#perception

The way I miss my daughter Esme is to worry about her. It is not a pleasurable longing. It contorts my body and scrambles my brain, makes me stop breathing, clench my jaw and my fists, it makes me frown, and makes me blind and deaf, in fact entirely without sensory perception. ↗

— Olivia Williams

#blind #body #brain #breathing #daughter

Quoting son, Noah Levine: Once you see what the heart really needs, it doesn’t matter if you’re going to live or die, the work is always the same. (25) ↗

— Stephen Levine

#heart #life #living #needs #perception

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

#human-heart #perception #change

How thin the air felt at the forest's edge, how ghostly the trees that guarded their realm.... The whole world seemed as delicate as a dandelion seed, and as fleeting.... How sad to know that the figment village of my imagination would not vanish when I ended, to understand that it was not I who had invented the moon the first time I realized how lovely it was. To admit that it was not my breath that made the winds blow.... [M]y heart, my heart knew that when I closed my eyes I invented the night sky and the stars too. Wasn't the whole dome of the sky the same shape as the inside of my skull? Didn't I create the sun and the day when I raised my eyelids every morning? ↗

— Martine Leavitt

#nature #perception #death

I have no auditory depth perception. She said, “I love you,” and I couldn’t even tell if she was 300 miles away, or 6 feet below my feet and 300 years away.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#auditory #cemetery #death #depth-perception #grave

Perceiving the world as well designed and thus the product of a designer, and even seeing divine providence in the daily affairs of life, may be the product of a brain adapted to finding patterns in nature. (38) ↗

— Michael Shermer

#patterns #perception #providence #design

How different would our perception of reality be if, instead, we discarded the mudane events that cannot coexist with our dreams? ↗

— Robin Hobb

#perceptions #dreams

A European says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with me? An American says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with him? I make no suggestion that one side or other is right, but observation over many years leads me to believe it is true. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#observational #perception #perception

Forgiveness has nothing to do with absolving a criminal of his crime. It has everything to do with relieving oneself of the burden of being a victim--letting go of the pain and transforming oneself from victim to survivor. ↗

— C.R. Strahan

#pain #self-perception #survivor #victim #forgiveness

No one else has access to the world you carry around within yourself; you are its custodian and entrance. No one else can see the world the way you see it. No one else can feel your life the way you feel it. Thus it is impossible to ever compare two people because each stands on such different ground. When you compare yourself to others, you are inviting envy into your consciousness; it can be a dangerous and destructive guest. ↗

— John O'Donohue

#perception #life