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Link Quote Stars Tags Author
61ed608 We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. optimism inspirational perception pessimism Oscar Wilde
0c5362f Humans see what they want to see. mankind self-delusion willful-ignorance perception humans Rick Riordan
9e3c9d6 Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change. change motivational inspirational perception Wayne W. Dyer
cfdbd50 The outer world is a reflection of the inner world. Other people's perception of you is a reflection of them; your response to them is an awareness of you. inspiration inspirational-attitude inspirational-life inspirational-quotes inspire life-and-living life-quotes living inspiring life-lessons life inspirational inspirational-quote authentic-living life-philosophy perception awareness Roy T. Bennett
436374e Songs are as sad as the listener. perception Jonathan Safran Foer
7bee1df If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern. perception William Blake
376c9c3 "You used," he said, and then took a sharp breath, "to call me Augustus." names the-fault-in-our-stars perception John Green
e79d72e To change ourselves effectively, we first had to change our perceptions. perception Stephen R. Covey
edbb27a No one else has access to the world you carry around within yourself; you are its custodian and entrance. No one else can see the world the way you see it. No one else can feel your life the way you feel it. Thus it is impossible to ever compare two people because each stands on such different ground. When you compare yourself to others, you are inviting envy into your consciousness; it can be a dangerous and destructive guest. perception John O'Donohue
397d3c4 Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered. order perception José Saramago
b3a302e "In this treacherous world Nothing is the truth nor a lie. lies good truth perception evil Pedro Calderón de la Barca
cbb56dd Fathers never have exactly the daughters they want because they invent a notion a them that the daughters have to conform to. fathers daughters ideals perception expectations Simone de Beauvoir
29d0fc2 We never see other people anyway, only the monsters we make of them. people perception Colson Whitehead
c79e963 At times I feel as if I had lived all this before and that I have already written these very words, but I know it was not I: it was another woman, who kept her notebooks so that one day I could use them. I write, she wrote, that memory is fragile and the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present, and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously. ... That's why my Grandmother Clara wrote in her notebooks, in order to see things in their true dimension and to defy her own poor memory. words time space perception memory Isabel Allende
484f2b0 The artistic image is not intended to represent the thing itself, but, rather, the reality of the force the thing contains. leopold-senghor connection perception James Baldwin
00d6f87 In making even horizontal and clear inspections we colour and mould according to the wants within us whatever our eyes bring in. perception Thomas Hardy
ff1bfea The most important thing I learnt on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever. When any Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. time perception Kurt Vonnegut
262d355 A monkey glances up and sees a banana, and that's as far as he looks. A visionary looks up and sees the moon. optimism perception Eoin Colfer
7f4becc Even if it were possible to cast my horoscope in this one life, and to make an accurate prediction about my future, it would not be possible to 'show' it to me because as soon as I saw it my future would change by definition. This is why Werner Heisenberg's adaptation of the Hays Office--the so-called principle of uncertainty whereby the act of measuring something has the effect of altering the measurement--is of such importance. In my case the difference is often made by publicity. For example, and to boast of one of my few virtues, I used to derive pleasure from giving my time to bright young people who showed promise as writers and who asked for my help. Then some profile of me quoted someone who disclosed that I liked to do this. Then it became something widely said of me, whereupon it became almost impossible for me to go on doing it, because I started to receive far more requests than I could respond to, let alone satisfy. Perception modifies reality: when I abandoned the smoking habit of more than three decades I was given a supposedly helpful pill called Wellbutrin. But as soon as I discovered that this was the brand name for an antidepressant, I tossed the bottle away. There may be successful methods for overcoming the blues but for me they cannot include a capsule that says: 'Fool yourself into happiness, while pretending not to do so.' I should actually my mind to be strong enough to circumvent such a trick. depression future reality happiness life assistance bupropion hays-office measurement mentorship publicity soothsaying horoscopes uncertainty-principle werner-heisenberg self-delusion perception virtues writers smoking Christopher Hitchens
33ba8e1 "And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds "joy luck" is not a word, it does not exist. They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation." women joy fear family hope concepts daughters heritage mothers immigration language perception ideas tradition luck Amy Tan
2cf244a Such is the influence which the condition of our own thoughts, exercises, even over the appearance of external objects. Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts. The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision. thoughts darkness optimism subconscious perspective perception pessimism human-nature Charles Dickens
aa9c54a "Ghosts don't haunt us. That's not how it works. They're present among us because we won't let go of them." "I don't believe in ghosts," I said, faintly. "Some people can't see the color red. That doesn't mean it isn't there," she replied." haunting perception Sue Grafton
8ff4f02 What do you mean, blindly? That baby is a very sentient creature... That baby sees the world with a completeness that you and I will never know again. His doors of perception have not yet been closed. He still experiences the moment he lives in. living perception Tom Wolfe
9815485 You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. You see what is, where most people see what they expect. perception John Steinbeck
4103666 "Silverfish looked down. "Oh. Are you a dwarf?" Cuddy gave him a blank stare. "Are you a giant?" He said. "Me? Of course not!" "Ah. Then I must be a dwarf, yes." dwarf perspective perception Terry Pratchett
76de685 "Have you thought about what it means to be a god?" asked the man. He had a beard and a baseball cap. "It means you give up your mortal existence to become a meme: something that lives forever in people's minds, like the tune of a nursery rhyme. It means that everyone gets to re-create you in their own minds. You barely have your own identity any more. Instead, you're a thousand aspects of what people need you to be. And everyone wants something different from you. Nothing is fixed, nothing is stable." meme interpretation perception Neil Gaiman
dff2759 The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence past historical-perspective history-repeating-itself human-perception jared-wheat past-and-future the-past historical presence perception T.S. Eliot
e0cf341 "Perception requires imagination because the data people encounter in their lives are never complete and always equivocal. For example, most people consider that the greatest evidence of an event one can obtain is to see it with their own eyes, and in a court of law little is held in more esteem than eyewitness testimony. Yet if you asked to display for a court a video of the same quality as the unprocessed data catptured on the retina of a human eye, the judge might wonder what you were tryig to put over. For one thing, the view will have a blind spot where the optic nerve attaches to the retina. Moreover, the only part of our field of vision with good resolution is a narrow area of about 1 degree of visual angle around the retina's center, an area the width of our thumb as it looks when held at arm's length. Outside that region, resolution drops off sharply. To compensate, we constantly move our eyes to bring the sharper region to bear on different portions of the scene we wish to observe. And so the pattern of raw data sent to the brain is a shaky, badly pixilated picture with a hole in it. Fortunately the brain processes the data, combining input from both eyes, filling in gaps on the assumption that the visual properties of neighboring locations are similar and interpolating. The result - at least until age, injury, disease, or an excess of mai tais takes its toll - is a happy human being suffering from the compelling illusion that his or her vision is sharp and clear. We also use our imagination and take shortcuts to fill gaps in patterns of nonvisual data. As with visual input, we draw conclusions and make judgments based on uncertain and incomplete information, and we conclude, when we are done analyzing the patterns, that out "picture" is clear and accurate. But is it?" -- reality perception eyes Leonard Mlodinow
317b6d1 We are happy when people/things conform and unhappy when they don't. People and events don't disappoint us, our models of reality do. It is my model of reality that determines my happiness or disappointments. reality life-lessons happiness perception perception-of-reality perceptions Stefan Zweig
12d1771 Thinking can only serve to measure out the helplessness of thought. ego helplessness perception thinking thought H. Rider Haggard
d45c04b "Andrei, did you like the opera?" "Not particularly." "Andrei, do you see what you're missing?" "I don't think I do, Kira. It's all rather silly. And useless." "Can't you enjoy things that are useless, merely because they are beautiful?" "No. But I enjoyed it." "The music?" "No. The way you listened to it." beauty music perception Ayn Rand
70e4d36 We must look at the lens through we see the world, as well as the world we see, and that the lens itself shapes how we interpret the world. reality perception Stephen R. Covey
