merely mistaken, but wicked or mad: and need restraining or suppressing. It is terrible and dangerous arrogance to believe that you alone are right, have a magical eye which sees the truth, and that others cannot be right if they disagree. — Thomas Gilovich

If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility! — Soren Kierkegaard

The soul sees what the eye cannot, — Elizabeth Brundage

When you see someone, you automatically start putting those people together - the eyes and the lips. And what that does is that it creates an identity with that person, so when they actually start working, the audience sees exactly what you're seeing, and they become recognizable. So instant recognition is when certain women and men have features that look like other people. So baby Gisele is, like, Linda V - that's what she was called for a long time. — Michael Flutie

The ear participates, and helps arrange marriages;
the eye has already made love with what it sees.
The eye knows pleasure, delights in the body's shape:
the ear hears words that talk about all this.
When hearing takes place, character areas change;
but when you see, inner areas change.
If all you know about fire is what you have heard
see if the fire will agree to cook you!
Certain energies come only when you burn.
If you long for belief, sit down in the fire!
When the ear receives subtly; it turns into an eye.
But if words do not reach the ear in the chest, nothing happens. — Rumi

The eye of judgment sees at a distance what it refuses to see in it's own reflection. — T.F. Hodge

The religious way is the deep way, the way that sees what physical eyes alone fail to see, the intangibles of the heart of every phenomenon. The religious way is the way that touches universal relationships; that goes high, wide and deep, that expands the feelings of kinship. — Sophia Lyon Fahs

Most sculptors make the mistake", he said, "of thinking of eyes as form and they therefore make them as spherical surfaces. Eyes are not forms, they are transparent, and what one really sees is the light of the soul in them - and that is what I try to give them — Walter Russell

A good photograph will prove to the viewer how little our eyes permit us to see. Most people, really, don't see-see only what they have always seen and what they expect to see-where a photographer, if he's good, will see everything. And better if he sees things he doesn't expect to see. — Leon Levinstein

I had always made pictures as I thought I saw the world, focusing on what lay in front, but this is not how one sees the world. It only frames the centre and cuts off the lateral vision, which lies unfocused. Now I found that I could turn my eye to the adjacent field of vision, seeing another focus, an extension which I added to the original. Instead of stopping at two focuses, I looked further to the side, adding another and yet another ... — Joseph Plaskett

A man sees only what concerns him ... How much more, then, it requires different intentions of the eye and of the mind to attend to different departments of knowledge! How differently the poet and the naturalist look at objects! — Henry David Thoreau

God knows your value; He sees your potential. You may not understand everything you are going through right now. But hold your head up high, knowing that God is in control and he has a great plan and purpose for your life. Your dreams may not have turned out exactly as you'd hoped, but the bible says that God's ways are better and higher than our ways, even when everybody else rejects you, remember, God stands before you with His arms open wide. He always accepts you. He always confirms your value. God sees your two good moves! You are His prized possession. No matter what you go through in life, no matter how many disappointments you suffer, your value in God's eyes always remains the same. You will always be the apple of His eye. He will never give up on you, so don't give up on yourself. — Joel Osteen

What a Lover sees in the Beloved is the projected shadow of his own potential beauty in the eyes of God. — Coventry Patmore

What the eyes sees, the ear hears, and the mind belives. — Harry Houdini

Blue is the most common eye color in Oria Province, but there is something different about his eyes and I'm not sure what it is. More depth? I wonder what he sees when he looks at me. If he seems to have depth to me, do I seem shallow and transparent to him? — Ally Condie

Suzuki also frequently quotes a sentence of Eckhart's: "The eye wherein I see God is the same eye wherein God sees me" (Suzuki, Mysticism: East and West, p. 50) as an exact expression of what Zen means by Prajna. — Thomas Merton

O me, what eyes hath Love put in my head,
Which have no correspondence with true sight!
... Or, if they have, where is my judgment fled,
That censures falsely what they see aright?
If that be fair whereon my false eyes dote,
What means the world to say it is not so?
If it be not, then love doth well denote
Love's eye is not so true as all men's 'No.'
How can it? O, how can Love's eye be true,
That is so vex'd with watching and with tears?
No marvel then, though I mistake my view;
The sun itself sees not till heaven clears.
O cunning Love! with tears thou keep'st me blind,
Lest eyes well-seeing thy foul faults should find.
- Shakespeare's Sonnet 148 — William Shakespeare

