Perception Quotes

There is no deception on the part of the woman, where a man bewilders himself: if he deludes his own wits, I can certainly acquit the women. Whatever man allows his mind to dwell upon the imprint his imagination has foolishly taken of women, is fanning the flames within himself -- and, since the woman knows nothing about it, she is not to blame. For if a man incites himself to drown, and will not restrain himself, it is not the water's fault.

~ John Gower

[Y]ou are not ashamed of your sin [in committing adultery] because so many men commit it. Man's wickedness is now such that men are more ashamed of chastity than of lechery. Murderers, thieves, perjurers, false witnesses, plunderers and fraudsters are detested and hated by people generally, but whoever will sleep with his servant girl in brazen lechery is liked and admired for it, and people make light of the damage to his soul. And if any man has the nerve to say that he is chaste and faithful to his wife and this gets known, he is ashamed to mix with other men, whose behaviour is not like his, for they will mock him and despise him and say he's not a real man; for man's wickedness is now of such proportions that no one is considered a man unless he is overcome by lechery, while one who overcomes lechery and stays chaste is considered unmanly.

~ Augustine Of Hippo

[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.

~ Antonia Fraser

The man or the woman in whom resides greater virtue is the higher; neither the loftiness nor the lowliness of a person lies in the body according to the sex, but in the perfection of conduct and virtues.

~ Christine De Pizan

To change ourselves effectively, we first had to change our perceptions.

~ Stephen R. Covey

We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep.We rise; one wand'ring thought pollutes the day.We feel, conceive, or reason; laugh or weep,Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away;It is the same: for, be it joy or sorrow,The path of its departure still is free.Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;Nought may endure but Mutability!

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Sometimes it's possible, just barely possible, to imagine a version of this world different from the existing one, a world in which there is true justice, heroic honesty, a clear perception possessed by each individual about how to treat all the others. Sometimes I swear I could see it, glittering in the pavement, glowing between the words in a stranger's sentence, a green, impossible vision--the world as it was meant to be, like a mist around the world as it is.

~ Ben H. Winters

This is where life as I knew it changed. This is where a new feeling slowly, eventually, permeated every cell of my body, changing the way I took in the world. My perceptions, opinions, everything changed the year I moved from Texas to Virginia.

~ Sharon E. Rainey

[C]hange your thinking, your interpretation of he world, change the way you see! To change the way you see is to change the world. (50)

~ Jean-Yves Leloup

To love a swamp, however, is to love what is muted and marginal, what exists in the shadows, what shoulders its way out of mud and scurries along the damp edges of what is most commonly praised. And sometimes its invisibility is a blessing. Swamps and bogs are places of transition and wild growth, breeding grounds, experimental labs where organisms and ideas have the luxury of being out of the spotlight, where the imagination can mutate and mate, send tendrils into and out of the water.

~ Barbara Hurd

Before I only wanted to change the world. I still want that, but it was ironic how I never wanted to change myself. Yet that's where revolutions start! And it's the only way revolutions can continue, if we keep looking inward, looking at how others might see us. That's what happened when I met Sofia. I saw myself the way she saw me.

~ Viet Thanh Nguyen

When you change the way you think about a situation, everything connected to that situation will change.

~ Rhonda Byrne

We are the product of our past. We start each day where we left off the day before. Changing the way we dress, where we work and live, or even changing a name does not alter our basic constitution. Transformation of the self requires a radical alteration in the way that we perceive the world and derive meaning.

~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Apathy is the door to ignorance. Empathy is the door to wisdom.

~ Suzy Kassem

There is this common notion that young conservatives are the few, that most people had liberal worldviews when they were young. If this is true, then it is with great irony that a number of old liberals must never had progressed into conservatives as they grew older.

~ Criss Jami

How do we perceive what’s important in life, from what we once thought to what we think now, how does it change?

~ Saim Cheeda

Everything is determined by your interpretation of what happens. You can change the meaning of what happens through your perception of events or memories.

