What These Eyes Have Seen Quotes & Sayings

And for a moment there, despite the bruising, despite the snarled dirty hair, despite her sunburned skin and the suffering in her eyes that she refused to let defeat her, she was one of the prettiest things he'd ever seen.
~Dallas and Amy~ — Cindy Gerard

Seen through the eyes of faith, religion's future is secure. As long as there are human beings, there will be religion for the sufficient reason that the self is a theomorphic creature - one whose morphe (form) is theos - God encased within it. Having been created in the imago Dei, the image God, all human beings have a God-shaped vacuum built into their hearts. Since nature abhors a vacuum, people keep trying to fill the one inside them. — Huston Smith

Caspian felt sure that he would hate the new Tutor, but when the new Tutor arrived about a week later he turned out to be the sort of person it is almost impossible not to like. He was the smallest, and also the fattest, man Caspian had ever seen. He had a long, silvery, pointed beard which came down to his waist, and his face, which was brown and covered with wrinkles, looked very wise, very ugly, and very kind. His voice was grave and his eyes were merry so that, until you got to now him really well, it was hard to know when he was joking and when he was serious. His name was Doctor Cornelius. — C.S. Lewis

I have seen the face of sorrow
She looks away in the distance
Across all these bridges
From whence I came
And those spans, trussed and arched
Hold up our lives as we go back again
To how we thought then
To how we thought we thought then
I have seen sorrow's face,
But she is ever turned away
And her words leave me blind
Her eyes make me mute
I do not understand what she says to me
I do not know if to obey
Or attempt a flood of tears
I have seen her face
She does not speak
She does not weep
She does not know me
For I am but a stone fitted in place
On the bridge where she walks

Lay of the Bridgeburners
Toc the Younger — Steven Erikson

The only good thing was that by midnight, even most of the bums had gone home to sleep it off. That was lucky for them, because Ray was the worst damn driver I'd ever seen. And that was after I jerked his head out of the duffel and parked it on the dashboard.
"Gah! That makes it worse!" he told me, as I tried to get the eyes facing forward.
"How can it possibly be worse?"
"Because I got double vision now! Get it off! Get it off!"
He batted at his own head and succeeded in sending it tumbling into Christine's lap. She immediately went into hysterics and slapped it away. The head fell out of the car; Ray hit the brakes and we came to a screeching halt.
"What are you doing?" I screeched, as he hopped out. "There are people firing at us!"
"Tough!" came from somewhere under the car. — Karen Chance

He looks at Norris, exasperated. He seems to think that with eloquence, with sincerity, with frankness, he can change what is happening. The whole court has seen him slobbering over the queen. How could he expect to go shopping with his eyes, and finger the goods no doubt, and not have an account to settle at the end of it? — Hilary Mantel

When I was little, my Aunt Bigeois told me "If you look at yourself too long in the mirror, you'll see a monkey." I must have looked at myself even longer than that: what I see is well below the monkey, on the fringe of the vegetable world, at the level of jellyfish... The eyes especially are horrible seen so close. They are glassy, soft, blind, red-rimmed, they look like fish scales... A silky white down covers the great slopes of the cheeks, two hairs protrude from the nostrils: it is a geological embossed map. And, in spite of everything, this lunar world is familiar to me. I cannot say I recognize the details. But the whole thing gives me an impression of something seen before which stupefies me. — Jean-Paul Sartre

What I liked was the train ride. It took an hour and that was enough for me to be able to lean backwards against the seat with closed eyes, feel the joints in the rails come up and thump through my body and sometimes peer out of the windows and see windswept heathland and imagine I was on the Trans-Siberian Railway. I had read about it, seen pictures in a book and decided that no matter when and how life would turn out, one day I would travel from Moscow to Vladivostok on that train, and I practised saying the names: Omsk, Tomsk, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, they were difficult to pronounce with all their hard consonants, but ever since the trip to Skagen, every journey I made by train was a potential departure on my own great journey. — Per Petterson

What happened to your lip?" Ravenna said to him. "It looks sore."
Miss Feather's fingers darted to her mouth.
"Thank you for your kind concern, Miss Caulfield." His eyes were very dark blue and still rimmed with the longest lashed Ravenna had ever seen on a man. Beauty and virility and confidence and sheer privileged arrogance combined to remarkable effect. No wonder these silly girls stared. "It was bitten," he said.
"Oh, dear." Lady Penelope pouted sweetly. "That must have been alarming."
"Not terribly. I have been bitten by cats before." The corner of his mouth twitched. "This one," he said, turning his dark, laughing gaze upon Ravenna, "was otherwise charming."

-Ravenna, Vitor, & Lady Penelope — Katharine Ashe

Why would you believe such things?" he asks. "What good does it do you?" "The world we see with our eyes is not the whole truth. Dreams and visions are just as real as matter. What we can imagine or think exists as truly as anything we can touch or smell. Where do our thoughts come from, if not from God?" "They come from our experience," Sumner says, "from what we've heard and seen and read, and what's been told to us." Otto shakes his head. "If that were true, then no growth or advancement would be possible. The world would be stagnant and unmoving. We would be doomed — Ian McGuire

Let us suppose that I have wept, on account of some incident of which the other has not even become aware (to weep is part of the normal activity of the amorous body), and that, so this cannot be seen, I put on dark glasses to mask my swollen eyes (a fine example of denial: to darken the sight in order not to be seen). The intention of this gesture is a calculated one: I want to keep the moral advantage of stoicism, of "dignity" (I take myself for Clotilde de Vaux), and at the same time, contradictorily, I want to provoke the tender question ("But what's the matter with you?"); I want to be both pathetic and admirable, I want to be at the same time a child and an adult. Thereby I gamble, I take a risk: for it is always possible that the other will simply ask no question whatever about these unaccustomed glasses; that the other will see, in the fact, no sign. — Roland Barthes

Coyotes move within a landscape of attentiveness. I have seen their eyes in the creosote bushes and among mesquite trees. They have watched me. And all the times that I saw no eyes, that I kept walking and never knew, there were still coyotes. When I have seen them trot away, when I have stepped from the floorboard of my truck, leaned on the door, and watched them as they watched me over their shoulders, I have been aware for that moment of how much more there is. Of how I have only seen only an instant of a broad and rich life. — Craig Childs

Did you hurt yourself? Sort of. Why'd you do that? I didn't do it on purpose. It's just the cost of doing business. Her Grandmother smiles and she gently touches my face with her free hand. I hope that's a business you're leaving, James. I smile, enjoy the warmth of her hand. We'll see. She nods. Her eyes and her hand understand my words, have seen and felt this type of damage before. There is no judgment and no condescension. Just hope. — James Frey

Art begins ... when someone interprets, when someone sees the world through his own eyes. Art happens when what is seen becomes mixed with the inside of the person who is seeing it. — Chaim Potok

I would know of myself through the witnessing and naming of others. As Jesus in the Gospels is only seen and spoken of and recorded by others. I would know my existence and the value of that existence through others' eyes, which I believed I could trust as I could not trust my own. — Joyce Carol Oates

Wolf's fur was speckled with drops of blood that had beaded on it like rain. The gravel in the alley shone in the half-light from the distant street lamps. The wolf's muzzle, a little shorter and broader than I had seen on Wild Kingdom, was drawn back, black lips from fangs striped white and red like peppermints. Its eyes were blue, rather than any proper lupine shade, and gleamed with a sort of demented awareness. — Jim Butcher

know," Maris sighed. "I'm disgusting." "No. You're very beautiful like this." Stunned, Maris looked up, unsure of what to expect. But he saw truth in Ture's eyes, not horror. Ture cupped Maris's cheek as he stared in awe of the man's current appearance. He'd never seen anything like this. Mari's skin reminded him of a sleek, silvery fish's. Only it wasn't scaled and it was as soft was warm velvet. Even his eyes were now an eerie glowing silver color. Not their normal dark chocolate. The neatest part was the beautiful design that was now visible around his eyes. Like someone had used dark gray and black eye shadow and liner to draw an intricate flowing scroll pattern. He — Sherrilyn Kenyon

There were never tears in Jamie's eyes though. He only cried in the way that couldn't be seen or heard. Inside. — Neha Yazmin

Ancient eyes had stared at me, filled with ancient grief. And something more. Something so alien and unexpected that I'd almost burst into tears. I'd seen many things in his eyes in the time that I'd known him: lust, amusement, sympathy, mockery, caution, fury. But I had never seen this.
Hope. Jericho Barrons had hope, and I was the reason for it.
I would never forget his smile. It had illuminated him from the inside out. — Karen Marie Moning

The power of the artform is stronger than stone, the poet says, and chooses the sonnet, a form concerned with argument and persuasion, to say so. This sonnet, he says, will last longer than any gravestone-and you'll be made shinier, brighter, by it. In this form it will-and therefore you will-avoid destruction by war, history, time generally; it'll even keep you alive after death; in fact it'll form a place for you to live, not die, where you'll be seen in the eyes of and the context of this love right to the end of time. — Ali Smith

She laughed. He was right. Her laughter was enchanting. So, too, the sparkle in her eyes as she glanced at him. He'd never seen eyes as darkly brown as hers. With her dark hair she should have been a study in monochrome, but she wasn't. Her cheeks matched her pink lips. — Karen Ranney

How?" I had seen it with my own eyes, but I still didn't believe it. Then something struck me. "Take off your shirt!"
"I'm not that kind of guy!" He frowned thoughtfully. "On second thought, why not?"
I blushed angrily and looked at Raquel. "What is he? I don't see anything!"
"He's not 'anything'.Just a talented boy."
"Then how did he make a door? How did he get through the Paths?"
"Wait,so am I allowed to put my shirt back on? Or did you want me to remove my pants,too?"
Lend and I joined forces in a dark glare. "Only if you want me to vomit," I snapped. — Kiersten White

smiling with sad eyes I've seen what you've been hiding — R H Sin

You had to have these peasant leaders quickly in this sort of war and a real peasant leader might be a little too much like Pablo. You couldn't wait for the real Peasant Leader to arrive and he might have too many peasant characteristics when he did. So you had to manifacture one. At that, from what he had seen of Campesino, with his black beard, his thick negroid lips, and his feverish, staring eyes, he thought he might give almost as much trouble as a real peasant leader. The last time he had seen him he seemed to have gotten to believe his own publicity and think he was a peasant. — Ernest Hemingway,

Our time prides itself on having finally achieved the freedom from censorship for which libertarians in all ages have struggled ... The credit for these great achievements is claimed by the new spirit of rationalism, a rationalism that, it is argued, has finally been able to tear from man's eyes the shrouds imposed by mystical thought, religion, and such powerful illusions as freedom and dignity. Science has given us this great victory over ignorance. But, on closer examination, this victory too can be seen as an Orwellian triumph of an even higher ignorance: what we have gained is a new conformism, which permits us to say anything that can be said in the functional languages of instrumental reason, but forbids us to allude to ... the living truth ... so we may discuss the very manufacture of life and its 'objective' manipulations, but we may not mention God, grace, or morality. — Joseph Weizenbaum

As Raimbaut dragged a dead man along he thought, 'Oh
corpse, I have come rushing here only to be dragged along by the
heels like you. What is this frenzy that drives me, this mania for
battle and for love, when seen from the place where your staring
eyes gaze and your flung-back head knocks over stones? It's that
I think of, oh corpse, it's that you make me think of: but does anything
change? Nothing. No other days exist but these of ours
before the tomb, both for us the living and for you the dead. May
it be granted me not to waste them, not to waste anything of what
I am, of what I could be: to do deeds helpful to the Frankish cause:
to embrace, to be embraced by, proud Bradamante. I hope you
spent your days no worse, oh corpse. Anyway to you the dice have already shown their numbers. For me they are still whirling in the
box. And I love my own disquiet, corpse, not your peace. — Italo Calvino

I've walked these streets, in a carnival of sights to see. All the cheap thrill seekers, the vendors & the dealers, they crowded around me. Have I been blind? Have I been lost, inside myself and my own mind? Hypnotized, mesmerized, by what my eyes have seen? I've walked these streets, in a spectacle of wealth & poverty. In the diamond market, the scarlet welcome carpet that they just rolled out for me. — Natalie Merchant

Now, ideals, conventions, even truth itself, are continually changing things so that the milk of one generation may be the poison of the next. The young Americans of my time have seen one of these transformations with their own eyes, and for this reason they will not make the initial mistake of trying to teach their children too much. Before a man is thirty he has already accumulated, along with a little wisdom, a great quantity of dust and rubbish in his mind, and the difficulty is to let the children profit by what is wise without unloading the dust and rubbish on them too. We can only try to do better at it than the last generation did - when a generation succeeds in doing it completely, in handing down all its discoveries and none of its delusions, its children shall inherit the earth. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I don't know what you may have seen fit to tell her, Venetia, but so far as I understand it you could think of nothing better to do than to beguile her with some farrago about wishing Damerel to strew rose-leaves for you to walk on!"
Damerel, who had resumed his seat, had been staring moodily into the fire, but at these words he looked up quickly. "Rose-leaves?" His eyes went to Venetia's face, wickedly quizzing her. "But my dear girl, at this season?"
"Be quiet, you wretch!" she said, blushing. — Georgette Heyer

They say that these are not the best of times, but they're the only times I've ever known. And I believe there is a time for meditation in cathedrals of our own. Now I have seen that sad surrender in my lovers eyes ... and I can only stand apart and sympathize ... for we are only what our situations hand us ... it's either sadness or euphoria ... — Billy Joel

I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? — Henry David Thoreau

I looked into his eyes, and I realized he was the same man I'd seen in my dreams. His face might be totally different, but the same soul was in there, the same intelligence and all the sadness. — Rick Riordan

The whole world may say there is light and there is rainbow in the sky and the sun is rising,
but if my eyes are closed what does it mean to me?
The rainbows, the colors, the sunrise,
the whole thing is non-existential to me.
My eyes are closed, I am blind.
And if I listen to them too much,
and if I start believing in them too much,
and if I borrow their words and I also start talking about the rainbow that I have not seen,
about colors which I cannot see,
about the sunrise which is not my experience,
I may be lost in the forest of words. — Osho

Neither the heart cut by a sliver of glass in a wasteland of thorns, nor the atrocious waters seen in the corners of certain houses, waters like eyelids and eyes, could hold your waist in my hands when my heart lifts its oak trees toward your unbreakable thread of snow. Night sugar, spirit of crowns, redeemed human blood, your kisses banish me, and a surge of water with remnants of the sea strikes the silences that wait for you surrounding the worn-out chairs, wearing doors away. — Pablo Neruda

When you see a fish you don't think of its scales, do you? You think of its speed, its floating, flashing body seen through the water. Well, I've tried to express just that. If I made fins and eyes and scales, I would arrest its movement, give a pattern or shape of reality. I want just the flash of its spirits. — Constantin Brancusi

Eli snorted, her eyes narrowed.
- Because I am like you.
- What do you mean like me? I..
Eli thrust her hand through the air as if she was holding a knife, said:
- What are you looking at, idiot? Want to die, or something? - Stabbed the air with empty hand. - That what happens if you look at me.
Oskar rubbed his lips together, dampening them.
- What are you saying?
- It's not me that's saying it. It's you. That was the first thing I heard you say. Down on the playground.
Oskar remembered. The tree. The knife. How he had held up the blade of the knife like a mirror, seen Eli for the first time. — John Ajvide Lindqvist

I looked him up and down. Once before I'd seen Jericho Barrons wearing jeans and a T-shirt. It's like sheet-metaling a W16 Bugatti Veyron engine - all 1,001 horsepower of it - with the body of a '65 Shelby. The height of sophisticated power sporting in-your-face, fuck-you muscle. The effect is disturbing.
He had more tattoos now than he'd had a few days ago.when I'd last seen him wearing nothing but a sheen of sweat, his arms were unmarked. They were now sleeved in intricate crimson and black designs, from bicep to hand. A silver cuff gleamed in his wrist. There were chains on his boots.
"Slumming, huh?" I'd said
You should talk, said those dark eyes, as they swept my black leather ensemble. — Karen Marie Moning

Somewhere out there is a true and living prophet of destruction and I dont want to confront him. I know he's real. I have seen his work. I walked in front of those eyes once. I wont do it again. I wont push my chips forward and stand up and go out to meet him. It aint just bein older. I wish that it was. I cant say that it's even what you are willin to do. Because I always knew that you had to be willin to die to even do this job. That was always true. Not to sound glorious about it or nothin but you do. If you aint they'll know it. They'll see it in a heartbeat. I think it is more like what you are willin to become. And I think a man would have to put his soul at hazard. And I wont do that. — Cormac McCarthy

Daring was glaring at Raven as if he could shoot arrows with his eyes. And maybe he could. She'd seen him swordfight holding the sword with his feet. And win. — Shannon Hale

Then everything was normal again, except that the liner was speeding for the planet Krim at something more than thirty times the speed of light. Normality extended through all the galaxy so far inhabited by men. There were worlds on which there was peace, and worlds on which there was tumult. There were busy, zestful young worlds, and languid, weary old ones. From the Near Rim to the farthest of occupied systems, planets circled their suns, and men lived on them, and every man took himself seriously and did not quite believe that the universe had existed before he was born or would long survive his loss. Time passed. Comets let out vast streamers like bridal veils and swept toward and around their suns. Some of them - one in ten thousand, or twenty - were possibly seen by human eyes. The liner bearing Hoddan sped through the void. In time it made a landfall on the Planet Krim. — Murray Leinster

Just close your eyes and try to think it over
You realize I'm not the man you know, girl
I hypotize ya
I paralyze ya
Go on and scream cause nobody's gonna find ya

Did I ever think to tell you I am a monster?
You ain't ever seen this side of me
Maybe I should wear a warning that says there is danger,
If you ever get too close to me... — Kris Allen

At first you saw only a mass of coarse, matted black hair; presently it was seen that this covered a body of fearful thinness, almost a skeleton, but with the muscles standing out like wires. The hands were of a dusky pallor, covered, like the body, with long, coarse hairs, and hideously taloned. The eyes, touched in with a burning yellow, had intensely black pupils, and were fixed upon the throned King with a look of beast-like hate. Imagine one of the awful bird-catching spiders of South America translated into human form, and endowed with intelligence just less than human, and you will have some faint conception of the terror inspired by the appalling effigy. — M.R. James

She wondered how a man could look into a woman's eyes and lie so completely, so convincingly. She wondered how he could have looked and not seen the love that had glowed there, the blind faith, the unconditional devotion. She wondered how he would sleep at night, knowing he had betrayed her so effortlessly. — V.S. Carnes

I do miss the days of living in our boardinghouse when I could practice my lines while experiencing the freedom of trousers without anyone thinking a thing about it." "The only time I saw you wearing trousers was when you were impersonating a coachman," Bram said slowly. "Have you seen her when her hair looks like a rat's nest because she's braided it at least a thousand times while she's distracted with her lines or . . . investments?" Millie asked. To Lucetta's surprise, instead of seeming taken aback by the idea she wasn't always very concerned about her appearance, Bram was watching her now with what looked like clear delight in his eyes. "I'll see what I can do to find you and Millie some trousers, if you really think that will help you mend fences with Geoffrey. — Jen Turano

It's only sixteen ninety-five," I say with a flutter of my lashes.
"You're serious."
I prop my hands on my waist and stick out a hip, striking a pose worthy of a supermodel. "Look at me. Don't I look serious?"
She collapses into the chair outside the dressing room in a fit of giggles so cute they make my insides fizz. "No! You must be stopped," she says.
"Why?" I strut down an aisle of yellowed lingerie, swiveling my hips, batting bras with flicks of my fingers. "I will be the king of the disco. I will be - " I spin and strike another pose. "An inspiration."
She sniffs and swipes at her eyes. "The real Dylan would die before he'd be seen in public in something like that."
"The real Dylan is boring." I brace my hands on the arms of her chair and lean down until our faces are a whisper apart. "And he's not one fourth the kisser I am."
"Is that right?" Her lips quirk.
"You know it is."
Her smile melts, and her breath comes faster. "Yeah. I do. — Stacey Jay

Strange, i thought i knew you well, thought i had read the sky, thought i had seen a change in your eyes. — Tori Amos

The world suddenly opened up, and she was coming to new realizations and a greater awareness, concerning the nature of reality, and the world, which her mortal mind had previously been unable to conceive. She smiled her radiant goddess smile and began to laugh. Her omnipresent peals of mirth resonated through the forest, seeming to echo to the edges of the universe and back. She was getting her first glimpses of the world, seen through the eyes of a goddess; the first sweet tastes of a consciousness empowered beyond all human levels of comprehension, and her spirit was in exultant bliss. — Alexei Maxim Russell

We live in an age of reproduction. Most of what makes up our personal picture of the world we have never seen with our own eyes
or rather, we've seen it with our own eyes, but not on the spot: our knowledge comes to us from a distance, we are televiewers, telehearers, teleknowers. — Max Frisch

When you've had children, your body changes; there's history to it. I like the evolution of that history; I'm fortunate to be with somebody who likes the evolution of that history. I think it's important to not eradicate it. I look at someone's face and I see the work before I see the person ... You're certainly not staving off the inevitable. And if you're doing it out of fear, that fear's still going to be seen through your eyes. The windows to your soul, they say. — Cate Blanchett

His eyebrows arched under a single, pensive line and his eyes themselves were imprinted with deep sadness, behind which from time to time could be seen dark flashes of misanthropy and hatred. — Alexandre Dumas

Photography in our time leaves us with a grave responsibility. While we are playing in our studios with broken flowerpots, oranges, nude studies and still lifes, one day we know that we will be brought to account: life is passing before our eyes without our ever having seen a thing. — Brassai

She knew she could answer it. She knew how to put one foot in front of the other even when every step hurt. And she knew there was pain in the journey, but there was also great beauty. She'd seen it standing on rooftops and in green eyes and in the smallest, ugliest rock. She would find the answer. — Veronica Rossi