Looking Quotes

“Man shouldn’t be able to see his own face--there’s nothing more sinister. Nature gave him the gift of not being able to see it, and of not being able to stare into his own eyes.

Only in the water of rivers and ponds could he look at his face. And the very posture he had to assume was symbolic. He had to bend over, stoop down, to commit the ignominy of beholding himself.

The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“In a world myriad as ours, the gaze is a singular act: to look at something is to fill your whole life with it, if only briefly.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“I have been finding treasures in places I did not want to search. I have been hearing wisdom from tongues I did not want to listen. I have been finding beauty where I did not want to look. And I have learned so much from journeys I did not want to take. Forgive me, O Gracious One; for I have been closing my ears and eyes for too long. I have learned that miracles are only called miracles because they are often witnessed by only those who can can see through all of life's illusions. I am ready to see what really exists on other side, what exists behind the blinds, and taste all the ugly fruit instead of all that looks right, plump and ripe.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Almost nothing need be said when you have eyes.”
― Tarjei Vesaas, The Boat in the Evening

“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

“Ultimately — or at the limit — in order to see a photograph well, it is best to look away or close your eyes. 'The necessary condition for an image is sight,'Janouch told Kafka; and Kafka smiled and replied: 'We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes.”
― Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography

“A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it.”
― H.L. Mencken

“Right, well, he'd been sick for a while and his nurse said to him, 'You seem to be feeling better this morning,' and Isben looked at her and said, 'On the contrary,' and then he died.”
― John Green, Looking for Alaska

“I was aware that I had been looking for him on every street, in every crowd.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“What use is care? What good is watching for that matter? People are forever watching things. They should be seeing. I see the things I look at. I am a see-er.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear

“Your suffering needs to be respected. Don't try to ignore the hurt, because it is real. Just let the hurt soften you instead of hardening you. Let the hurt open you instead of closing you. Let the hurt send you looking for those who will accept you instead of hiding from those who reject you.”
― Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life

“He, too, stood looking at her for a moment--and it seemed to her that it was not a look of greeting after an absence, but the look of someone who had thought of her every day of that year. She could not be certain, it was only an instant, so brief that just as she caught it, he was turning...”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“I am looking for the one I can’t fool.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“After a long silence, Dodge cleared his throat. "I think I speak for all of us when I say, 'Huh?'"
-Dodge(obviously)”
― Frank Beddor, Seeing Redd

“You have two eyes, and two ears, but only one mouth. This is so because you are supposed to look and listen more than you talk.”
― Lucca Kaldahl

“Never look directly at the sun. Instead, look at the sunflower.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“She had a weapon now. She wasn't defenseless against him. She'd never been defenseless. She had just never thought to look.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Dragon Republic

“Looking but not seeing is the hearing but not understanding of the eye.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“It's not that we spend five days looking forward to just two. It's that most people do what they enjoy most on those two days. Imagine living a life where everyday are your Saturdays and Sundays. Make everyday your weekend. Make everyday a play-day…”
― James A. Murphy, The Waves of Life Quotes and Daily Meditations

“And even, if circumstances required, a contingency plan for his contingency plan's contingency plan.”
― Frank Beddor, Seeing Redd

“In my living room there are two large bookcases, each one eight feet tall, and they have about five hundred books between them. If I step up to a shelf and look at the books one by one, I can remember something about each. As a historian once said, some stare at me reproachfully, grumbling that I have never read them. One may remind me vaguely of a time when I was interested in romantic novels. An old college text will elicit a pang of unhappiness about studying. Each book has its character, and even books I know very well also have this kind of wordless flavor. Now if I step back from the shelf and look quickly across both bookcases I speed up that same process a hundredfold. Impressions wash across my awareness. But each book still looks back in its own way, answering the rude brevity of my gaze, calling faintly to me out of the corner of my eye. At that speed many books remain wrapped in the shadows of my awareness--I know I have looked past them and I know they are there, but I refuse to call them to mind.”
― James Elkins, The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing

“For now. But if I ever decide you're useless, you are a dead man."
To be killed by you is to be desired more than a life excluded from your service."
Bravo." Her Imperial Viciousness laughed with genuine feeling. "Bra-vo!”
― Frank Beddor, Seeing Redd

“Well now," the scholar went on, "I'm just an old fuddy-duddy who could use a tan, so you needn't grant my opinion any authority, but I consider the queendom lucky that a handful of Milliners and their children lived incognito among the population during Redd's tyranny.”
― Frank Beddor, Seeing Redd

“If all of her was not enough for him, then let him have none of her and seek what he needed elsewhere.”
― Robin Hobb, City of Dragons

“I ain’t the only old woman looking. I’m just the only one honest enough to admit it. The others just hire the boy to cut their grass so they can sit at the window and drool.”
― Glines Abbi

“Only the previous day, Arch had found him in a spirit-dance corral, blistering the creatures to the point of death, such was his need to touch and destroy.”
― Frank Beddor, Seeing Redd

“I want a History of Looking. For the Photograph is the advent of myself as other: a cunning dissociation of consciousness from identity. Even odder: it was before Photography that men had the most to say about the vision of the double. Heautoscopy was compared with an hallucinosis; for centuries this was a great mythic theme.”
― Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography

“In the first place, you can't see anything from a car.”
― ed abbey

“I spent the whole morning looking at him. He looked at Mama. Mama looked at me. Then he would look at me. I would look at Mama. She would look at him. In different circumstances, I'd be amused.”
― Melina Marchetta, Looking for Alibrandi

“Seeing the obvious is often harder than seeing the hidden!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan