#blindness

This same habitual blindness to spiritual, substantive dimensions of every significant challenge continues to handicap Hollywood. ↗

— Michael Medved

#challenge #continues #dimensions #every #habitual

There is a condition worse than blindness, and that is, seeing something that isn't there. ↗

— Thomas Hardy

#condition #seeing #something #than #worse

To be blind is not miserable; not to be able to bear blindness, that is miserable. ↗

— John Milton

#bear #blind #blindness #miserable

You collect art: you must know that the miniature artists, at the end of careers spent painting the tiniest, most exacting details that no one would ever look at, would often put their eyes out with needles. Too much beauty, yes, but also too much seeing. They were tired of seeing. The dark was safe and warm and comfortable. Blindness was a gift. I still have seeing to do. ↗

— Ian McDonald

#beauty #blindness #seeing #sight #art

There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate, and not a grain more. ... A man sees only what concerns him. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#beauty #blindness #beauty

It seems that I have been held in some dreaming state A tourist in the waking world world, never quite awake. No kiss, no gentle word could wake me from this slumber, Until I realised that it was you who held me under. ↗

— Florence + the Machine

#florence-and-the-machine #kiss #dreams

I chanced on a wonderful book by Marius von Senden, called Space and Sight. . . . For the newly sighted, vision is pure sensation unencumbered by meaning: "The girl went through the experience that we all go through and forget, the moment we are born. She saw, but it did not mean anything but a lot of different kinds of brightness." . . . In general the newly sighted see the world as a dazzle of color-patches. They are pleased by the sensation of color, and learn quickly to name the colors, but the rest of seeing is tormentingly difficult. . . . The mental effort involved . . . proves overwhelming for many patients. It oppresses them to realize, if they ever do at all, the tremendous size of the world, which they had previously conceived of as something touchingly manageable. . . . A disheartening number of them refuse to use their new vision, continuing to go over objects with their tongues, and lapsing into apathy and despair. . . . On the other hand, many newly sighted people speak well of the world, and teach us how dull is our own vision. ↗

— Annie Dillard

#nature #seeing #vision #experience

We have flattered ourselves by inventing proverbs of comparison in matter of blindness,--"blind as a bat," for instance. It would be safe to say that there cannot be found in the animal kingdom a bat, or any other creature, so blind in its own range of circumstance and connection, as the greater majority of human beings are in the bosoms of their families. Tempers strain and recover, hearts break and heal, strength falters, fails, and comes near to giving way altogether, every day, without being noted by the closest lookers-on. ↗

— Helen Hunt Jackson

#blindness #california #family #female-author #female-authors

There are poisons that blind you, and poisons that open your eyes. ↗

— August Strindberg

#poison #sight #vision #vision

There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. ↗

— Søren Kierkegaard

#fools #self-deception #truth #willful-blindness #willful-ignorance