The eyes are more exact witnesses than the ears.

Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.

The ‚I think‘ which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the ‚I breathe‘ which actually does accompany them.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

You have to see and smell and feel the circumstances of people to really understand them.

Many people find the universe confusing – it’s not.

I had been told from school onwards that the best definition of a human being was man the tool-maker – yet I had just watched a chimp tool-maker in action. I remember that day as vividly as if it was yesterday.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

It’s very difficult for the American people to believe that our government, one of the richest on Earth, is also one of the stingiest on Earth.

All knowledge or form conception is evoked through the medium of the eye, either in response to disturbances directly received on the retina or to their fainter secondary effects and reverberations. Other sense organs can only call forth feelings which have no reality of existence and of which no conception can be formed.

It’s amazing how confused and distracted and misdirected so many people are.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

I can walk through a hotel lobby and watch people at the desk and see what they’re doing. People don’t look at me. They don’t even know I’m there.

The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.

More than anything else, I want the folks back at home to think right of me.

Things ain’t what they used to be and never were.

The young are permanently in a state resembling intoxication.

Every now and then I will see a word as if for the first time, and suddenly appreciate that Evian is ‚naive‘ spelled backward, or that Bosnia is an anagram of ‚bonsai.‘

I became a people-watcher when I lost all my friends when I was 12.

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

Some are reputed sick and some are not. It often happens that the sicker man is the nurse to the sounder.

When you read, I’m sure you don’t realize that your eyes are going backwards and forwards and to this place and that place. Mine don’t do that.

People think you have to go through something to write about it, and you absolutely do not. You can write about, like, a shoe. It’s a story.

People talk to people who perceive nothing, who have open eyes and see nothing; they shall talk to them and receive no answer; they shall adore those who have ears and hear nothing; they shall burn lamps for those who do not see.

A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.

Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe.

In too many communities, too many young men of color are left behind and seen only as objects of fear. Through initiatives like My Brother’s Keeper, I’m personally committed to changing both perception and reality.

I never gave anybody hell! I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.

On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.

The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.

Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

I like gaps; all my stories have gaps. It seems this is the way people’s lives present themselves.

The nice thing about being a celebrity is that, if you bore people, they think it’s their fault.

Men willingly believe what they wish.

But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

If one plays good music, people don’t listen and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.

A person hears only what they understand.

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.

Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.

See, people are watching you. Especially your children. They’re taking in every single thing you do. They are like video cameras with legs. And they are always in the record mode. They learn more from what you do than from what you say.

The eyes of some persons are large, others small, and others of a moderate size; the last-mentioned are the best. And some eyes are projecting, some deep-set, and some moderate, and those which are deep-set have the most acute vision in all animals; the middle position is a sign of the best disposition.

I am persuaded, you will permit me to observe, that the path of true piety is so plain as to require but little political direction.

There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.

The fellow that can only see a week ahead is always the popular fellow, for he is looking with the crowd. But the one that can see years ahead, he has a telescope but he can’t make anybody believe that he has it.

The intellectual is different from the ordinary man, but only in certain sections of his personality, and even then not all the time.

A tree’s a tree. How many more do you need to look at?

I confused things with their names: that is belief.

I mean, if you didn’t get it or if you didn’t feel like you enjoyed it, sometimes that experience can change.

Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.

Certainly, if you look at human behavior around the world, you have to admit that we can be very aggressive.

Absolute space, in its own nature, without regard to anything external, remains always similar and immovable. Relative space is some movable dimension or measure of the absolute spaces, which our senses determine by its position to bodies, and which is vulgarly taken for immovable space.

The eye of a human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than it really is.

It’s only I have seen enough of it and the funny thing is now, I know that I’m skinny, because I know there are even smaller clothes in the store. I think I’m big, when I was big, I never thought about it.