~ Steven Redhead

It is naive to think you know someone so well.To think that whatever time you have shared in knowing their habits, their history, their stories, their weaknesses, their strengths, their wounds, and deepest corners of their heart could ever sum them up-- is unjust.It is a shame to be unaware of the shifts and changes that happen every day, every moment, right before your eyes. The little crinkles around her eyes that get ever-so-slightly deeper and wiser. The silver linings of her hair. The wonders of time and how they show their presence in such ways. You may think that a flower is simply a flower. A flower that looks and smells just as simply as it always has. Or that the ocean is simply salt water and blue. The flower is always moving, changing, blossoming, and giving life to the birds and the bees. The ocean's tides rise and fall with the phases of the moon. The currents change direction. And depending on how the sun hits the water, the colors and shades of blue are in fact, infinite. Everything around you and everyone is always changing. Take time to smell the roses. Take time to watch the tide. Take time to see your love with new eyes. It would be a shame to miss it.

~ Kayko Tamaki

Always think of what is useful and not what is beautiful. Beauty will come of its own accord.

~ Nikolai Gogol

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.

~ E.m. Forster

What would beauty be if the whole world were blind?

~ Marty Rubin

If all we had were roses, would the thorns then be beautiful?

~ Kamand Kojouri

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.

~ Ayn Rand

In my perception and self - awareness of life, I see the big picture ~ I see my self ~ the place of my true home ~ the home of my soul.You are the Master of your own life - The key and beauty of your soul.

~ Angie Karan

For the first time in his life, Mont Blanc for a moment looked to him what it was - a chaos of anarchic and purposeless forces - and he needed days of repose to see it clothe itself again with the illusions of his senses, the white purity of its snows, the splendor of its light, and the infinity of its heavenly peace. Nature was kind; Lake Geneva was beautiful beyond itself, and the Alps put on charms real as terrors.

~ Henry Adams

Order and reason, beauty and benevolence, are characteristics and conceptions which we find solely associated with the mind of man.

~ Karl Pearson

Your beauty is yours, believe it. Do not rely on someone else to approve it.

~ Joan Ambu

Until you see beauty everywhere, in every face, until then, you are blind.

~ Kamand Kojouri

In all truth might it be said that beauty is the unique aliment of our soul, for in all places does it search for beauty, and it perishes not of hunger even in the most degraded of lives. For indeed nothing of beauty can pass by and be altogether unperceived. Perhaps does it never pass by save only in our unconsciousness, but its action is no less puissant in gloom of night than by light of day; the joy it procures may be less tangible, but other difference there is none.

~ Maurice Maeterlinck

Beauty becomes uglyunder the influence ofthe demons inside the mind.

~ Hobs

beauty pertains with everyone. It's just the perception that defines the differences.

~ Shivangi Lavaniya

Silence is the language of nature and beauty where perception and feelings are the only reality.

~ Debasish Mridha

On hearing of the interesting events which have happened in the course of a man's experience, many people will wish that similar things had happened in their lives too, completely forgetting that they should be envious rather of the mental aptitude which lent those events the significance they possess when he describes them ; to a man of genius they were interesting adventures; but to the dull perceptions of an ordinary individual they would have been stale, everyday occurrences.This is, in the highest degree, the case with many of Goethe's and Byron's poems, which are obviously founded upon actual facts; where it is open to a foolish reader to envy the poet because so many delightful things happened to him, instead of envying that mighty power of fantasy which was capable of turning a fairly common experience into something so great and beautiful.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer

We must clean the lens of our hearts to see the state of our souls. However, too often the former is too dirty to even know that the latter exists.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I see you better in music, I hear you better in wind, I feel you more in a flooding moonlight, that understands nothing, but darkness and silence.

~ Anthony Liccione

You are not just white, but a rainbow of colors. You are not just black, but golden. You are not just a nationality, but a citizen of the world. You are not just for the right or left, but for what is right over the wrong. You are not just rich or poor, but always wealthy in the mind and heart. You are not perfect, but flawed. You are flawed, but you are just. You may just be human, but you are also a magnificent reflection of God.

~ Suzy Kassem

You're an infinite soul, a spark of Consciousness, and your perception is a creative decision you're continuously making.

~ Yol Swan

Experiment participants asked to pick which politician looked more confident in a photograph picked the winner of the race two thirds of the time. This phenomenon held up even when they only glimpsed the photographs for a 10th of a second.

~ Jonathan Haidt

Whatever his weight in pounds and ounces, he always seems bigger because of his bounces.

~ A.a. Milne

Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is like a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue. . . .

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson