Perceive Quotes - Page 34

• A: There is no grand scheme of things. B: If there were a grand scheme of things, the fact – the fact – that we are not equipped to perceive it, either by natural or supernatural means, is a nightmarish obscenity. C: The very notion of a grand scheme of things is a nightmarish obscenity.

  Thomas Ligotti

  Mean, Facts, Natural

  Thomas Ligotti (2011). “My Work Is Not Yet Done”, p.14, Random House

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• In this world, who can do a thing, will not; And who would do it, cannot, I perceive: Yet the will's somewhat — somewhat, too, the power — And thus we half-men struggle.

  Robert Browning

  Struggle, Men, Half

  Robert Browning (1994). “The Works of Robert Browning”, p.433, Wordsworth Editions

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• Tell me,' asked Stas, 'what is a wicked deed?' 'If anyone takes away Kali's cow,' he answered after a brief reflection, 'that then is a wicked deed.' 'Excellent!' exclaimed Stas, 'and what is a good one?' This time the answer came without any reflection: 'If Kali takes away the cow of somebody else, that is a good deed.' Stas was too young to perceive that similar views of evil and good deeds were enunciated in Europe not only by politicians but by whole nations.

  Henryk Sienkiewicz

  Reflection, Views, Europe

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• Everyone strives to attain the Law,' answers the man, 'how does it come about, then, that in all these years no one has come seeking admittance but me?' The doorkeeper perceives that the man is nearing his end and his hearing is failing, so he bellows in his ear: 'No one but you could gain admittance through this door, since this door was intended for you. I am now going to shut it.

  Franz Kafka

  Men, Law, Doors

  Franz Kafka (1970). “The Trial”

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• I perceive that you have a cruel heart, my child. It lies within your breast like a smoldering blade, hissing steam at me.

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Children, Lying, Heart

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• Like all people, we perceive the version of reality that our culture communicates. Like others having or living in more than one culture, we get multiple, often opposing messages. The coming together of two self-consistent but habitually incomparable frames of reference causes un choque, a cultural collision.

  Gloria E. Anzaldúa

  Reality, Self, Two

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• It may be that DMT makes us able to perceive what the physicist call "dark matter" - the 95 per cent of the universe's mass that is known to exist but that at present remains invisible to our senses and instruments.

  Graham Hancock

  Dark, Dmt, May

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• The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings. Viewed by this light it becomes a coherent scheme, and not the monstrous maze the laity are apt to think it. Let them but once clearly perceive that its grand principle is to make business for itself at their expense, and surely they will cease to grumble.

  Charles Dickens

  Thinking, Light, Law

  1852-3 Bleak House, ch.39.

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• People assume that they perceive reality as it is, that our senses accurately record the outside world. Yet the science suggests that, in important ways, people experience reality not as it is, but as they expect it to be.

  Jonah Lehrer

  Reality, People, Important

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• The brain is a far more open system than we ever imagined, and nature has gone very far to help us perceive and take in the world around us. It has given us a brain that survives in a changing world by changing itself.

  Norman Doidge

  Brain, Gone, World

  Norman Doidge (2007). “The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science”, p.26, Penguin

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• Intelligence is the capacity to perceive the essential, the what is; and to awaken this capacity, in oneself and in others, is education.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Essentials, Capacity, Oneself

  Jiddu Krishnamurti (2010). “Education and the Significance of Life”, p.14, Harper Collins

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• Pain - has an Element of Blank It cannot recollect When it begun - or if there were a time when it was not - It has no Future - but itself - Its Infinite contain Its Past - enlightened to perceive New Periods - of Pain.

  Emily Dickinson

  Pain, Past, Elements

  Emily Dickinson, Ralph William Franklin (1998). “The Poems of Emily Dickinson”, p.719, Harvard University Press

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• 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

  Eye, Thinking, Animal

  Wendy Mass (2008). “Jeremy Fink and the meaning of life”

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• Resolved, to study the Scriptures so steadily, constantly and frequently, as that I may find, and plainly perceive myself to grow in the knowledge of the same.

  Jonathan Edwards

  Christian, Inspiration, May

  Jonathan Edwards (1852). “The Works ...”, p.4

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• It seems to me that the desire to make art produces an ongoing experience of longing, a restlessness sometimes, but not inevitably, played out romantically, or sexually. Always there seems something ahead, the next poem or story, visible, at least, apprehensible, but unreachable. To perceive it at all is to be haunted by it; some sound, some tone, becomes a torment — the poem embodying that sound seems to exist somewhere already finished. It’s like a lighthouse, except that, as one swims towards it, it backs away.

  Louise Glück

  Art, Swim, Desire

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• Toni hears voices," said Trapp. "But who is this Dr. Ellsworth to tell her she's a schizophrenic? Maybe she just perceives better than the rest of us. Maybe the voices she hears are just uncommunicated ideas, floating free.

  Louis Sachar

  Ideas, Voice, Drs

  Louis Sachar (2011). “The Cardturner”, p.124, A&C Black

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• Because there is no cosmic point to the life that each of us perceives on this distant bit of dust at galaxy's edge, all the more reason for us to maintain in proper balance what we have here. Because there is nothing else. Nothing. This is it. And quite enough, all in all.

  Gore Vidal

  Dust, Balance, Reason

  Gore Vidal (1987). “Armageddon?: essays 1983-1987”, Andre Deutsch Ltd

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• If, from time to time, you give up expectation, you will be able to perceive what it is you are getting.

  Idries Shah

  Giving Up, Expectations, Able

  Idries Shah (1983). “Reflections”, p.141, Octagon Press Ltd

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• And in me too the wave rises. It swells; it arches its back. I am aware once more of a new desire, something rising beneath me like the proud horse whose rider first spurs and then pulls him back. What enemy do we now perceive advancing against us, you whom I ride now, as we stand pawing this stretch of pavement? It is death. Death is the enemy. It is death against whom I ride with my spear couched and my hair flying back like a young man's, like Percival's, when he galloped in India. I strike spurs into my horse. Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!

  Virginia Woolf

  Horse, Men, Hair

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.779, Wordsworth Editions

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• Everything is what it is, that's all. If we keep attaching meanings and mysteries to everything we perceive, everything we see that is, and to everything that goes on inside us, we are bound to go crazy sooner or later, I thought.

  Thomas Bernhard

  Crazy, Goes On, Mystery

  Thomas Bernhard (2013). “Correction: A Novel”, p.125, Vintage

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• I can make the earth stop in its tracks. I made the blue cars go away. I can make myself invisible or small. I can become gigantic & reach the farthest things. I can change the course of nature. I can place myself anywhere in space or time. I can summon the dead. I can perceive events on other worlds, in my deepest inner mind, & in the minds of others. I can I am

  Jim Morrison

  Blue, Other Worlds, Space

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• No amount of effort could have stopped that, because our points of view - the way we perceive things - are inextricably linked to our beliefs, ... ,our beliefs color what we see.

  Chris Crutcher

  Views, Color, Effort

  Chris Crutcher (1995). “Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes”, Laurel Leaf

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• The private experience that you perceive forms your world, period. But which world do you inhabit? For if you altered your private sensations of reality, then that world, seemingly the only one, would also change. You do go through transformations of beliefs all the time, and your perception of the world is different. You seem to be, no longer, the person you that you were. You are quite correct — you are not the person that you were, and your world has changed, and not just symbolically.

  Jane Roberts

  Reality, Perception, World

  Jane Roberts (2011). “The Nature of Personal Reality (A Seth Book): Specific, Practical Techniques for Solving Everyday Problems and Enriching the Life You Know”, p.350, Amber-Allen Publishing

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• For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the system of 'brainwashing under freedom' to which we are subjected and which all too often we serve as willing or unwitting instruments.

  Noam Chomsky

  Freedom, Practice, Tasks

  "The Chomsky Reader". Book by Noam Chomsky, 1987.

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• We are different because our brain is wired differently. This causes us to perceive the world in different ways and have different values and priorities. Not better or worse - different.

  Allan Pease

  Priorities, Brain, Different

  Allan Pease, Barbara Pease (2004). “Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps: How We're Different and What to Do About It”, p.9, Harmony

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