13f735c "One noteworthy study suggests that people who suppress negative emotions tend to leak those emotions later in unexpected ways. The psychologist Judith Grob asked people to hide their emotions when she showed them disgusting images. She even had them hold pens in their mouths to prevent them from frowning. She found that this group reported feeling less disgusted by the pictures than did those who'd been allowed to react naturally. Later, however, the people who hid their emotions suffered side effects. Their memory was impaired, and the negative emotions they'd suppressed seemed to color their outlook. When Grob had them fill in the missing letter to the word "gr_ss", for example, they were more likely than others to offer "gross" rather than "grass". "People who tend to [suppress their negative emotions] regularly," concludes Grob, "might start to see their world in a more negative light." p. 223" -- perception Susan Cain
0b2c307 Dad had once said, Trust your mind, Rob. If it smells like shit but has writing across it that says Happy Birthday and a candle stuck down in it, what is it? Is there icing on it? he'd said. Dad had done that thing of squinting his eyes when an answer was not quite there yet. trust sons perception George Saunders
b912bc0 You may plainly perceive the traitor through his mask; he is well-known everywhere in his true colors; his rolling eyes and his honeyed tones impose only on those who do not know him. cunning misanthropic masks hypocrisy traitor perception deceit betrayal Molière
3d2eb30 No! I don't want to speak of that! But I'm going to. I want you to hear. I want you to know what's in store for you. There will be days when you'll look at your hands and you'll want to take something and smash every bone in them, because they'll be taunting you with what they could do, if you found a chance for them to do it, and you can't find that chance, and you can't bear your living body because it has failed those hands somewhere. There will be days when a bus driver will snap at you as you enter a bus, and he'll be only asking for a dime, but that won't be what you hear; you'll hear that you're nothing, that he's laughing at you, that it's written on your forehead, that thing they hate you for. There will be days when you'll stand in the corner of a hall and listen to a creature on a platform talking about buildings, about the work you love, and the things he'll say will make you wait for somebody to rise and crack him open between two thumbnails; and then you'll hear people applauding him, and you'll want to scream, because you won't know whether they're real or you are, whether you're in a room full of gored skulls, or whether someone has just emptied your own head, and you'll say nothing, because the sounds you could make - they're not a language in that room any longer; but you'd want to speak, you won't anyway, because you'll be brushed aside, you who have nothing to tell them about buildings! Is that what you want? objectivism purpose perception Ayn Rand
f692609 What she saw, she felt. Her eyes went straight to her heart. sympathy feelings emotion feel sense perception Jerry Spinelli
392af29 After all, is it not the way we humans shape the universe, shape time itself? Do we not take the raw stuff of chaos and impose a beginning, middle, and end on it, like the simplest and most profound of folktales, to reflect the shapes of our own tiny lives? And if the physicists are right, that the physical world changes as it is observed, and we are its only known observers, then might we not be bending the entire chaotic universe, the eternal, ever-active Now, to fit that familiar form? energy perception Tad Williams
b6301ed When a book leaves its author's desk it changes. Even before anyone has read it, before eyes other than its creator's have looked upon a single phrase, it is irretrievably altered. It has become , that no longer belongs to its maker. It has acquired, in a sense, free will. It will make its journey through the world and there is no longer anything the author can do about it. Even he, as he looks at its sentences, reads them differently now that they can be read by others. They look like different sentences. The book has gone out into the world and the world has remade it. reading writing books books-and-authors books-and-reading published-books publishing metamorphosis perception Salman Rushdie
14507e3 My father says that there is only one perfect view -- the view of the sky straight over our heads, and that all these views on earth are but bungled copies of it. the-sky view perception E.M. Forster
f2e0593 [In 16th century European society] Marriage was the triumphal arch through which women, almost without exception, had to pass in order to reach the public eye. And after marriage followed, in theory, the total self-abnegation of the woman. marriage men feminism women-s-rights history self-determination independence women empowerment wedlock subjugation self-abnegation married-life matrimony social-norms misogyny perception inequality gender Antonia Fraser
2f610b1 "It's a popular fact that 90 percent of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong. . . . It is used. One of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary, to turn the unusual into the usual. Otherwise, human beings, faced with the daily wondrousness of everything, would go around wearing a stupid grin, saying "Wow," a lot. Part of the brain exists to stop this from happening." humour perception Terry Pratchett
0935437 Personally, I like a chocolate-covered sky. Dark, dark chocolate. People say it suits me. I do, however, try to enjoy every color I see - the whole spectrum. A billion or so flavors, none of them quite the same, and a sky to slowly suck on. It takes the edge off the stress. It helps me relax. death stress perception Markus Zusak
1cf7eee If there's a thing, a scene, maybe, an image that you want to see real bad, that you need to see but it doesn't exist in the world around you, at least not in the form that you envision, then you create it so that you can look at it and have it around, or show it to other people who wouldn't have imagined it because they perceive reality in a more narrow, predictable way. And that's it. That's all an artist does. reality perception artist Tom Robbins
9a1277d We walk through so many myths of each other and ourselves; we are so thankful when someone sees us for who we are and accepts us. gratitude relationships love perception Natalie Goldberg
be05215 So much of the past in encapsulated in the odds and ends. Most of us discard more information about ourselves than we ever care to preserve. Our recollection of the past is not simply distorted by our faulty perception of events remembered but skewed by those forgotten. The memory is like twin orbiting stars, one visible, one dark, the trajectory of what's evident forever affected by the gravity of what's concealed. perception Sue Grafton
1eef1b1 A storyteller who provided us with such a profusion of details would rapidly grow maddening. Unfortunately, life itself often subscribes to this mode of storytelling, wearing us out with repetition, misleading emphases and inconsequential plot lines. It insists on showing us Bardak Electronics, the saftey handle in the car, a stray dog, a Christmas card and a fly that lands first on the rim and then in the centre of the ashtray. Which explains how the curious phenomenon whereby valuable elements may be easier to experience in art and in anticipation than in reality. The anticipatory and artistic imaginations omit and compress; they cut away the periods of boredom and direct our attention to critical moments, and thus, without either lying or embellishing, they lend to life a vividness and a coherence that it may lack in the distracting wooliness of the present. conduct perception Alain De Botton
495c357 In a swamp, as in meditation, you begin to glimpse how elusive, how inherently insubstantial, how fleeting our thoughts are, our identities. There is magic in this moist world, in how the mind lets go, slips into sleepy water, circles and nuzzles the banks of palmetto and wild iris, how it seeps across dreams, smears them into the upright world, rots the wood of treasure chests, welcomes the body home. mind magic dream circle palmetto meditation self iris perception water Barbara Hurd
1f58dda I have seen a face with a thousand countenances, and a face that was but a single countenance as if held in a mould. I have seen a face whose sheen I could look through to the ugliness beneath, and a face whose sheen I had to lift to see how beautiful it was. I have seen an old face much lined with nothing, and a smooth face in which all things were graven. I know faces, because I look through the fabric my own eye weaves, and behold the reality beneath. prejudice illusion reality perspectives perception Kahlil Gibran
ff98551 He considered it a shame when people couldn't grasp the infinite-a failure not just of imagination but of simple vision. perception Jess Walter
5cd2415 [I]t is dangerous for a bride to be apologetic about her husband. marriage wives matrimony inferiority perception inequality husbands Wallace Stegner
54b7e45 I brought a picture with me that I had at home, of a girl in a swing with a castle and pretty blue bubbles in the background, to hang in my room, but that nurse here said the girl was naked from the waist up and not appropriate. You know, I've had that picture for fifty years and I never knew she was naked. If you ask me, I don't think the old men they've got here can see well enough to notice that she's bare-breasted. But, this is a Methodist home, so she's in the closet with my gallstones. perception Fannie Flagg
421c020 "This is a perfectly good picture. And if I didn't know you, I would be impressed and charmed. But I do know you." He thought some more, wondering whether he dared say precisely what he felt, for he knew he could never explain exactly why the idea came to him. "It's the painting of a dutiful daughter," he said eventually, looking at her cautiously to see her reaction. "You want to please. You are always aware of what the person looking at this picture will think of it. Because of that you've missed something important. Does that make sense?" She thought, then nodded. "All right," she said grudgingly and with just a touch of despair in her voice. "You win." Julien grunted. "Have another go, then. I shall come back and come back until you figure it out." "And you'll know?" "You'll know. I will merely get the benefit of it." individuality independence paintings daughters fulfillment skills duty gift expectation perception creativity obedience Iain Pears
de9f917 The only people who see the whole picture are the ones who step outside the frame. clear-mindedness clear-view outside-the-box view-from-outside whole-picture perception Salman Rushdie
4dc4a38 Gore Vidal, for instance, once languidly told me that one should never miss a chance either to have sex or to appear on television. My efforts to live up to this maxim have mainly resulted in my passing many unglamorous hours on off-peak cable TV. It was actually Vidal's great foe William F. Buckley who launched my part-time television career, by inviting me on to when I was still quite young, and giving me one of the American Right's less towering intellects as my foil. The response to the show made my day, and then my week. Yet almost every time I go to a TV studio, I feel faintly guilty. This is pre-eminently the 'soft' world of dream and illusion and 'perception': it has only a surrogate relationship to the 'hard' world of printed words and written-down concepts to which I've tried to dedicate my life, and that surrogate relationship, while it, too, may be 'verbal,' consists of being glib rather than fluent, fast rather than quick, sharp rather than pointed. It means reveling in the fact that I have a meretricious, want-it-both-ways side. My only excuse is to say that at least I do not pretend that this is not so. sex literature illusion television cable-television cable-television-in-the-us conservatism-in-the-us gore-vidal william-f-buckley conservatism united-states perception guilt Christopher Hitchens
3f930c5 Foreign behavior? What the fuck are you talking about? Foreign behavior? Have you read Things Fall Apart? Ifemulu asked, wishing she had not told Ranyinudo about Dike. She was angrier with Ranyinudo than she had ever been, yet she knew that Ranyinudo meant well, and had said what many other Nigerians would say, which was why she had not told anyone else about Dike's suicide attempt since she came back. immigration culture home perception Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
1744c24 "What if the differences between social strata stem not from genomics or inherent xcellence or even dollars, but merely differences in knowledge? Would this not mean the whole Pyramid is built on shifting sands?" I speculated such a suggestion could be seen as a serious deviancy. Melphi seemed delited. "Try this for deviancy: fabricants are mirrors held up to purebloods' consciences; what purebloods see reflected there sickens them. So they blame you for holding up the mirror." I hid my shock by asking when purebloods might blame themselves. Melphi relplied, "History suggests, not until they are made to." hatred racism equality perception justice David Mitchell
5e453cd Secularity is a way of being dependent on the responses of our milieu. The secular or false self is the self which is fabricated, as Thomas Merton says, by social compulsions. 'Compulsive' is indeed the best adjective for the false self. It points to the need for ongoing and increasing affirmation. Who am I? I am the one who is liked, praised, admired, disliked, hated or despised. Whether I am a pianist, a businessman or a minister, what matters is how I am perceived by my world. If being busy is a good thing, then I must be busy. If having money is a sign of real freedom, then I must claim my money. If knowing many people proves my importance, I will have to make the necessary contacts. The compulsion manifests itself in the lurking fear of failure and the steady urge to prevent this by gathering more of the same - more work, more money, more friends. worldliness self-perception perception self-esteem Henri J.M. Nouwen
291b907 It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. words literature reading perception Henry David Thoreau
885ea6e But perhaps it is always so, that men form their conceptions from fictitious, conventional types, and then--all the combinations made--they are tired of the fictitious figures and begin to invent more natural, true figures. writing inspiration life drawing perception Leo Tolstoy
598b29e I walked home, seeing all my doubt from the other side. Have you ever seen that? Like when you go on holiday. On the way back, everything is the same but it looks a little different than it did on the way. It's because you're seeing it backwards. life view perception Markus Zusak
b2a30f9 Why then should witless man so much misweene That nothing is but that which he hath seene? perspective perception Edmund Spenser
0ab12e3 Our contradictions are never so to ourselves. perception Jeanette Winterson
096837c "A hundred francs! Oh, dear me! It is worth millions of francs, my child. But my -- dealer -- here tells me that in fact a picture is worth only what someone will give for it. How much money do you have?" Julia took out her purse and counted. "Four francs and twenty sous," she said, looking up at him sadly. "Is that all the money you have in the world?" She nodded. "Then four francs and twenty sous it is." money subjectivity value perception Iain Pears
0f81e20 An author must gorge himself on ten thousand images to select the magical one that can define a piece of the world in a way one has never considered before. writing perception Pat Conroy
73225a1 Doubtless some ancient Greek has observed that behind the big mask and the speaking-trumpet, there must always be our poor little eyes peeping as usual and our timorous lips more or less under anxious control. metaphor theatre self-knowledge masks perception drama speech George Eliot
587c4a0 The spaces between the perceiver and the thing perceived can [...] be closed with a shout of recognition. recognition experience perception knowledge Timothy Findley
3df2589 The novelist is required to create the illusion of a whole world with believable people in it, and the chief difference between the novelist who is an orthodox Christian and the novelist who is merely a naturalist is that the Christian novelist lives in a larger universe. He believes that the natural world contains the supernatural. And this doesn't mean that his obligation to portray the natural is less; it means it is greater. writer writing christian-writers novelist realistic-fiction writers-on-writing perspective perception perception-of-reality realism Flannery O'Connor
f7cb590 The Greeks were realists. They saw the beauty of common things and were content with it. perspective perception Edith Hamilton
fc0e46d I don't know which is worse--to have a bad teacher or no teacher at all. In any case, I believe the teacher's work should be largely negative. He can't put the gift into you, but if he finds it there, he can try to keep it from going in an obviously wrong direction. We can learn how not to write, but this is a discipline that does not simply concern writing itself but concerns the whole intellectual life. A mind cleared of false emotion and false sentiment and egocentricity is going to have at least those roadblocks removed from its path. If you don't think cheaply, then there at least won't be the quality of cheapness in your writing, even though you may not be able to write well. The teacher can try to weed out what is positively bad, and this should be the aim of the whole college. Any discipline can help your writing: logic, mathematics, theology, and of course and particularly drawing. Anything that helps you to see, anything that makes you look. The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that doesn't require his attention. education teaching-writing writing-class guidance observation writing-process perception Flannery O'Connor
1865635 The fiction writer is an observer, first, last, and always, but he cannot be an adequate observer unless he is free from uncertainty about what he sees. Those who have no absolute values cannot let the relative remain merely relative; they are always raising it to the level of the absolute. The Catholic fiction writer is entirely free to observe. He feels no call to take on the duties of God or to create a new universe. He feels perfectly free to look at the one we already have and to show exactly what he sees. how-to-write writing-fiction observation fiction-writing novel-writing perception world-view Flannery O'Connor
f771119 It is not the logical part of thinking that changes emotions but the perceptual part. If we see something differently, our emotions may alter with the altered perception. (p64) perception logic Edward De Bono
c6c55db The circularity of influence was like a trail of dominoes falling in four dimensions. Each time one slapped another and fell to the ground, from a different vantage point it appeared knocked upright, ready to be slapped and fall again. Everything was not merely relative, it was--how to put it? --relevant. Representational. Revealing. Referential and reverential both. perspective perception Gregory Maguire
d115b59 [H]e initially conceived of Olivier as a man of the greatest promise destroyed by a fatal flaw, the unreasoning passion for a woman dissolving into violence, desperately weakening everything he tried to do. For how could learning and poetry be defended when it produced such dreadful results and was advanced by such imperfect creatures? At least Julien did not see the desperate fate of the ruined lover as a nineteenth-century novelist or a poet might have done, recasting the tale to create some appealing romantic hero, dashed to pieces against the unyielding society that produced him. Rather, his initial opinion -- held almost to the last -- was of Olivier as a failure, ruined by a terible weakness. passion poetry love romanticism perception Iain Pears
3649bdb We don't see the world as a botanist who is at the same time an architect, a physician, a geologist, and a ship's captain. Recognizing isn't at all like seeing; the two often don't even agree... paintings perception Sten Nadolny
95b958f People are different in reality from the way you've seen them while making scenarios in your mind. For one thing, they're less consistent. They surprise you all the time. imagination perception Ruth Rendell
42015ae What you see is not what wee se. What you see is distracted by memory, by being who you are, all this time, for all these years. perceptions-of-reality perception Don DeLillo
f9056bf How disquieting to realise that reality is an illusion, at best a democratisation of perception based on participant consensus. reality perception Irvin D. Yalom
a79aeb0 I am often told that the model of balance for the novelist should be Dante, who divided his territory up pretty evenly between hell, purgatory, and paradise. There can be no objection to this, but also there can be no reason to assume that the result of doing it in these times will give us the balanced picture it gave in Dante's. Dante lived in the thirteenth century, when that balance was achieved by the faith of his age. We live now in an age which doubts both fact and value, which is swept this way and that by momentary convictions. Instead of reflecting a balance from the world around him, the novelist now has to achieve one from a felt balance inside himself. structure writing-craft novel-writing perception Flannery O'Connor
9711d4d Nonconformists aren't just going against the grain; they're going against the brain. Either their brains aren't taking the easy way out to begin with, or in standing apart from their peers, these students are standing up to their biology. perception Alexandra Robbins
cef3923 The author perceives nuances of Abigail Adams' character in the occasional errors she makes in readily quoting John Milton. Rather than giving the observer a reason to quibble, they are evidence that she had absorbed Milton's works enough to feel comfortable quoting them from memory. openness perspective perception intellect David McCullough
b1b7859 The human brain takes in information from other people and incorporates it with the information coming from its own senses, neuroscientist Gregory Berns has written. Many times, the group's opinion trumps the individual's before he even becomes aware of it. perception Alexandra Robbins
2eef5fa "Group membership can modify individuals' perceptions of themselves. Unable to separate their personal introspection from the ways they believe other people perceive them, teenagers may have what psychologists call an "imaginary audience", meaning that they believed that other people are just as attuned to their appearance and behavior as they are." reputation perception Alexandra Robbins
e003dda Everything is supposed to be something. But it never is. That's the nature of existence. reality perception expectations Don DeLillo
06c9cc3 Here, then, is the last moment of true perception, a man fishing in a red jacket and a cloudy sky reflected on opaque water. zen perception Michael Cunningham
e42bc4f Memory is always in art, even when it works involuntarily. emotion distortion culture perception Harold Bloom
1aac290 If we are on the outside, we assume a conspiracy is the perfect working scheme. Silent nameless men with unadorned hearts. A conspiracy is everything that ordinary life is not. It's the inside game, cold, sure, undistracted, forever closed off to us. We are the flawed ones, the innocents, trying to make some rough sense of the daily jostle. Conspirators have a logic and daring beyond our reach. All conspiracies are the same taut story of men who find coherence in some criminal act. lies truth perception crime Don DeLillo
a5dc056 The better you look, the more you see model superficiality perspective perception inequality vanity Bret Easton Ellis
8002f50 A world emerging, daily, out of nothing, a world that we trust to resemble what we've seen previously. We should know better. trust emerging perceptions-of-reality resemble gregory-maguire day worlds perception Gregory Maguire
05803b9 The future is intact, still unredeemed, but the past is irredeemable. She is not who she thought she was. future past perception Jeanette Winterson
d8c6888 If physicists want to develop a time machine, they should explore fear. Fear dilates and compresses time without limit. For desperate people awaiting rescue, every instant stretches into unendurable agony; for those awaiting death by cancer, the earth spins relentlessly, shortening the days until they pass like fanned pages in a book. Trapped in our bodies, perception is all, and the engine of perception is hunger for life. perception Greg Iles
5ade18b 1. Men are easy to please but are not pleased for long before some new novelty must delight them. 2. Men are easy to make passionate but are unable to sustain it. 3. Men are always seeking soft women but find their lives in ruins without strong women. 4. Men must be occupied at all times otherwise they make mischief. 5. Men deem themselves weighty and women light. Therefore it is simple to tie a stone round their necks and drown them should they become too troublesome. 6. Men are best left in groups by themselves where they will entirely wear themselves out in drunkenness and competition. While this is taking place a woman may carry on with her own life unhindered. 7. Men are never never to be trusted with what is closest to your heart, and if it is they who are closest to your heart, do not tell them. 8. If a man asks you for money, do not give it to him. 9. If you ask a man for money and he does not give it to you, sell his richest possession and leave at once. 10. Your greatest strength is that every man believes he knows the sum and possibility of every woman. money men passion women trust gender-relations perception power rules Jeanette Winterson
a589e90 "The philosophical implications of "predictive coding" are deep and strange. The model suggests that our perceptions of the world offer us not a literal transcription of reality but rather a seamless illusion woven from both the data of our senses and the models in our memories." reality perception Michael Pollan
12a34ba Your perception of the world and the way you see yourself in it has created within your mind a concept, a philosophy, of the way you believe things to be. inspiration inspirational-quotes life passages-ventura passages-malibu perception Chris Prentiss
26429f3 By changing how you perceive things and how you act upon those perceptions, you will change your life. inspiration life philosophy inspirational non-12-step passages-ventura passages-malibu chris-prentiss quotes perception Chris Prentiss
de08ace "Just remember that in most things, right or wrong depends on where you're standing at the moment. My father's people would have thought having your life's mate picked out for you by your parents to be ... well, barbaric." As Talon's expression started to darken, Caleb added, "No offense intended, but I'm pointing out that things look the way they do because that is how you were taught as a child. And the rest of the world is vastly different from what a child can imagine." social-mores perception Raymond E. Feist
e80d956 I marvelled, not for the first time, at the cruel complacency of ordinary things. But no, not cruel, not complacent, only indifferent, as how could they be otherwise? Henceforth, I would have to address things as they are, not as I imagine them, for this was a new version of reality. reality perception John Banville
a17e657 It is so easy to demonize free-market and the freedom to outsource and offshore because it is so much easier to see people being laid off in big bunches, which makes headlines, than to see them being hired in fives and tens by small and medium-sized companies, which rarely makes news. optimism perspective perception Thomas L. Friedman
79c0e77 But rock, of course, is many colors. The distinction is subtle, but it is not just one plain grey, that I can promise...I spent five hours one afternoon just staring at a rock trying to see into its color scheme. the-color-master perception Aimee Bender
0d73ca8 Cosmic consciousness is the next level of holistic perception. mind inspirational-quotes dan-rather intuition-quotes laurie-nadel laurie-nadel-quotes quote-about-life quote-of-the-day quote-of-the-week quotes-twitter wayne-dyer intuition perception power-of-thoughts Laurie Nadel
d578ae3 "It's tempting to think of red for sun," she said, "but it has to be just a dash, not much. More of a dark orange and a hint of brown. And then white on yellow on white. Not bright white,' she said. 'The kind of white that makes you squint, but in a softer way...' 'Go look at fire for a while. Go spend some time with fire.' Looking at fire was interesting, I have to admit. I sat with a candle for a couple hours. It has these stages of color: the white, the yellow, the red, the tiny spot of blue I'd heard mentioned but never noticed." seeing sun perception fire Aimee Bender
02d81dc There is but one reality, that is true -- but the two of you experience it in slightly different ways. The older you get, I should think, the more you will come to understand that the universe is very much a looking glass, Miss Lancaster. reality multiple-realities perception perception-of-reality Jim Butcher
8ccb595 We were in separate realities, fast and slow. There is no fixed reality, only objects in contrast. objectivity objects subjectivity motion speed observation relativity perception Rachel Kushner
f1f15d6 Why, Mr. Anderson?, Why, why?. Why do you do it? Why, why get up?. Why keep fighting?. Do you believe you're fighting...for something?. For more than your survival?. Can you tell me what it is?. Do you even know?; Is it freedom?, Or truth?. Perhaps peace?. Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson. Vagaries of perception. Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself, although... only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now, You can't win. It's pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson?. Why?, Why do you persist?. Agent Smith ( Matrix Revolutions Movie, 2003 ). existence passion freedom persistence love truth why-we-live illusions matrix why perception human-beings survival survival-instinct win fight William Irwin
5ac4574 Was I like honey thinking it's a small bear, not realizing the bear is just the shape of its bottle? -Cheryl self-awareness identity cheryl the-first-bad-man perspective self perception Miranda July
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