c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
All you do is think. Because all you do is think, you've constructed two separate worlds—one inside your head and one outside. Just the fact that you tolerate this enormous dissonance—why, that's a great intangible failure already.
— Sōseki Natsume, And Then
I stopped explaining myself when I realized other people only understand from their level of perception.
— Anonymous
When we have a narrative in mind, we often plug in anecdotes that confirm it.
— Nicholas Kristof
Signal transduction science recognizes that the fate and behavior of an organism is directly linked to its perception of the environment.
— Bruce H. Lipton, The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter and Miracles
It took me some time to sleep last night, I lowered the temp of AC that it might help but still it took a while, while coming back from Fajr I saw a street sweeper sleeping on the road near the wall of a big house behind a parked car, it was 29C without any breeze and he was in deep sleep with snoring loud enough to be audible 10 feet away, surely our perception of things which will bestow us with peace is clouded
— Nauman Khan
Young man, Mr. Aubrey has made us so rich that we can now afford to worry about our image.
— David Halberstam, The Powers That Be
You don't trust what you don't know, and you don't know, what you don't trust.
— Yusuf Saleem
Your perception of your dream changes as you walk toward it.
— Innocent Mwatsikesimbe, The Reason
Painting is concerned with all the 10 attributes of sight; which are: Darkness and Light, Solidity and Color, Form and Position, Distance and Propinquity, Motion and Rest.
— Leonardo da Vinci
The rules of the universe that we think we know are buried deep in our processes of perception.
— Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature
People in the intelligence community are not made to believe in coincidences.
— Tom Clancy, Executive Orders
We are all so happy. If we only could realize it.
— Pat R, O Pijama da Gata
Diplomacy "was like a card game. The difference was that you never really knew the value of the cards in your own hand.
— Tom Clancy, Executive Orders
Often pain is not real but just a perception.
— Debasish Mridha
One Fails Before One Perception...!
— Rishi Sethi
It is so easy to practice a creditable degree of so seeming virtue, and so difficult to purify and direct the affections of the heart, that I feel myself in continual danger of appearing better than I am; and I verily believe it is possible to make one’s whole life a display of splendid virtue and agreeable qualities, without ever setting foot towards the narrow path, or even one’s face towards the strait gate.” – Hannah More
— Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist
Her changing perception of time had altered the sum of her reflections.
— Lori Lansens, The Wife's Tale
One Fails Before One's Perception...!
— Rishi Sethi
A day is a day. It’s just a measurement of time. Whether it’s a good day or a bad day is up to you. It’s all a matter of perception.
— Donald L. Hicks, Look into the stillness
Some trees grow straight, while others grow gnarled and twisted. Yet none are imperfect. Perfection is merely a perception.
— Donald L. Hicks, Look into the stillness
nothing changes from one generation to another except the things seen and the things seen make that generation, that is to say nothing changes in people from one generation to another except the way of seeing and being seen.
— Gertrude Stein, Picasso
Eyes that are blind have no way to tell the loveliness of faces and features
—  eyes with no pupils have no way to tell the beauty of colored and embroidered silks.
We can't expect a blind man to appreciate beautiful patterns or a deaf man to listen to bells and drums. And blindness and deafness are not confined to the body alone - the understanding has them, too.
— Zhuangzi
Some people's taste is to an educated taste as is the visual impression received by a purblind eye to that of a normal eye. Where a normal eye will see something clearly articulated, a weak eye will see a blurred patch of colour.
— Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value
A child of repeated infinity.
— RJ Clawson
World with various situations has various relations,don't give conclusions with your perception.
— sai nikhil dinatkurthi
Parallel lines meet at infinity. Looking back from said point, do parallel lines ever not meet?
— RJ Clawson
there can be no failure to a human who has not lost his courage, unlike a drop of water which loses its identity when it joins the ocean, human does not lose his being in the society in which he lives
— irak.ibrahim hussain didi
What is important may or may not be important but what is thought to be important is indeed important.
— Hemanta Bhatt
What do we know of our mothers? I thought I knew her. But I'd seen her as a child sees a good mother--pure, transparent, incapable of deception.
— Rhonda Riley, The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope
He looked at me with the tired, ignorant, slightly stupid expression that is so common in people who aren't used to seeing the broader picture in small things.
— Jonas Karlsson, The Room
Habitualization devours objects, clothes, furniture, one's wife, and the fear of war. If all the complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been. Art exists to help us recover the sensation of life; it exists to make us feel things, to make the stone stony. The end of art is to give a sensation of the object seen, not as recognized. The technique of art is to make things 'unfamiliar,' to make forms obscure, so as to increase the difficulty and the duration of perception. The act of perception in art is an end in itself and must be prolonged. In art, it is our experience of the process of construction that counts, not the finished product.
— Victor Shklovsky
You must not grieve that the world is glimpsed through veils. How else can it be seen?
— Suji Kwock Kim
Though people are laughing at the dirt surrounding you, they are missing to see the seeds also planted, growing silently within.
— Anthony Liccione
Sometimes we do grip the concert in a human head, and so hold it that in a way we get a record of it into paint, but the vision and expressing of one day will not do for the next.
— Robert Henri
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.
— Alexandra Robbins, The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School
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.
— Alexandra Robbins, The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School
The Christian witness never benefits when Christian organizations are known more for what they are against than what they are for.
— Wendy Vanderwal-Gritter, Generous Spaciousness: Responding to Gay Christians in the Church
People are afraid of change. Change is inevitable to life. Change actually has the mask of pushing us out of comfort zone. Every time we learn, go through life experiences our perception/Emotional chemistry is changing. Embrace change because we are becoming a more polished version of ourselves.
— Matthew Donnelly
If you perceive a world where there are separate images and you still feel a charge about anything, that is the indicator that you want to ask for Help. Lord, help me today. I am determined to see. Help me to see. That is where the openness and the humility come in. If you feel a charge about something, you not only are not seeing clearly, you are not seeing at all.
— David Hoffmeister, Unwind Your Mind Back to God:  Experiencing A Course in Miracles
Even the water, grey and listless as it tossed against the harbour wall, seemed fixed in time; as if peering hard enough into its depths would reveal the tips of Peter’s fingers, himself still swaying underwater, cradled in the sea’s mouth.
— Ava Bloomfield, Honest
..the senses do not give us a picture of the world directly; rather they provide evidence for checking hypotheses about what lies before us. Indeed we may say that a perceived object is a hypothesis, suggested and tested by sensory data.
— Richard Langton Gregory
Happiness is an inner perception, not an outer realistic conception.
— Debasish Mridha
Happiness is not in perfection but it is a perception in the midst of imperfection.
— Debasish Mridha
Happiness is there when perceptions and expectations are in joyful harmony.
— Debasish Mridha
People do not change, only expression and perception changes.
— RD
Everything is all right. You just need the perception to find it right.
— RD
Form is useful, but it is secondary.
— Idries Shah, Sufi Thought and Action
Noah had transformed in my eyes, too, butt it wasn't because he had changed. It was my perception of him had changed. He'd always been the cool person I'd come to know and respect, I'd just been blinded by my prejudices.
— Lee Strauss
You can twist perception, reality won't budge
— Neil Peart
It's Not How Good You Are... But How Good They Think You Are - That Matters!
— Dan Blaze
Our happiness or misery depends upon our perception, not on the situation.
— Debasish Mridha
Happiness is a perception of what you have, not what you should have.
— Debasish Mridha
If you want to change anything or your surroundingChange your perception, it will change everything.
— Debasish Mridha
Our happiness or misery depends upon our perception Not on the situation.
— Debasish Mridha
Why would you want to appear as one thing and be another? If you are a warrior then you are a warrior and if you are not a warrior then you are not a warrior. The Way of the warrior is the Way of the warrior. To be a warrior, look like a warrior and stand like a warrior. Do not be false to yourself.
— Miyamoto Musashi
Perception through emptiness is existential, as the transience of all phenomena affirms the indivisibility of existence itself, before, within and behind all manifestation.
— Georgi Y. Johnson, I Am Here: Opening the Windows of Life and Beauty
Because vision appears so effortless, we are like fish challenged to understand water.
— David Eagleman, Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain
Perception is the lens through which we interpret experiences,and when we change the lens we change how we experience.
— Aisha Mirza
That which is capable of perceiving objective reality is, in Sufism, the human soul (ruh).
— Idries Shah
Perception does not define who we are, but it does define where we are limited, and where we are not yet free.
— Georgi Y. Johnson, I Am Here: Opening the Windows of Life and Beauty
Those without an idea of who you are make you become what they think.
— Michael Bassey Johnson
How you perceive yourself is how others will see you.
— Paul Arden, It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be
Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
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)
— Edward de Bono, Six Thinking Hats Revised Edition
The question is not what you look at, but what you see. It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair's breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance.