Essentially, perspective is a form of abstraction. It simplifies the relationship between eye, brain and object. It is an ideal view, imagined as being seen by a one-eyed, motionless person who is clearly detached from what he sees. It makes a God of the spectator, who becomes the person on whom the whole world converges, the Unmoved Onlooker. — Robert Hughes

The dreamer's untamed eye sees beyond the illusions to the heart of what is real. — Bryant McGill

Holmes had cultivated the ability to still the noise of the mind, by smoking his pipe and playing nontunes on the violin. He once compared this mental state with the sort of passive seeing that enables the eye, in a dim light or at a great distance, to grasp details with greater clarity by focusing slightly to one side of the object of interest. When active, strained vision only obscures and frustrates, looking away often permits the eyes to see and interpret the shapes of what it sees. Thus does inattention allow the mind to register the still, small whisper of the daughter of the voice. — Laurie R. King

Mysteriously, as elusive as it is, this moment
where the eye is what it sees, where the heart is what it feels
this moment shows us that what is real is sacred — Mark Nepo

Shut your eyes, wait, think of nothing. Now, open them ... one sees nothing but a great coloured undulation. What then? An irradiation and glory of colour. This is what a picture should give us ... an abyss in which the eye is lost, a secret germination, a coloured state of grace ... loose conciousness. Descend with the painter into the dim tangled roots of things, and rise again from them in colours, be steeped in the light of them. — Paul Cezanne

The difference between travel writing as fiction is the difference between recording what the eye sees and discovering what the imagination knows. Fiction is pure joy - how sad that I could not reinvent the trip as fiction. — Paul Theroux

We're eye doctors."
"What's something about the eye that most people don't realize?"
"The eye doesn't see. The brain sees. The eye just transmits. So what we see isn't only determined by what comes through the eyes. What we see is affected by our memories, our feelings, and by what we've seen before. — Brandon Stanton

One problem with people is that as soon as they fill a space it's them you see and not the space. Large, desolate landscapes stop being large, desolate landscapes once they have people in them. They define what the eye sees. And the human eye is almost always directed at other humans. In this way an illusion is created that humans are more important than those things on earth which are not human. It's a sick illusion. — Erlend Loe

People often say "Just look for the silver lining." But what do you say to the person surrounded by fog? They don't see a fluffy object in the sky, blocking the sun for a moment or two. But instead, they see everything as it was before, but through the murky, un-clarity of hopelessness. As if they were standing at the bottom of a grimy lake except able to breathe. But not wanting to because with each breath they grow numb from the cold loneliness. What if they're surrounded by a dreary blanket of darkness, made up of their own thoughts, too impenetrable for any light to break through? So what do you tell that person who, as far as the eye could see, only sees fog? A place where there is no silver lining peeking around the corner. Imagine a place where your only companion is the confusion you walk around with. — Sadie Turner

First, I'm a writer; I look at things from a different point of view. The untrained eye is the eye that sees what's been missed.
Devon, from The Dragon's Breath by Jenna Lindsey — Jenna Lindsey

Men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, for everyone can see and few can feel. Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are. — Niccolo Machiavelli

For these beings, fall is ever the normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth ... Such are the autumn people. — Ray Bradbury

What the eye sees is a synthesis of who you are and all you have learned. This is what I would call the language of photography. — Graciela Iturbide

The fictional eye sees in, through, and around what is really there. — Eudora Welty

The eye sees all, but the mind shows us what we want to see. — William Shakespeare

He who sees only what is before his eyes sees the worst part of every view. — Leslie Stephen

The writer, unlike his non-writing adult friend, has no predisposed outlook; he seldom observes deliberately. He sees what he didnot intend to see; he remembers what does not seem wholly possible. Inattentive learner in the schoolroom of life, he keeps some faculty free to veer and wander. His is the roving eye. — Elizabeth Bowen

The artist expresses only what he has within himself, not what he sees with his eyes — Alexej Von Jawlensky

This was her original state; and then, as I was saying, and as the lovers of knowledge are well aware, philosophy, seeing how terrible was her confinement, of which she was to herself the cause, received and gently comforted her and sought to release her, pointing out that the eye and the ear and the other senses are full of deception, and persuading her to retire from them, and abstain from all but the necessary use of them, and be gathered up and collected into herself, bidding her trust in herself and her own pure apprehension of pure existence, and to mistrust whatever comes to her through other channels and is subject to variation; for such things are visible and tangible, but what she sees in her own nature is intelligible and invisible. — Plato