When They See Us Quotes & Sayings

Knowing a great deal about what is in the world art, catastrophe, the beauties of nature through photographic images, people are frequently disappointed, surprised, unmoved when the see the real thing. For photographic images tend to subtract feeling from something we experience at first hand and the feelings they do arouse are, largely, not those we have in real life. Often something disturbs us more in photographed form than it does when we actually experience it. — Susan Sontag

I think that there is a terrible possibility now, in the World. We may not brush it away, we must look at it. It is possible that They will not die. That it is now within the state of Their art to go on forever - though we, of course, will keep dying as we always have. Death has been the source of Their power. It was easy enough for us to see that. If we are here once, only once, then clearly we are here to take what we can while we may. If They have taken much more, and taken not only from Earth but also from us - well, why begrudge Them, when they're just as doomed to die as we are? All in the same boat, all under the same shadow ... yes ... yes. But is that really true? Or is it the best, and the most carefully propagated, of all Their lies, known and unknown?
We have to carry on under the possibility that we die only because They want us to: because They need our terror for Their survival. — Thomas Pynchon

We may never know what another person is thinking--never truly get into anyone else's head--but photography brings us as close as anything can. When the members of an audience at an art gallery look at a picture, they can step for a moment inside the mind of the artist. Like telepathy. Like time travel. At some future date, when people gaze at my photographs of the islands, they will see what I saw. They will stand where I stood, on this granite, surrounded by this ocean. Perhaps they will even feel some of the elation I have experienced here. — Abby Geni

Children have a ton of mirror neurons when they are babies and kids and they mimic what they see and so heroes are important because we are watching these heroes make a difference in these peoples lives and sacrificing their lives in some cases and I think it is really important to know that it is not just about us but about the community. — John Assaraf

Buddha says this is how one should be - no desire, because all desires are futile. They are about the future; life is in the present. All desires distract you from the present, all desires distract you from life, all desires are destructive of life, all desires are postponements of life. Life is now and the desire takes you away, farther and farther away from now. And when we see that our life is misery we go on throwing the responsibility on others, and nobody is responsible except us. — Rajneesh

But Solomon frowned when he saw the Chinese workers in their traditional pointed hats. 'Since they arrived in this area many colobus monkeys have been trapped. The Chinese are buying the skins,' he told us furiously, then with his voice cracking, 'and there was even an elephant killed, the tusks were gone, and it is the first time I see an elephant killed in this area.' Somebody else in the car pointed out that the Chinese had required 14,000 work permits, when as many unemployed Kenyans could have done the work. — Juliet Barnes

Do not write. I am sad, and want my light put out.
Summers in your absence are as dark as a room.
I have closed my arms again. They must do without.
To knock at my heart is like knocking at a tomb.
Do not write!
Do not write. Let us learn to die, as best we may.
Did I love you? Ask God. Ask yourself. Do you know?
To hear that you love me, when you are far away,
Is like hearing from heaven and never to go.
Do not write!
Do not write. I fear you. I fear to remember,
For memory holds the voice I have often heard.
To the one who cannot drink, do not show water,
The beloved one's picture in the handwritten word.
Do not write!
Do not write those gentle words that I dare not see,
It seems that your voice is spreading them on my heart,
Across your smile, on fire, they appear to me,
It seems that a kiss is printing them on my heart.
Do not write! — Louis Simpson

We must surrender our skepticism only in the face of rock-solid evidence. Science demands a tolerance for ambiguity. Where we are ignorant, we withhold belief. Whatever annoyance the uncertainty engenders serves a higher purpose: It drives us to accumulate better data. This attitude is the difference between science and so much else. Science offers little in the way of cheap thrills. The standards of evidence are strict. But when followed they allow us to see far, illuminating even a great darkness. — Carl Sagan

I adore the work of Lucas and Spielberg. I'm certainly not trying to minimize their talents, but I'd love to see what they could do when they aren't leading us from reality. — Lina Wertmuller

Chris, soap people are like
us-they seldom go outdoors. And when they do, we only hear about it,
never see it. They loll about in living rooms, bedrooms, sit in the
kitchens and sip coffee or stand up and drink martinis-but never, never
go outside before our eyes. And whenever something good happens,
whenever they think they're finally going to be happy, some catastrophe
comes along to dash their hopes. — V.C. Andrews

Death is not the consummation of oneself but just the end of oneself. Before the self vanishes nothing really is, and that is how it is most of the time. But as soon as the self vanishes everything is, and becomes automatically the object of love. Love holds the world together, and if we could forget ourselves everything in the world would fly into a perfect harmony, and when we see beautiful things that is what they remind us of. — Iris Murdoch

WE CAN'T SAVE OURSELVES We need God. We all need to repent of trying to extend his kingdom in our own strength. We need him to change things. The great news is that he delights in helping us when we listen, trust, and obey him. Don't we want to make a difference and see God turn around the decline in Christianity? Don't we want to see our family members and friends find Jesus as Savior? Then let's draw closer to God and talk with him. This is what sincere believers in Christ have done for hundreds of years. And when they have, miracles happened. Nowhere in the Bible did God ever promise that anything would "work," except him. If you're a Christian who is bewildered and disheartened by the things you see going on, or if you're a pastor or church leader who is discouraged by a lukewarm church and lack of fruit, be sure of this promise: "Come near to God and he will come near to you" (James 4:8). — Jim Cymbala

The life of a non-Muslim to Muslim is worth as much as the life of a chicken is worth to you and me. We don't go around killing every chicken we see. In fact we keep them and feed them as long as they are useful to us. But we don't lose sleep when we have to slaughter them. So it is not that Muslims will necessarily go around massacring every non-Muslim. As long as these non-Muslims are useful to them, they are granted protection. — Ali Sina

Did you see them? They're kids, Nathan. Children, who ended up being in the wrong place, at the wrong time." I blew out a frustrated breath, tracking one of the angry young teens in topic as he was dragged kicking and yelling from the room. "They won't even consider switching sides. Plumber has them so scared, all they can see if the numbers advantage he has over us."
"Numbers don't mean shit when you're fighters have the same level of skill as a two year old." He sniffed, shaking his head at the kid who was finally pulled from the room. "And that's insulting to two year olds. — Violet Cross

Our very success, gained you will agree by skill, will draw more people than ever to see it. And that will benefit many more clubs than Rangers. Let the others come after us. We welcome the chase. It is healthy for us. We will never hide from it. Never fear, inevitably we shall have our years of failure, and when they arrive, we must reveal tolerance and sanity. No matter the days of anxiety that come our way, we shall emerge stronger because of the trials to be overcome. That has been the philosophy of the Rangers since the days of the gallant pioneers. — Bill Struth

We are wolves, which are wild dogs, and this is our place in the city. We are small and our house is small on our small urban street. We can see the city and the train line and it's beautiful in its own dangerous way. Dangerous because it's shared and taken and fought for.
That's the best way I can put it, and thinking about it, when I walk past the tiny houses on our street, I wonder about the stories inside them. I wonder hard, because houses must have walls and rooftops for a reason. My only query is the windows. Why do they have windows? Is it to let a glimpse of the world in? Or for us to see out? — Markus Zusak

There, now, father, you won't work in it till it's all easy," said Eppie, "and you and me can mark out the beds, and make holes and plant the roots. It'll be a deal livelier at the Stone-pits when we've got some flowers, for I always think the flowers can see us and know what we're talking about. And I'll have a bit o' rosemary, and bergamot, and thyme, because they're so sweet-smelling; but there's no lavender only in the gentlefolks' gardens, I think. — George Eliot

Much of the story we have told falls outside the boundaries of modern academic disciplines and their respective histories. Contemporary economics focuses on issues of efficiency in allocation, political science on institutions of governmental power, political theory on questions of justice, sociology on social groups as defined by interactions outside the market. Some division of intellectual labor is of course productive, and the conceptual lenses that each discipline brings to bear may genuinely help us see an aspect of reality that would otherwise remain undetected. Yet those concerned with the moral implications and ramifications of the market
as any self-critical person in modern society ought to be
get a very skewed picture when they view it through only one of these lenses. Seeing the market with the added perspectives offered by the thinkers treated here provides us with a richer and more rounded view. — Jerry Z. Muller

Nay, [2] after conversion we need bruising, that (1) reeds may know themselves to be reeds, and not oaks; even reeds need bruising, by reason of the remainder of pride in our nature, and to let us see that we live by mercy. And (2) that weaker Christians may not be too much discouraged when they see the stronger shaken and bruised. — Richard Sibbes

People will tell us that without the consolations of religion they would be intolerably unhappy. So far as this is true, it is a coward's argument. Nobody but a coward would consciously choose to live in a fool's paradise. When a man suspects his wife of infidelity, he is not thought the better of for shutting his eyes to the evidence. And I cannot see why ignoring evidence should be contemptible in one case and admirable in the other. — Bertrand Russell

This explained to me
and I suppose, forgave me
my inability to see the face of this man, because whoever must deceive us in order to live will by necessity far exceed the skill of ordinary men, who are as much tempted by the desire to be honest as they are plagued by guilt and shame when they have broken faith. — Michael Ennis

What was so important that I had to risk my friends' safety to sneak out here?" I demanded. "Huh? What was so -"
"I had to see you." He closed the space between us. His hands were warm from his pockets as they closed around my fingers. "I had to know that you were okay. I had to see you and touch you and ... know."
He brushed my hair away from my face, his fingers light against my skin. "In London ... " He trailed off. "After D.C ... "
"I'm fine," I said, easing away. "CAT scans and X-rays were normal. No lasting damage."
Most people believe me when I lie. I've learned how to say the words just right.I have a trusting kind of face. But the boy in front of me was a trained operative, so Zach knew better. And besides, Zach knew me.
"Really?" He touched my face again. "Cause I'm not. — Ally Carter

Changing our behavior purely for the sake of appearances may seem to conflict with the need to be authentic and consistent, but in many ways it is actually a result of those needs. After all, resolving the tension between standing out from the crowd and becoming isolated requires finding our niche in the world. But what would happen if we weren't accepted in the place where we felt we belonged? For others to see us as a "poseur" or as "delusional" would be painful. Even worse, what if they were right? The social consequences and self-doubt that follow when our self-perceptions conflict with how others see us can be just as destabilizing to our identity as conflicts between our own self-perceptions and actions. — Sheena Iyengar

When people get cynical about love, they should look at us [Yoko and John Lennon] and see it is possible — Yoko Ono

When I can't fall asleep at night it's not because of work or school or Amber or Bekah. It's you. You're the one that drives me crazy."
I shake my head because it makes no sense. "Have you ever thought about what people will think? What they'll say when they see us together holding hands?"
"You never struck me as the type to give a shit what everyone else thinks." His jaw twitches for a moment before he lowers his voice and says, "I want to go everywhere with you. I want to show you off. I want to wear a cheap suit and be your escort for that ridiculous pageant. — Julie Murphy

I know, Ma. I'm a-tryin'. But them deputies- Did you ever see a deputy that didn't have a fat ass? An' they waggle their ass an' flop their gun aroun'. Ma", he said, "if it was the law they was workin' with, why we could take it. But it ain't the law. They're a-working away at our spirits. They're a-tryin' to make us cringe an' crawl like a whipped bitch. They're tryin' to break us. Why, Jesus Christ, Ma, they comes a time when the on'y way a fella can keep his decency is by takin' a sock at a cop. They're working on our decency". — John Steinbeck

We're seeing that God's word and His principles do work. They may not work overnight but they are powerful and when we apply them in the way He shows us to apply them in life then we're going to see positive consequences. — Alex Kendrick

The conclusion I have reached is that, above all, dogs are witnesses. They are allowed access to our most private moments. They are there when we think we are alone. Think of what they could tell us. They sit on the laps of presidents. They see acts of love and violence, quarrels and feuds, and the secret play of children. If they could tell us everything they have seen, all of the gaps of our lives would stitch themselves together. — Carolyn Parkhurst

I select people to work more closely when they are prepared to and I see that. They don't have to tell me. I know. I will give them a task of some type, and that task becomes the koan between us. — Frederick Lenz

can't see her in the dark, but I know she's looking at me when she says, "I know you've been kind of weird about Ryan and that's why we didn't use him for Mr. Vernon's going-away party, but, Becs, you have to admit he'd be completely perfect for this. He has the hair and the accent and the guitar. The girls will totally eat him up." She's so right, but aaaaaaah. I'm way too embarrassed around Ryan. I mean, at least I learned my lesson and I'm not throwing myself at him anymore. No more bike crashes for me. The other day, he and Lance were in the line ahead of me, Sades, and Izzy at mini golf and when Lance asked us to join them, I was the one to say they should just go ahead so we could have girl time. I could tell Ryan was, like, ubershocked. His eyebrows were — Jen Malone

I think we need to understand what we mean when we talk about closure, we don't mean transfer or prosecute which is what many of the critics of Guantanamo would like to see happen. When the US government talks about closing Guantanamo, they talk about moving some set of detainees to some other place where they continue to be detained without charge. — Jennifer Daskal

Everybody was hoping for something, talking about our new life to come and all that they hoped from it. Fresh air, whatever that's supposed to mean. Real gravity, instead of the fake kind that broke every now and then (even though no one over fifteen would admit that it was actually really fun when it did). All the wide open spaces we'd have, all the new people we'd meet when we woke them up, ignoring completely what happened to the original settlers, super- confident that we were so much better equipped that nothing bad could possibly happen to us.
All this hope, and here I was, right at the very edge of it, looking out into the darkness, the first to see it coming, the first to greet it when we found out what it really looked like. — Patrick Ness

Now you see. We are all fugitives. We have always been fugitives from the void. Whatever comfort, whatever power we gain from outside of ourselves diminishes us
because comfort and power, unless they are won from the void inside of us, are illusions that make us forget the emptyness that carries us. When we forget that, we believe we deserve comfort and power and so are capable of any evil. We deserve nothing but what we make of ourselves. We deserve nothing else. And when we understand that, then nothing is enough. — Tirumalai S. Srivatsan

How'd it go?" I said, trying to sound indifferent. "He took it like a champ." She opened the back car door for Clay. He lifted his head and stood with obvious effort. Then he hopped down with care and pathetically climbed the deck steps to my side. I stared at him for a moment. "What'd they do to him?" Rachel shook her head and closed the door. "He wasn't acting like this when we left. I swear. I think he's hamming it up for you." She patted Clay's head with a laugh. He accepted the pat with a defeated grunt, stopped hobbling, and started to walk with his usual gait. I heaved a relieved sigh. He looked up at me and winked. I quickly checked to see if Rachel had noticed, but she had already walked away from us and into the house. I shook my head at him before we followed Rachel in. "So — Melissa Haag

Some people, he says, they hide themselves away from the eyes of the world. They hunker down and shiver. They find four walls high enough to put between them and everything else. Those people, to them the world is a frightful place. See, you and me, we're different. When we are called on to move, we move. It don't matter the cause or the distance. Revenge or ministration, reason or folly - it's all the same to us. — Alden Bell

I know it's hard when other children are called home but we can find purpose and good in all things when we can see things from the Lord's perspective. There is goodness to be found and lives are still touched and changed for the good when little ones go home to Heavenly Father. My sister was 7 when she returned to him. Her passing gave me the strength to be who I am today. Every experience we have had in our lives has made us the strong women we are today.
The Lord is strengthening those families as they pass through these trials just as He does us. — Laura Lane

An elephant fell off a cliff, a copper cliff, which practically broke my heart. Elephants and gravity, not a great mix. But you know what? The other elephants immediately stopped and went down and found what was left of it and stood around it in a ring. I couldn't see what they did, but when they were done - it took a day - the one that fell was all back together and up and running again. They resurrected him, I've never seen anything like it. Elephants, they know some shit. I don't know why we rule them, they should rule us. — Lev Grossman

God clues us in to the fact that, "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." In short, God is not logical. This is not to say that he is illogical, only that he is not limited by logic. Simplified, "logic" is connecting the dots. We identify the dots we consider relevant, then connect them into lines and patterns. God, on the other hand, may see that, beneath one of the dots is a stack of a trillion more dots, each of which may be combined with the others. Little wonder that our ways and meanings frequently fail to match God's ways and meanings. Great wonder that, when they don't, we tend to fault him. — Ron Brackin

Not everyone is as honest as Freud was when he said that he cured the miseries of the neurotic only to open him up to the normal misery of life. Only angels know unrelieved joy-or are able to stand it. Yet we see the books by the mind-healers with their garish titles: "Joy!" "Awakening," and the like; we see them in person in lecture halls or in groups, beaming their particular brand of inward, confident well-being, so that it communicates its unmistakable message: we can do this for you, too, if you will only let us. I have never seen or heard them communicate the dangers of the total liberation that they claim to offer; say, to put up a small sign next to the one advertising joy, carrying some inscription like "Danger: real probability of the awakening of terror and dread, from which there is no turning back." It would be honest and would also relieve them of some of the guilt of the occasional suicide that takes place in therapy. — Ernest Becker

And yes, you might be thinking that girls can totally wear cargo pants if they want to, but I disagree. Skinny girls might be able to wear those things, but girls like me look like they're wearing pants with a bunch of purses stapled to them, and that's really the last thing you need when you're looking for something slimming in the plus-size section. In fact, most of the pockets you see on women's pants are just illusions made to taunt you. Or sometimes they really are pockets but they are intentionally sewn closed, as if to say, "I'm letting you have these pockets but I'm sewing them shut for your own good." And most of us leave them sewn shut because we'd rather look thin than have pockets. — Jenny Lawson

They haven't killed us yet, I say, and I imagine that one day I will fly a plane over Portland, over Rochester, over every fenced-in city in the whole country, and I will bomb and bomb and bomb, and watch all their buildings smoldering to dust, and all those people melting and bleeding into flame, and I will see how they like it.
If you take, we will take back. Steal from us, and we will rob you blind. When you squeeze, we will hit.
This is the way the world is made now. — Lauren Oliver

I'm sorry," Leo murmured and then seemed to look through Martin for a few seconds before he returned his gaze to him. "Although if it's any comfort - and please don't take this the wrong way, because I speak from my own perspective, which I understand often places me far outside of the norm - I sometimes like to think that death, at least in the case of those we truly love, allows us to appreciate what they have done for us in ways that are not possible when we're all here, constantly changing and fixated on how to get from one day to the next. Death offers us the chance to reflect on who they were, which of course is a way to understand ourselves. As painful as it can be to see them go - and I don't mean to diminish the sense of loss or grief we all feel - there is also no greater gift. — Matthew Gallaway

People and situations always show us what we need to see and learn about ourselves, and when we take responsibility for our own feelings, how others treat us also changes. Everything in life is there to teach us something about ourselves. Don't blame others, or try to separate yourself from them. Be grateful that they are helping you to become conscious of yourself and your own ego-mind an consciousness. — Mada Eliza Dalian

There's only one thing we can be sure of, and that is the love that we have for our children, for our families, for each other. The warmth of a small child's embrace, that is true. The memories we have of them, the joy that they bring, the wonder we see through their eyes, that fierce and boundless love we feel for them, a love that takes us out of ourselves and binds us to something larger, we know that's what matters. We know we're always doing right when we're taking care of them, when we're teaching them well, when we're showing acts of kindness. We don't go wrong when we do that. — Barack Obama

When we think about immigration, we have to understand there are folks all around the world who still see America as the land of promise. And they provide us energy, and they provide us innovation. And they start companies like Intel and Google, and we want to encourage that. — Barack Obama

I want the Saints to be one of those teams where when other teams see us on the schedule, they know they're in for one hell of a game. — Reggie Bush

What finally helped was an image from a medieval monk, Brother Lawrence, who saw all of us as trees in winter, with little to give, stripped of leaves and color and growth, whom God loves unconditionally anyway. My priest friend Margaret, who works with the aged and who shared this image with me, wanted me to see that even though these old people are no longer useful in any traditional meaning of the word, they are there to be loved unconditionally, like trees in the winter. When — Anne Lamott

I have shown you this evening autographic records of the history of stress and strain in the living and non-living. How similar are the writings! So similar in fact that you cannot tell one apart from the other. Among such phenomena, how can we draw a line of demarcation and say, here the physical ends and there the physiological begins? Such absolute barriers do not exist.
It was when I came upon the mute witness of these self made records, and perceived in them one phase of a pervading unity that bears within it all things - the mote that quivers in ripples of light, the teeming life upon our earth, and the radiant suns that shine above us - it was then that I understood for the first time a little of that message proclaimed by my ancestors on the banks of the Ganges thirty centuries ago: "They who see but one, in all the changing manifoldness of this universe, unto them belongs Eternal Truth - unto none else, unto none else! — Jagadis Chandra Bose

The environment in which we live and work plays a very important role in this practice. When we choose wholesome living and working environments (and that includes the things we hear, see, smell, and touch), they help us get in touch with what's beautiful and healthy in us and in the world, and we will be nourished, healed, and transformed. We should do everything we can to choose - or create - wholesome environments for ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren. If you are a political leader, if you work in a ministry of culture, or if you are a teacher or a parent, please reflect on this point. — Thich Nhat Hanh

What is the bottom line for the animal/human hierarchy? I think it is at the animate/inanimate line, and Carol Adams and others are close to it: we eat them. This is what humans want from animals and largely why and how they are most harmed. We make them dead so we can live. We make our bodies out of their bodies. Their inanimate becomes our animate. We justify it as necessary, but it is not. We do it because we want to, we enjoy it, and we can. We say they eat each other, too, which they do. But this does not exonerate us; it only makes us animal rather than human, the distinguishing methodology abandoned when its conclusions are inconvenient or unpleasant. The place to look for this bottom line is the farm, the stockyard, the slaughterhouse. I have yet to see one run by a nonhuman animal. — Catherine Mackinnon

Also, when we did "Smallville," we didn't have an opportunity to interact with people who watched the show. And see what they had to say and listen to criticism and listen to praise at the same time. So a lot of this is a new experience and it's very interesting and rewarding for us. I think we get honest feedback. You get hate. You get a lot of love as well. And I'm actually very curious what people think of the show. For us, it's been a passion project of ours, and an incredibly challenging show to make. — Miles Millar

If only we know, boss, what the stones and rain and flowers say. Maybe they call-call us-and we don't hear them. When will people's ears open, boss? When shall we have our eyes open to see? When shall we open our arms to embrace everything-stones, rain, flowers, and people? What do you think about that, boss? And what do your books have to say about that? — Nikos Kazantzakis

What is a great love of books? It is something like a personal introduction to the great and good men of all past times. Books, it is true, are silent as you see them on their shelves; but, silent as they are, when I enter a library I feel as if almost the dead were present, and I know if I put questions to these books they will answer me with all the faithfulness and fulness which has been left in them by the great men who have left the books with us. — John Bright

Of course it's the apparently tranquil periods that deceive us. Though our instruments or our senses or our wits may not be able to see the processes that are leading toward these clusters of events, they're happening. The star, the wheel, the butterfly - all are in a subtle state of unrest, waiting for the moment when some invisible mechanism signals that the time has come. Then the star explodes; the wheel makes poor men rich; the butterfly mates and dies. — Clive Barker

I was always restless, always a roving spirit. When I was a little child I was always running away. I never got very far, but they were always having to come and fetch me. Once when I was about six, my father came to get me somewhere I'd gone, and he told me later he'd asked me, "Why are you so restless? Why can't you stay here with us?" and I said to him, "I want to go and see the world. I want to know the world like the palm of my hand. — Katherine Anne Porter

When we put our trust in diplomacy, it is not because it is an inspiring or uplifting discourse or because it helps us see the common humanity in others. The stylized circumlocutions of diplomats can make them seem ridiculous or irrelevant: they never seem to be talking about what is really going on. — Noah Feldman

When they see us dance. When they see how you look at me. When they see how I smile at you. — Philippa Gregory

You are the witness of the three bodies: the gross, the subtle, and the causal, and of the three times: past, present and future, and also this void. In the story of the tenth man, when each of them counted and thought they were only nine, each one forgetting to count himself, there is a stage when they think one is missing and do not know who it is; and that corresponds to the void. We are so accustomed to the notion that all that we see around us is permanent and that we are this body, that when all this ceases to exist we imagine and fear that we also have ceased to exist. — Ramana Maharshi

Understanding the world too well, you see too many options and become as indecisive as Hamlet.
No matter how far we progress, we remain part animal, and it is the animal in us that fires our strategies, gives them life, animates us to fight. Without the desire to fight, without a capacity for the violence war churns up, we cannot deal with danger.
The prudent Odysseus types are comfortable with both sides of their nature. They plan ahead as best they can, see far and wide, but when it comes time to move ahead, they move. Knowing how to control your emotions means not repressing them completely but using them to their best effect. — Robert Greene

We spoke of how to say good-bye," Jem said. "When Jonathan bid farewell to David, he said, 'Go in peace, for as much as we have sworn, both of us, saying the Lord be between me and thee, forever.' They did not see each other again, but they did not forget. So it will be with us. When I am Brother Zachariah, when I no longer see the world with my human eyes, I will still be in some part the Jem you knew, and I will see you with the eyes of my heart. — Cassandra Clare

Our Buddhist sutra tells us that when conditions are sufficient, we see forms, and when conditions are not sufficient, we don't. When all conditions are prsesent, phenomena can be perceived by us, and so they are revealed to us as existing, — Thich Nhat Hanh

You'd help if you could, wouldn't you, boy?" I said. "It's no wonder they call you man's best friend. Faithful and loyal and true, you share in our sorrows and rejoice with us in our triumphs, the truest friend we ever have known, a better friend than we deserve. You have thrown in your lot with us, through thick and thin, on battlefield and hearthrug, refusing to leave your master even when death and destruction lie all around. Ah, noble dog, you are the furry mirror in which we see our better selves reflected, man as he could be, unstained by war or ambition, unspoilt by- — Connie Willis

I looked over at Augustus Waters, who looked back at me. You could almost see through his eyes they were so blue. "There will come a time," I said, "when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed for that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. — John Green

Sometimes I ain't sho who's got ere a right to say when a man is crazy and when he ain't. Sometimes I think it ain't none of us pure crazy and ain't none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It's like it ain't so much what a fellow does, but it's the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it. [ ... ] That's how I reckon a man is crazy. That's how he can't see eye to eye with other folks. And I reckon they ain't nothing else to do with him but what the most folks says is right. — William Faulkner

