Quotes about Perception

Consequently, we find it convenient to be misled by the inadequacies of language and to believe (not always, of course, but just when it suits us) that things, persons and events are as completely distinct and separate one from another as the words, by means of which we think about them.

Thought is crude, matter unimaginably subtle.

Time moved for you not in quotidian beats, but in the slow rhythm the ages keep —

Goodness needeth not to enter into the soul, for it is there already, only it is unperceived. Theologia Germanica

If I only knew who in fact I am, I should cease to behave as what I think I am; and if I stopped behaving as what I think I am, I should know who I am.

I perceive that marble conceals a multitude of sins.

We float in language like icebergs — four-fifths under the surface and only one-fifth of us projecting into the open air of immediate, non-linguistic experience.

I looked down by chance, and went on passionately staring by choice, at my own crossed legs," the writer and philosopher recollected. "Those folds in the trousers ? what a labyrinth of endlessly significant complexity! And the texture of the gray flannel ? how rich, how deeply, mysteriously sumptuous.

We must learn how to handle words effectively; but at the same time we must preserve and, if necessary, intensify our ability to look at the world directly and not through that half opaque medium of concepts, which distorts every given fact into the all too familiar likeness of some generic label or explanatory abstraction.

She looked up with a certain anxiety. 'But you don't think I'm too plump, do you?' He shook his head.Like so much meat. 'You think I'm all right.' Another nod. 'In every way?' 'Perfect.' he said aloud. And inwardly, 'She thinks of herself that way. She doesn't mind being meat.

The trouble with fiction is that it makes too much sense, whereas reality never makes sense.

You remind me of another of those old fellows called Bradley. He defined philosophy as the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.