— Henry David Thoreau
The destruction of sight, wherever the injuries be sustained, follows the same law: all colours are aﬀected in the ﬁrst place, and lose their saturation. Then the spectrum is simpliﬁed, being reduced to four andsoon to two colours; ﬁnally a grey monochrome stage is reached, although the pathological colour is never identiﬁable with any normal one. Thus in central as in peripheral lesions ‘the loss of nervous substance results not only in a deﬁciency of certain qualities, but in the change to a less diﬀerentiated and more primitive structure’.
— Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception
Night is the permanent revolution, that of the globe. Every sundown the streets change, becoming sinister or libidinous, or, for that matter, longer or narrower or unexpectedly twisted. The familiar rebels against those who presume to know it. The map is altered and time is telescoped. Daylight restores things to their normal condition, or is that really their normal condition? The map of the city wrinkles and unfolds, wrinkles and unfolds.
— Luc Sante, Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York
That melting pot stuff was always more about what this country wanted to believe about itself than the way people really felt.
— Wally Lamb
All forms are limited. Some of the limitations are time, place, culture, language.
— Idries Shah, Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way
I can't prove it yet know it when I seem it.
— Brian Spellman, Cartoonist's Book Camp
For many, what they see on television becomes more true than what they see with their eyes in the external world. But this is not so, for one must never forget that every television and has been edited. The viewer does not see the event. He sees in edited form of the event. It is not the event which is seen, but an edited symbol or an edited image of the event. An aura and illusion of objectivity and truth is built up, which could not be totally the case, even if the people shooting the film were completely neutral.
— Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture
Discernment is a light of protection and direction in a world that grows increasingly dark.
— Elder David A. Bednar
Clothing doesn't really change a man. But it changes how others react to him.
— Brandon Sanderson
My life is so bad that it's worse than it really is.
— Brian Spellman, Cartoonist's Book Camp
Look at a cloud and it may seem very still. Look at it a few minutes later and it could have transformed into a totally different shape without you even noticing. When it may seem that you are standing still, quite the contrary, you are actually transforming every second. Next time you gaze at the clouds, remember you are moving right along with them.
— Jason Micheal Ratliff
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.
— Chris Prentiss, Be Who You Want, Have What You Want: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life
By changing how you perceive things and how you act upon those perceptions, you will change your life.
— Chris Prentiss, Be Who You Want, Have What You Want: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life
You may plainly perceive the traitor through his mask
—  he is well-known everywhere in his true colors
Education stuffs you full of ideas without the coinciding experience that gave rise to those ideas in the first place, giving you incorrect perspective and notions.
— Arthur Schopenhauer
Abstraction allows man to see with his mind what he cannot see physically with his eyes....Abstract art enables the artist to perceive beyond the tangible, to extract the infinite out of the finite. It is the emancipation of the mind. It is an exploration into unknown areas.
— Arshile Gorky
Teachers should be made aware of visual stress symptoms and the potential difference coloured lights, overlays and lenses could make to a learners perception.
— Adele Devine, Colour Coding for Learners with Autism: A Resource Book for Creating Meaning through Colour at Home and School
Stuff only allows you to rent temporary pleasure.
— Linda Deir
Careful preparation is necessary before people can perceive something which is there all the time.
— Idries Shah
Poisonous relationships can alter our perception. You can spend many years thinking you’re worthless… but you’re not worthless, you’re unappreciated.
— Steve Maraboli
Our perceptions shape whether challenges are obstacles that block our path to success or important arrows that steer us in the direction we want to go.
— Julie Connor, Dreams to Action Trailblazer's Guide
The yellow eyes had fallen from the tired star. Lorq's face erupted about the scar at some antic from the Mouse that Katin had missed. Rage, Katin pondered. Rage. Yes, he is laughing. But how is anyone supposed to distinguish between laughter and rage in that face? But the others were laughing too. Yet some way, somehow, we do.
— Samuel R. Delany, Nova
There are three types of actions: purposeful, habitual, and gratuitous. Characters, to be immediate and apprehensible, must be presented by all three.' Katin looked toward the front of the car. The captain gazed through the curving plate that lapped the roof. His yellow eyes fixed Her consumptive light that pulsed fire-spots in a giant cinder. The light was so weak he did not squint at all. I am confounded, Katin admitted to his jeweled box, 'nevertheless. The mirror of my observation turns and what first seemed gratuitous I see enough times to realize it is a habit. What I suspected as habit now seems part of a great design. While what I originally took as purpose explodes into gratuitousness. The mirror turns again, and the character I thought obsessed by purpose reveals his obsession is only habit; his habits are gratuitously meaningless; while those actions i construed as gratuitous now reveal a most demonic end.
