Quotes about Perception

It was Gwynplaine's laugh which created the laughter of others, yet he did not laugh himself. His face laughed; his thoughts did not. The extraordinary face which chance or a special and weird industry had fashioned for him, laughed alone. Gwynplaine had nothing to do with it.

It is sometimes no less startling to meet the dog than the wolf

In fact, were it given to our human eye to see into the consciences of others, we would judge a man much more surely from what he dreams than from what he thinks.

Théodule was, we think we have mentioned, the favourite of Aunt Gillenormand, who preferred him because she did not see him. Not seeing people permits us to imagine in them every perfection.

Words can be liars, we must not blindly believe what they say.

All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.

We are what we imagine ourselves to be.

I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I've never been able to believe it. I don't believe a rose WOULD be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage.

The greater the ambiguity, the greater the pleasure.

The moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping a public in mind, means living in lies…

Optimism is the opium of the people.

I think, therefore I am' is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.