Brian Turner has given us not so much a memoir as a mediation, rendered with grace and wit and wisdom. If you want to know what modern soldiers see when they look at their world, read this book. — Larry Heinemann

Some of them [family names] have sentimental value for some reason or another, some of them just sound beautiful. Some of them are because of people that are meaningful to us in our lives. So it's hard to say which one we'll pick. Sometimes they say you have to see the child before you decide. So maybe when we see her we'll make a last-second decision. — John Legend

He took another swallow of beer. "Are things as bad as they seem? Or have I just gotten old like my da, and now everything tastes a little bitter compared to when I was a boy?" Kote wiped at the bar for a long moment, as if reluctant to speak. "I think things are usually bad one way or another," he said. "It might be that only us older folk can see it." Graham began to nod, then frowned. "Except you're not old, are you? I forget that most times." He looked the red-haired man up and down. "I mean, you move around old, and you talk old, but you're not, are you? I'll bet you're half my age." He squinted at the innkeeper. "How old are you, anyway?" The innkeeper gave a tired smile. "Old enough to feel old. — Patrick Rothfuss

When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for; and let us think, as we lay stone on stone, that a time is to come when those stones will be held sacred because our hands have touched them, and that men will say, as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, 'See! This our father did for us. — John Ruskin

The receptive attitude enables one mind to fix itself to another as by spiritual grappling-irons. When you see that every word you utter us taken in, and weighed, and measured by your listener, you cannot free yourself from the influence of his presence. You are compelled to have in your thoughts not only the words you utter, but the man to whom they are spoken. You must not only talk, and talk well, but you must talk to him. — Charles Dickens

Kant was surely right that our minds "cleave the air" with concepts of substance, space, time, and causality. They are the substrate of our conscious experience. They are the semantic contents of the major elements of syntax: non, preposition, tense, verb. They give us the vocabulary, verbal and mental, with which we reason about the physical and social world. Because they are gadgets in the brain rather than readouts of reality, they present us with paradoxes when we push them to the frontiers of science, philosophy, and law. And as we shall see in the next chapter, they are a source of the metaphors by which we comprehend many other spheres of life. — Steven Pinker

Everything we do is in service of our needs. When this one concept is applied to our view of others, we'll see that we have no real enemies, that what others do to us is the best possible thing they know to do to get their needs met. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

We are in one galaxy called the Milky Way. When you look at the Milky Way's next-door neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy, your telescope is a time machine taking you back two and a half million years. There's a cluster of five galaxies called Stephan's Quintet, which we see through the Hubble telescope spectacularly colliding with each other. But we see them colliding 280 million years ago. If there are aliens in one of those colliding galaxies with a telescope powerful enough to see us, what they are seeing on Earth, at this very moment, here and now, is the early ancestors of the dinosaurs. Are — Richard Dawkins

We were approaching the Louvre, but he paused to lean on the parapet, and we both stood there contemplating the passing boats, which dazzled us with their spotlights. 'Look at them,' I said, because I needed to talk about something, afraid that he might get bored and go home. 'They only see what the spotlights show them. When they go home home, they'll say they know Paris. Tomorrow they'll go and see the Mona Lisa and claim they've visited the Louvre. But they don't know Paris and have never really been to the Louvre. All they did was go on a boat and look at a painting, one painting, instead of looking at a whole city and trying to find out what's happening in it, visiting the bars, going down the streets that don't appear in any of the tourist guides, and getting lost in order to find themselves again. It's the difference between watching a porn movie and making love. — Paulo Coelho

Just because some people see us that way doesn't mean it's what we are. We'll overcome our labels together. They don't matter; they don't make us who we are. We make us who we are. Fuck those motherfuckers."
She laughed. "When did you get so smart?"
"Baby, I've always been smart," he said playfully. "I'm just lazy as hell and rarely show. — J.M. Darhower

IN the morning we went up to the village and bought a wire rat-trap and fetched it down, and unstopped the best rat-hole, and in about an hour we had fifteen of the bulliest kind of ones; and then we took it and put it in a safe place under Aunt Sally's bed. But while we was gone for spiders little Thomas Franklin Benjamin Jefferson Elexander Phelps found it there, and opened the door of it to see if the rats would come out, and they did; and Aunt Sally she come in, and when we got back she was a- standing on top of the bed raising Cain, and the rats was doing what they could to keep off the dull times for her. So she took and dusted us both with the hickry, and we was as much as two hours catching another fifteen or sixteen, drat that meddlesome cub, and they warn't the likeliest, nuther, because the first haul was the pick of the flock. I never see a likelier lot of rats than what that first haul was. — Mark Twain

Organizations like the UN do a lot of good, but there are certain basic realities they never seem to grasp ... Maybe the most important truth that eludes these organizations is that it's insulting when outsiders come in and tell a traumatized people what it will take for them to heal.
You cannot go to another country and make a plan for it. The cultural context is so different from what you know that you will not understand much of what you see. I would never come to the US and claim to understand what's going on, even in the African American culture. People who have lived through a terrible conflict may be hungry and desperate, but they are not stupid. They often have very good ideas about how peace can evolve, and they need to be asked.
That includes women. Most especially women ...
To outsiders like the UN, these soldiers were a problem to be managed. But they were our children. — Leymah Gbowee

I think the roots of this antagonism to science run very deep. They're ancient. We see them in Genesis, this first story, this founding myth of ours, in which the first humans are doomed and cursed eternally for asking a question, for partaking of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. It's puzzling that Eden is synonymous with paradise when, if you think about it at all, it's more like a maximum-security prison with twenty-four hour surveillance. It's a horrible place. Adam and Eve have no childhood. They awaken full-grown. What is a human being without a childhood? Our long childhood is a critical feature of our species. It differentiates us, to a degree, from most other species. We take a longer time to mature. We depend upon these formative years and the social fabric to learn many of the things we need to know. — Ann Druyan

the car into gear and drives through the gate. Dede closes the gate behind them, taking another look across the street and seeing nothing. "That's the thing, though," she says when she reenters the car. "He wasn't walking. He was just watching us. I mean, I think. With the headlights, I couldn't really see. It could just be my eyes playing tricks." Annie pulls the Beetle onto the grass next to the massive detached garage, hidden from sight. She lets out a sigh. "Good to be home," she says. "There's no place like home. There's no place like - " "Would you shut up?" As they walk toward the back entrance, they see the ladder the hot tool-belt guy used yesterday, broken down and lying in the grass. "Noah was cute," Annie says. "Was he? Was he cute?" Dede throws another elbow. "Now, now, dearest, I only have eyes for you. — James Patterson

There is this certain rawness of soul that puts the polished ones on edge. Some of us just step out and the sunlight illuminates our bones, nerves, veins, cells! And that's just it, we're just like that! Then the others are tinted, polished, honed and well-contemplated; when they see you walk in and they can see all of your bones, even the tiniest ones, illuminated and outlined by the sunlight, it makes them feel shaded-in, it makes them feel hidden, it makes them turn their faces away. The way you bleed yourself all over the lines just makes it too uncomfortable for them, I guess. — C. JoyBell C.

As soon as we see our dreams betrayed we realize that the intensest joys of our life have nothing to do with reality, and we are consumed with regret for the time when they glowed within us. And in this succession of hopes and regrets our life slips by. — Natalia Ginzburg

It's like this, Sergeant. We've seen a lot of our friends die, right? And maybe we didn't have to give the orders, so maybe you think it's easier for us. But I don't think so. You see, to use those people were living, breathing. They were friends. When they die, it hurts. But you go around telling yourself that the only way to keep from going mad is to take all that away from them, so you don't have to think about it, so you don't have to feel anything when they die. But, damn, when you take away everybody else's humanity, you take away your own. And that'll drive you mad as sure as anything. It's that hurt we feel that makes us keep going, Sergeant. And maybe we're not getting anywhere, but at least we're not running away from anything. — Steven Erikson

Pursuing a family history beyond a simple catalogue of names is always evidence of separation, of severing ties at least to the extent of holding one's relations at arm's length. The family member who want to make a private gift of a family tree to a close circle of relatives soon becomes the historian who estranges her antecedents by locating them "in history". I found that family history, which humanizes those who might otherwise be mere faces in a crowd, also defamiliarized those closest to me, giving their lives a larger pattern than they had when they were lived. They became both more and less themselves. I consoled myself by thinking that this is what history does to us too. As we grow older we see not how unique our lives have been, but how representative we were and are; that we are part of the figure in the carpet woven by events, by chance and accident, and by the play of forces more powerful than us. — Alison Light

Stories exist to entertain and inspire us. They're merely veils of hope for when we see the ugliness of the world. — Felix Alexander

My name is Tobias Eaton," Tobias says. "I don't think you want to push me off this train."
The effect of the name on the people in the car is immediate and bewildering: they lower their weapons. They exchange meaningful looks.
"Eaton? Really?" Edward says, eyebrows raised. "I have to admit, I did not see that coming." He clears his throat. "Fine, you can come. But when we get to the city, you've got to come with us."
Then he smiles a little. "We know someone who's been looking for you, Tobias Eaton. — Veronica Roth

We see what we want to see, what we can tolerate seeing, and our partner does the same. Neutralizing each other's complexity affords us a kind of manageable otherness. We narrow down our partner, ignoring or rejecting essential parts when they threaten the established order of our coupledom. We also reduce ourselves, jettisoning large chunks of our personalities in the name of love. — Esther Perel

The mood was terrible. You could see it in everybody's eyes. The body language was just defeated. When they put me in I was hoping I could give us some energy and try to bring us back. — Billy Campbell

In all my years here, no one's been able to remember my name when I'm introduced. No one has bothered. They usually see us as types, not as individuals. His — Abraham Verghese

However we may flatter ourselves to the contrary, our friends think no higher of us than the world do. They see us through the jaundiced or distrustful eyes of others. They may know better, but their feelings are governed by popular prejudice. Nay, they are more shy of us (when under a cloud) than even strangers; for we involve them in a common disgrace, or compel them to embroil themselves in continual quarrels and disputes in our defense. — William Hazlitt

There is a belief advanced today, and in some cases by conservative black authors, that poor children and particularly black children should not be allowed to hear too much about these matters. If they learn how much less they are getting than rich children, we are told, this knowledge may induce them to regard themselves as "victims," and such "victim-thinking," it is argued, may then undermine their capacity to profit from whatever opportunities may actually exist. But this is a matter of psychology-or strategy-and not reality. The matter, in any case, is academic since most adolescents in the poorest neighborhoods learn very soon that they are getting less than children in the wealthier school districts. They see suburban schools on television and they see them when they travel for athletic competitions. It is a waste of time to worry whether we should tell them something they could tell to us. About injustice, most poor children in American cannot be fooled. — Jonathan Kozol

Balloons
Since Christmas they have lived with us, Guileless and clear, Oval soul-animals, Taking up half the space, Moving and rubbing on the silk Invisible air drifts, Giving a shriek and pop When attacked, then scooting to rest, barely trembling. Yellow cathead, blue fish
Such queer moons we live with Instead of dead furniture! Straw mats, white walls And these traveling Globes of thin air, red, green, Delighting The heart like wishes or free Peacocks blessing Old ground with a feather Beaten in starry metals. Your small Brother is making His balloon squeak like a cat. Seeming to see A funny pink world he might eat on the other side of it, He bites, Then sits Back, fat jug Contemplating a world clear as water. A red Shred in his little fist. — Sylvia Plath

Some of our parents were always on our side. Some of our parents chose to banish us rather than see us for who we were. And some of our parents, when they found out we were sick, stopped being dragons and became dragonslayers instead. Sometimes that's what it takes - the final battle. But it should take much, much less than that. — David Levithan

What do you believe, Aunt Elizabeth?'
'I believe ... I am comfortable with reading the Bible figuratively rather than literally. For instance, I think the six days in Genesis are not literal days, but different periods of creation, so that it took many thousands
or hundreds of thousands of years
to create. It does not demean God; it simply gives Him more time to build this extraordinary world.'
'And the ichthyosaurus and plesiosaurus?'
'They are creatures from long, long ago. They remind us that the world is changing. Of course it is. I can see it change when there are landslips at Lyme that alter the shoreline. It changes when there are earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and floods. And why shouldn't it? — Tracy Chevalier

These young ones. They do not understand. There are so few of us left who remember how destructive rebellion is. The slaughter after the Golden Calf was worshiped. The thousands who died. The firestorm that burned the outer rim of camp when the foreigners among us incited a riot. They take for granted the miraculous water that feeds this multitude. They have eaten the manna every day of their lives and do not see the utter strangeness of it. They have not felt the desperation of thirst or the hopelessness of hunger. All they do is complain, — Connilyn Cossette

One day I was handed a few volumes of new literature unlike anything I had ever read before and so captivating as to make me utterly forget my hopeless state. They were the earlier works of Mark Twain and to them might have been due the miraculous recovery which followed. Twenty-five years later, when I met Mr. Clemens and we formed a friendship between us, I told him of the experience and was amazed to see that great man of laughter burst into tears. — Nikola Tesla

Father's face was buried in early summer flowers. There was something gruesome about the utter freshness of those flowers. It was as though they were peering down into the bottom of a well. For a dead man's face falls to an infinite depth beneath the surface which the face possessed when it was alive, leaving nothing for the survivors to see but the frame of a mask; it falls so deep, indeed, that it can never be pulled back to the surface. A dead man's face can tell us better than anything else in this world how far removed we are from the true existence of physical substance, how impossible it is for us to lay hands on the way in which this substance exists. — Yukio Mishima

You see, team," Dan said passionately, "our problem is negativity, and we have no one to blame but ourselves. I believe where there is a void, negativity will fill it. And, unfortunately, within every organization you get voids in communication between leaders and their employees and between different teams and team members. It happens everywhere: with sports teams, work teams, family teams. Within these voids, negativity starts to breed and grow and, eventually, like a cancer it will spread if you don't address it. As an executive team it's up to us to do everything we can to prevent these voids from occurring and when they do occur, we must quickly fill them with positive communication and positive energy. People don't just want to be seen and heard. They want to hear and see, and if they don't feel like they are part of the company then they will assume the worst and act accordingly. — Jon Gordon

They waited awhile before lighting the candles; the gloom allowed the past to slip cozily into the present. But the memories were of a time that was gone and didn't overshadow the present. But the memories were vivid, and they made the freinds feel both young and old ... When Chrsitanne finally lit the candles and they saw one another clearly again, she was happy to see in the old faces of the others the young faces they had come across in their memories. we store our youth wihtin us, we can go back to it and find ourselves in it, but it is past
melancholy filled their hearsts, and sympahty, for one another and for themsleves. — The Weekend

Thing that got me was not her list of things she hated, since she was obviously crazy as a Cyborg, but fact that always somebody agreed with her prohibitions. Must be a yearning deep in human heart to stop other people from doing as they please. Rules, laws - always for other fellow. A murky part of us, something we had before we came down out of trees, and failed to shuck when we stood up. Because not one of those people said: "Please pass this so that I won't be able to do something I know I should stop." Nyet, tovarishchee, was always something they hated to see neighbors doing. Stop them "for their own good" - not because speaker claimed to be harmed by it. — Robert A. Heinlein

Loving yourself isn't just about celebrating your accomplishments and nurturing your talents. Those things are nice, sure. But that's not how we know others love us. We know others love us when they see us with our face on the ground, crying and weak, feeling like we've got nothing to offer the world - and they smile, and they reach out, and they love us anyway. Loving yourself is what you do when you fail, when you don't know, when you screw up, when you forget, when you lose everything. Loving yourself is what you do when you can't approve of what you've done. Loving yourself is what you do when you're not sure if it's going to get better. Loving yourself is what you must do in those moments when you can't like yourself. Real love is when you reach out for no good reason at all, except to love. — Vironika Tugaleva

Bodies always tell the truth. They give us hints of how to listen for it, and to recognize it when we hear or see it. — Robin Rose Bennett