— Samuel R. Delany, Nova
...human beings have a distorted view of risk. They don't see the whole picture. Our perceptions are twisted by stories in the media, by films, by our own personalities and experiences. So, despite the unlikely odds, we still worry about being raped or murdered. We hear a sound in the night and think of burglars, not mice... It's kind of a protective pessimism: if we worry about the worst happening, it may miss our door.
— Ruth Dugdall, The Sacrificial Man
Habits of the mind also provide our mental framework – the way we see the world
— Gyalwa Dokhampa, The Restful Mind
In spiritual moments we nearly perceive a grand, divine conspiracy of interconnectedness between us and everything.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Nothing happens ‘to’ you, everything happens ‘for’ you.
— Linda Deir
If a boat is shattered by a storm, the desperate passengers cling to the floating pieces of the hull. In that moment, it's not a broken boat. To a drowning man, it's a floating miracle.
— Elmer Seward, Dreams of the Sleepless
We stood as the ground shifted and we saw the view from belowthrough tiled floors  and concrete stairs, our feet burning holes in the foundation while you whispered of dreams.
— Marie Anzalone, Peregrintaing North-South Compass Points: Poems in English and Spanish
Eventlessness has no post to drape duration on.
— John Steinbeck
Most of the mistakes in thinking are inadequacies of perception rather than mistakes of logic.
— Edward de Bono
Where was the line between compassion and foolishness, kindness and weakness? And that was from her position. From theirs, it might be a line between mercy and cruelty, consideration and callousness.
— Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance
As for everything else, so for a mathematical theory: beauty can be perceived but not explained.
— Arthur Cayley
Everything is interconnected. My readings of classical authors, who never speaks of sunsets, have made many sunsets intelligible to me, in all their colors. There is a relationship between syntactical competence, by which we distinguish the values of beings, sounds and shapes, and the capacity to perceive when the blue of the sky is actually green, and how much yellow is in the blue green of the sky. It comes down to the same thing - the capacity to distinguish and to discriminate. There is no enduring emotion without syntax. Immortality depends of the grammarians.
— Fernando Pessoa
Exaggeration misleads the credulous and offends the perceptive.
— Eliza Cook
Perceptions of the world and of other actors diverge from reality in patterns that we can detect and for reasons that we can understand.
— Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics
Adapting our own perception, following rather than leading and building bridges are all keys to helping the child with autism learn.
— Adele Devine, Colour Coding for Learners with Autism: A Resource Book for Creating Meaning through Colour at Home and School
How do you see the world? Happy endings come not through events but through a shift in perception.
— Jane Tara, The Happy Endings Book Club
The flawlessly beautiful were flawlessy happy, weren't they? To Kristy this had always seemed self-evident. Tonight, however, the alcohol made her wonder if envy hadn't blinded her. Perhaps to be flawless was another kind of sadness.
— Clive Barker, The Hellbound Heart
For eyes we have no models in the remotely antique.
— Edgar Allan Poe, Ligeia
Our visual field, the entire view of what we can see when we look out into the world, is divided into billions of tiny spots or pixels. Each pixel is filled with atoms and molecules that are in vibration. The retinal cells in the back of our eyes detect the movement of those atomic particles. Atoms vibrating at different frequencies emit different wavelengths of energy, and this information is eventually coded as different colors by the visual cortex in the occipital region of our brain. A visual image is built by our brain's ability to package groups of pixels together in the form of edges. Different edges with different orientations - vertical, horizontal and oblique, combine to form complex images. Different groups of cells in our brain add depth, color and motion to what we see.
— Jill Bolte Taylor, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey
Sometimes a person’s first assumption was very telling. It revealed how they perceived the situation.
— Sara Sheridan, London Calling
As information processing machines, our ability to process data about the external world begins at the level of sensory perception. Although most of us are rarely aware of it, our sensory receptors are designed to detect information at the energy level. Because everything around us - the air we breathe, even the materials we use to build with, are composed of spinning and vibrating atomic particles, you and I are literally swimming in a turbulent sea of electromagnetic fields. We are part of it. We are enveloped within in, and through our sensory apparatus we experience what is.Each of our sensory systems is made up of a complex cascade of neurons that process the incoming neural code from the level of the receptor to specific areas within the brain. Each group of neurons along the cascade alters or enhances the code, and passes it on to the next set of cells in the system, which further defines and refines the message. By the time the code reaches the outermost portion of our brain, the higher levels of the cerebral cortex, we become conscious of the stimulation. However, if any of the cells along the pathway fail in their ability to function normally, then the final perception is skewed away from normal reality.
— Jill Bolte Taylor, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey
Art has been wrecked by a complete consciousness of the universe which shews that the world is to each man only a rubbish-heap limned by his individual perception. It will be saved, if at all, by the next and last step of disillusion; the realisation that complete consciousness and truth are themselves valueless, and that to acquire any genuine artistic titillation we must artificially invent limitations of consciousness and feign a pattern of life common to all mankind--most naturally the simple old pattern which ancient and groping tradition first gave us.
— H.P. Lovecraft, Collected Essays 2: Literary Criticism
People see what they expect to see.
— Sara Sheridan, London Calling
Writing the poems, I came to think that regarding is a form of love, but the regarding is not necessarily accurate. In the poems, people are always misperceiving one another. But misperceptions are a part of being alive to others. You don’t need truth or beauty. All you do is perceive. That’s all you need to have loved and lived fully.
— Joy Katz
To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended directly and unconditionally by Mind at Large-- this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone and especially to the intellectual.
— Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell
As I grew up, everything started getting grey and dull. I could still remember the amazing intensity of the world I'd lived in as a child, but I thought the dulling of perception was an inevitable consequence of age - just as a lens of the eye is bound gradually to dim. I didn't understand that clarity is in the mind.
— Keith Johnstone, Impro
Visual impressions are greatly intensified and the eye recovers some of the perceptual innocence of childhood, when the sensum was not immediately and automatically subordinated to the concept. Interest in space is diminished and interest in time falls almost to zero.
— Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell
How we perceive of the world around us determines the outcome of what it is we choose to see or not see
— Christine Upton
It seems to me that the poet has only to perceive that which others do not perceive, to look deeper than others look. And the mathematician must do the same thing.
— Sofia Kovalevskaya
A cell in our body may recognize that it is part of a greater whole, but it may never be able to define all that is beyond it simply because of its limited perceptive capacity. Likewise, all that makes up the universal consciousness will always lie just outside of our capacity to define it.
— Rajeev Kurapati, Unbound Intelligence: A Personal Guide to Self-Discovery
Our response to the external conditions of our lives can be greatly altered by our perceptions of those conditions.
— Kitt Weagant, Each Day a New Beginning: Daily Meditations for Women
...Understanding as had the ancients that angels and demons were identical- interchangeable archetypes- all a matter of polarity: the guardian angel who conquered your enemy in battle was perceived by your enemy as a demon destroyer...
— Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol
People seldom change. Only their masks do. It is only our perception of them and the perception they have of themselves that actually change.
— Shannon L. Alder
The colour of the water seems to be the colour of the glass into which it has been poured'.
— Idries Shah
People perceive the divine according to their own biases. That doesn’t make the experience any less real.
— James Rozoff, Perchance to Dream
The dial of the clock wears out unevenly; Most worn Is the area round eight. As it is stared at with abrasive glancesunfailingly twice a day, It is weathered away. On the other side The area at two Is only half as worn, For closed eyes at nightPass without stopping. If there is one who possesses a flat watch evenly worn, It is he who, failing at the start, is running one lap behind. Thus the world is always A lap fast--The world he thinks he sees Has not yet begun. Illusory time, When the hands stand vertically on the dial; Without the bell announcing the raising of the curtain, The play has come to an end.
— Kōbō Abe, The Box Man
The intellect seeks to throw its own interpretation of the real over reality, and in so doing carves the world up into artificial little cubes.
— James Rozoff, Perchance to Dream
We have long laboured under an obtuse presupposition that the senses by which other living creatures perceive their world must to a great extent resemble our own; but in fact we are, by scientific invention, only now beginning to approach methods of perception that the whales have always owned as their birthright.
— Gavin Maxwell, Ring of Bright Water
You make the best out of it, you can. Nothing is ever as good or as bad as you think it will be. It's what you make of it.
— Nichole Chase, Suddenly Royal
At that moment, he realised that he did not exist to her in the same way that he existed in his own perception. She held a copied version, an interpretation of him, filtered through the matrix of her priorities and desires.Therefore, surely, he only held a copy of her.
— K.J. Bishop, The Etched City
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.
— Kahlil Gibran, The Madman
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.
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
Two blades clashed, ringing like a bell. Like all small boys, Philip thought his father was invincible; and this was the moment when he learned the truth.
— Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth
Here, then, is the last moment of true perception, a man fishing in a red jacket and a cloudy sky reflected on opaque water.
— Michael Cunningham, The Hours
Tobias took the photograph. At least, that's what I saw. Most likely I still had the photograph in my hand, but I couldn't feel it there, now I perceived Tobias holding it. It's strange, the way the mind can change perception.
— Brandon Sanderson, Legion
In my perception, the world wasn't a graph or formula or an equation. It was a story.
— Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
You're an intensely attractive woman. You do know that, don't you?" To her silence, he replied, "You'd believe me if you could see your
— Tessa Dare, Any Duchess Will Do
Reality is what one makes it. And the more negative reality one nurtures and creates, the more of it one has.
— Benjamin Hoff, The Te of Piglet
If you think you don't have enemies, then they have won.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
How you see and depict yourself will be the exact way people will treat you--Period, Think your worth millions, people will treat you like millions, think pennies, get treated like pennies
— Treasure Blue, Fly Betty
The revolution of consciousness is connected to the food revolution
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
Time and times are but cogwheels, unmatched, grinding on oblivious to one another. Occasionally - oh, very rarely! - the cogs fit; the pieces of the plot snap together momentarily and give men faint glimpses beyond the veil of this everyday blindness we call reality.
— Robert E. Howard, Bran Mak Morn: The Last King
Old age. All the facial detail is visible; all the traces life has left there are to be seen. The face is furrowed, wrinkled, sagging, ravaged by time. But the eyes are bright and, if not young, then somehow transcend the time that otherwise marks the face. It is as though someone else is looking at us, from somewhere inside the face, where everything is different. One can hardly be closer to another human soul.
— Karl Ove Knausgård, Min kamp 1
As humans, reality for us is largely based on other people's perceptions. If there's 20 bodies in your crawl space but you haven't been caught yet, you tell yourself you're still a birthday clown, and that's how you keep doing it.
— Dan  Harmon
Imagine, Bishop, that you have a beloved cat, but that your cat is not with you. If you close your eyes and further imagine you are petting your cat, the same neurons in your brains are activated as if you were petting the actual cat. Our minds may know the difference between its models and reality itself, but it prefers its models. So much so that we apprehend reality through our models, rather than directly via the sense. When I'm speaking to you, I have a little bishop in my head, and though I speak out load, I'm speaking to my little bishop. When you answer, I can only perceive you through my model of you.Mentars also make models, but they don't apprehend reality through them. They end up, not with little people in their minds, but with highly complex rule sets. They relate to their models in the same way we relate to weather models, as things to consult, but not to conflate with external reality.
— David Marusek, Mind Over Ship
One who has lived through the days of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and the Japanese war lords feels something that a younger generation does not concerning the aberrations that are possible in this world.
— Bernard Brodie, War and Politics
Love, far from being blind, is the very emotion that allows us to see.
— Cristina Nehring, A Vindication of Love: Reclaiming Romance for the Twenty-first Century
It bothered me that the bag bothered me more than head did, but what are you going to do? A person doesn't conciously choose what he focuses on. Those things choose you, and, once they do, nothing, it seems, can shake them.
— David Sedaris, Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
Our contradictions are never so to ourselves.
— Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Too often, it is only love that makes us engaged enough, alert enough, alive enough to see
— Cristina Nehring, A Vindication of Love: Reclaiming Romance for the Twenty-first Century
...the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.
— David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
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
— Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
People sometimes talk about the power of first impressions, and believe me, there is truth to it.
— Ann Brashares, My Name Is Memory
She never sent the castle to sleep”, said Granny, “that’s just an old wife’s tale. She just stirred up time a little. It’s not as hard as people think, everyone does it all the time. It’s like rubber, is time, you can stretch it to suit yourself.”Magrat was about to say: That’s not right, time is time, every second lasts a second, that’s its job. The she recalled weeks that had flown past and afternoons that had lasted forever. Some minutes had lasted hours, some hours had gone past so quickly she hadn’t been aware they’d gone past at all.“But that’s just people’s perception, isn’t it?”“Oh yes”, said Granny, “of course it is, it all is, what difference does that make?
— Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters
It is the same in life; the heart changes, and that is our worst misfortune; but we learn of it only from reading or by imagination; for in reality its alteration, like that of certain natural phenomena, is so gradual that, even if we are able to distinguish, successively, each of its different states, we are still spared the actual sensation of change.Lygiai taip gyvenime keičiasi ir mūsų širdis, ir tai skaudžiausia; tačiau patiriame tą skausmą tik skaitydami knygas, vaizduotėje; tikrovėje jos keitimasis, kaip ir kai kurių gamtos reiškinių vyksmas yra toks lėtas, kad nors ir galime konstatuoti kiekvieną atskirą būseną, paties keitimosi pajusti nepajėgiame.
— Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
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.
— Pat Conroy, My Losing Season: A Memoir
People often find comfort in ignorance of illusions, but rarely find solace in the truth of reality.
— Lionel Suggs
We prayed the moon would unstopper long enough to suck us through to the other side so we could see how dull the stars were at their backsides.
— Lindsay Hunter, Daddy's
One might trouble one's dainty snout with a whiff of the taleggio displayed in an artisanal cheese shop, or take a saucer of jasmine tea and a knuckle of fennel-scented snuff at a counter of buffed Big Nothing granite. But there was a want in these ladies yet, and it was for the rude life of youth.
— Kevin Barry, City of Bohane
I find that there are a lot of objects and subjects within the world today. There's so much going on, that it seems like reality itself is trying hide something. Not only do we have to deal with illusions that the media, literature, states, governments, religions, and all of the plentiful theatrics of life entrances us with, but we have to deal with reality's false face. People continuously livelife, go to work, play, stress, dance, eat, sleep, and step back into yesterday, not understanding that there are invisible curtains blinding the truth from the surface. Become empty, just for a moment, and ask yourself simple paradoxical questions. Do you know where you are? Do you understand where you are? Do you understand who you are? Do you understand why you are? Gain a sense of glory, by being defeated by your own question, and liberate yourself from the mask that reality has given you since adolescence. However, that is the problem. So many have worn this invisible mask for so long, that they are unable to take it off, and are bound by the illusion that reality wants them to see. Liberation is a goal that you may no longer obtain, but don't worry, for ignorance and deception are your only true friends now. They can carry you to God, but they cannot wake you up.
— Lionel Suggs
Still, we permit the appearance of our meats, sauces, fruits, and vdgetables to dominate our tongues until it is difficult to divide a twist of lemon or squeeze of lime from the colors of their rinds or separate yellow from its yolk or chocolate from the quenchless brown which seems to be the root, shoot, stalk, and bloom of it. Yet I hardly think the eggplant's taste is as purple as its skin. In fact, there are few flavors at the violet end, odors either, for the acrid smell of blue smoke is deceiving, as is the tooth of the plum, though there may be just a hint of blue in the higher sauces. Perceptions are always profound, associations deceiving. No watermelon tastes red. Apropos: while waiting for a bus once, I saw open down the arm of a midfat, midlife, freckled woman, suitcase tugging at her hand like a small boy needing to pee, a deep blue crack as wide as any in a Roquefort. Split like paper tearing. She said nothing. Stood. Blue bubbled up in the opening like tar. One thing is certain: a cool flute blue tastes like deep well water drunk from a cup.
— William H. Gass, On Being Blue
according to the psychologist irving Janis, is that our sense of belonging (which makes us feel safe) blinds us to dangers and encourages greater risk-taking.
— Margaret Heffernan, Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril
I do think that our perception of reality is fragmentary, and in 20th-century literature, it’s totally normal to not describe reality as something whole and completely transportable and explicable. That’s been accepted in novels. But genre films always pretend that reality is transportable, which means that it is explicable.
— Michael Haneke
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...
— Sten Nadolny, Die Entdeckung der Langsamkeit
People enjoy the passion of delusions. However, the world is built on a basis that if you free yourself, you find yourself within another illusion. There is always a truth hidden within a truth. It is no different from illusions and deceptions of reality. The question then becomes -- how does one become truly free?
— Lionel Suggs
Conscientious stupidity is a religion for most. Many will deny it, but it's those same people that find it easier to ignore the truth. This religion can only be followed by their humble ignorance. It's safe to assume, that this religion is an illusion of knowledge.
— Lionel Suggs
Toward the end of Carmel's life, the perception of super talls shifted dramatically, thanks largely to televised NBA games, By 1975, pretty much everyone had seen super tall people on TV, in the context of being celebrated in front of sold-out basketball arenas. This new frame of reference could not have been more positive. By 1995 Shaquille O'Neal was known as The Man of Steel, not the Traveling Human Giant. The idea of super tall people as freaks was replaced by the idea of super tall people as amazing athletes.
— Arianne Cohen, The Tall Book: A Celebration of Life from on High
All incoming bits of information have, simultaneously, a tentacular, optic, and sexual dimension. Its world is not doubtful, but surprising; vampyroteuthic thinking is an unbroken stream of Aristotelian shock.
— Vilém Flusser, Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: A Treatise, with a Report by the Institut Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste
People who prefer to believe the worst of others will breed war and religious persecutions while the world lasts.
— Dorothy L. Sayers, The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers. Vol. 1, 1899-1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist
If, from time to time, you give up expectation, you will be able to perceive what it is you are getting.
— Idries Shah, Reflections
When we see someone or something as imperfect, it is a reflection of our limitations, not theirs.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Everything we think we know is really only perceived by our senses,' he explains patiently. 'The sounds we hear are just waves in the air; colors are electromagnetic radiation; your sense of taste comes from molecules that match a specific area on your tongue. Hey, if our eyes could access the infrared part of the light spectrum, the sky would be green and trees would be red. Some animals see in completely different ways, so who knows what colors look like to them. Nothing is really how we perceive it.
— Wendy Mass, Jeremy Fink and the Meaning of Life
You will die, and when you die, you will know a profound lack of it [dignity]. It's never dignified, always brutal. What's dignified about dying? It's never dignified. And in obscurity? Offensive. Dignity is an affectation, cute but eccentric, like learning French or collecting scarves. And it's fleeting and incredibly mercurial. And subjective. So fuck it.
— Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
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.
— Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
He considered it a shame when people couldn't grasp the infinite-a failure not just of imagination but of simple vision.
— Jess Walter, Beautiful Ruins
You can't change reality -- only its perception.
— Lionel Suggs
It takes discipline to turn illusion into reality.
— Lionel Suggs
An angry woman is a bitch. An angry man is strong, whereas, a sad man or a fearful man is a wimp. A sad or fearful woman is frail.
— Irene Tomkinson, Not Like My Mother: Becoming a Sane Parent After Growing Up in a Crazy Family
There are times when the truth can only show you an illusion.
— Lionel Suggs
Even if things were the same, people's perception of them might have been very different back then. The darkness of night was probably deeper then, so the moon must have been that much bigger and brighter.
— Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
Deceptions of the senses are the truths of perception.
— Johannes Purkinje
We make sense of the world intentionally. Faced with chaos, we seek or make the familiar, and build up the world with it. Babies do it, we all do it; we filter out most of what our senses report.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, A Fisherman of the Inland Sea
If you know something is an illusion, why pretend it is reality?
— Lionel Suggs
We are who people think we are. The reality is irrelevant.
— Lionel Suggs
Humans are most imaginative when they need a means of self-destruction. If the world existed in an overflowing amount of happiness; a utopian state, then the suicide rate would dwarf any extinction level threat. Humans cannot be trusted with their own survival. Their minds have been trained to be blindly and unconsciously subjugated. In a time related to Heaven-on-Earth, the smallest amount of worry, will drive a human into the arms of death. This is how weak and fragile the human mind and will is. It's funny, because the best friend of humanity, is none other than Chaos itself.
— Lionel Suggs
it crossed Farren's mind that although death seemed big, life was even bigger
— Kate Grenville, The Secret River
Reality is a changeless concept that only perception can mask.
— Lionel Suggs
People rely too much on their lifelong instincts. Their perception is divided by necessary obedience, which they themselves have become too weak to liberate themselves from. I'd let the Devil read me the bible, before I trusted the Words of God or the Mind of Man.
— Lionel Suggs
If I paint a wild horse, you might not see the horse... but surely you will see the wildness!
— Pablo Picasso
Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received — hatred. The great creators — the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors — stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible. The power loom was considered vicious. Anesthesia was considered sinful. But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.
— Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
He who looks through an open window sees fewer things than he who looks through a closed window.
— Charles Baudelaire
The only thing worse than being blind is having sight and no vision.
— Helen Keller
There are poisons that blind you, and poisons that open your eyes.
— August Strindberg
Nothing is more imminent than the impossible . . . what we must always foresee is the unforeseen.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
The more boundless your vision, the more real you are.
— Deepak Chopra, Life After Death: The Burden of Proof
The first step toward creating an improved future is developing the ability to envision it. VISION will ignite the fire of passion that fuels our commitment to do WHATEVER IT TAKES to achieve excellence. Only VISION allows us to transform dreams of greatness into the reality of achievement through human action. VISION has no boundaries and knows no limits. Our VISION is what we become in life. 
— Tony Dungy
At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing.
— William Golding, The Spire
It is a commonplace of all religious thought, even the most primitive, that the man seeking visions and insight must go apart from his fellows and love for a time in the wilderness.
— Loren Eiseley
Never look directly at the sun. Instead, look at the sunflower.
— Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration