Mind

"Vision without implementation is hallucination."

"In the Middle Ages society was far more static and was essentially hierarchical in nature. As a result the causal or genetic attitude was far less important in medieval thought that it is in ours and the concept of evolution had little influence compared with the role of symbolism in the general world-view... Moreover, even the concept of time itself was of less significance to historians... For St Augustine the date of an event was of far less importance than its theological significance. His tendency to see everything in a theological rather than in a historical perspective was a powerful influence in the Middle Ages... It was not until the nineteenth century that the fundamental significance of the historical perspective came to be generally recognized. This was several hundred years after the theory and practice of perspective had been developed by painters and others. In each case a new way of looking at the world resulted."

"For any man with half an eye, What stands before him may espy; But optics sharp it needs I ween, To see what is not to be seen."

"Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible."

"Therefore, anyone who now wants to ask God for visions or revelations would seem to be doing God an injustice by not fixing their eyes entirely on Christ and wanting anything else or anything new."

"I can read and see the words that you have confined behind the wall of your lips in the expression on your face and in the gaze of your eyes."

"From now on, everything in life will appear blurry to me. What’s the point of wiping my glasses when my vision has already left me?"

"No vision can grasp him, but His grasp is over all vision: He is above all comprehension, yet is acquainted with all things."

"Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he."

"Some feminist cultural theorists in France, Britain, and the United States have argued that visualization and objectification as privileged ways of knowing are specifically masculine (man the viewer, woman the spectacle). Without falling into such essentialism, we may suppose that the language, perceptions, and uses of visual information may be different for women, as pregnant subjects, than they are for men (or women) as physicians, researchers, or reporters."

"The "prevalence of the gaze," or the privileging of the visual, as the primary means to knowledge in Western scientific and philosophical traditions has been the subject of a feminist inquiry by Evelyn Fox Keller and Christine R. Grontkowski. In their analysis, stretching from Plato to Bacon and Descartes, this emphasis on the visual has had a paradoxical function. For sight, in contrast to the other senses, has as its peculiar property the capacity for detachment, for objectifying the thing visualized by creating distance between knower and known. (In modern optics, the eye becomes a passive recorder, a camera obscura.) In this way, the elevation of the visual in a hierarchy of senses actually has the effect of debasing sensory experience, and relatedness, as modes of knowing:" Vision connects us to truth as it distances us from the corporeal.""

"I spry my closed vision over the streets of this city and the shadows lurching within it."

"Then purg'd with euphrasy and rue The visual nerve, for he had much to see."

"In Nietzsche’s view nihilism is not a Weltanschauung that occurs at some time and place or another; it is rather the basic character of what happens in Occidental history."

"Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare."

"Not so many years ago this was a mistake that brain scientists actually made: they succumbed all too often to the temptation to treat vision as if it were television — as if it were simply a matter of getting "the picture" from the eyes to the screen somewhere in the middle where it could be handsomely reproduced so that the phenomena of appreciation and analysis could then get underway. Today we realize that the analysis — the whatever you want to call it that composes, in the end, all the visual understanding — begins right away, on the retina; if you postpone consideration of it, you misdescribe how vision works."

"The Greeks elaborated several theories of vision. According to the Pythagoreans, Democritus, and others vision is caused by the projection of particles from the object seen, into the pupil of the eye. On the other hand Empedocles, the Platonists, and Euclid held the strange doctrine of ocular beams, according to which the eye itself sends out something which causes sight as soon as it meets something else emanated by the object."

"You’re actually socially isolating yourself with your phone. I feel like it’s kind of emasculating. This Google Glass really takes away that excuse.… It really opened my eyes to how much of my life I spent secluded away in email or social posts. My vision when we started Google 15 years ago was that eventually you wouldn’t have to have a search query at all — the information would just come to you as you needed it. This is the first form factor that can deliver that vision."

"Do not complain and cry and pray, but open your eyes and see, for the light is all about you, and it is so wonderful, so beautiful, so far beyond anything of which men have ever dreamt, for which they have ever prayed, and it is for ever and for ever."

"I wanted to see, because I didn't believe what I'd been hearing."

"There's nothing you can know that isn't known Nothing you can see that isn't shown There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be It's easy.hello hello hello"

"Let not soft slumber close your eyes, Before you've collected thrice The train of action through the day! Where have my feet chose out their way? What have I learnt, where'er I've been, From all I've heard, from all I've seen? What have I more that's worth the knowing? What have I done that's worth the doing? What have I sought that I should shun? What duty have I left undone, Or into what new follies run? These self-inquiries are the road That lead to virtue and to God."

"Summe up at night what thou hast done by day; And in the morning what thou hast to do. Dresse and undresse thy soul; mark the decay And growth of it; if, with thy watch, that too Be down then winde up both; since we shall be Most surely judg'd, make thy accounts agree."

"'Tis greatly wise to talk with our past hours; And ask them what report they bore to heaven: And how they might have borne more welcome news."

"There is a luxury in self-dispraise; And inward self-disparagement affords To meditative spleen a grateful feast."

"There are many subtle but easily overlooked forms of ego that you may observe in other people and, more important, in yourself. Remember: The moment you become aware of the ego in yourself, that emerging awareness is who you are beyond ego, the deeper “I.” The recognition of the false is already the arising of the real. For example, you are about to tell someone the news of what happened. “Guess what? You don't know yet? Let me tell you.” If you are alert enough, present enough, you may be able to detect a momentary sense of satisfaction within yourself just before imparting the news, even if it is bad news. It is due to the fact that for a brief moment there is, in the eyes of the ego, an imbalance in your favor between you and the other person. For that brief moment, you know more than the other. The satisfaction that you feel is of the ego, and it is derived from feeling a stronger sense of self relative to the other person. p. 52"

"When the ego is at war, know that it is no more than an illusion that is fighting to survive. That illusion thinks it is you. It is not easy at first to be there as the witnessing Presence, especially when the ego is in survival mode or some emotional pattern from the past has become activated, but once you have had a taste of it, you will grow in Presence power, and the ego will lose its grip on you. And so a power comes into your life that is far greater than the ego, greater than the mind. All that is required to become free of the ego is to be aware of it, since awareness and ego are incompatible. Awareness is the power that is concealed within the present moment. This is why we may also call it Presence. The ultimate purpose of human existence, which is to say, your purpose is to bring that power into this world. And this is also why becoming free of the ego cannot be made into a goal to be attained at some point in the future. Only Presence can free you of the ego, and you can only be present Now, not yesterday or tomorrow. only Presence can undo the past in you and thus transform your state of consciousness. p. 50"

"“I am bored.” Who knows this?"

"Be present as the watcher of your mind."

"Whenever you are able to observe your mind, you are no longer trapped in it. Another factor has come in, something that is not of the mind: the witnessing presence."

"When you listen to a thought, you are aware not only of the thought but also of yourself as the witness of the thought. A new dimension of consciousness has come in."

"Go to your bosom; Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know."

"Speak no more: Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul; And there I see such black and grained spots As will not leave their tinct."

"Whether you become a daughter, sister, lover, partner, sister-in-law, daughter-in-law, mother, or anything else with complete honesty, the satisfaction you'll find in becoming yourself cannot be found in becoming any of these relative beings."

"The psyche is awareized energy, in a state of constant creativity; a psychic pattern of multidimensionally expressed; each point within it changing in relationship to all other points, and thus altering the entire pattern or model. Each self is immersed in the psyche, yet immersed in its own individuality simultaneously, experiencing reality in time and out of it at once."

"One self-approving hour whole years out-weighs Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas."

"I have sometimes asked myself whether my country is the better for my having lived at all? I do not know that it is. I have been the instrument of doing the following things; but they would have been done by others; some of them, perhaps, a little better."

"Ruthless toward itself, the Enlightenment has eradicated the last remnant of its own self-awareness."

"To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are. ... The very people who are most self-dissatisfied and crave most for a new identity have the least self-awareness. They have turned away from an unwanted self and hence never had a good look at it."

"The test of a civilized person is first self-awareness, and then depth after depth of sincerity in self-confrontation."

"How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is, "Who in the world am I?" Ah, that's the great puzzle!"

"Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other."

"As I walked by myself, I talked to myself And myself replied to me; And the questions myself then put to myself, With their answers, I give to thee."

"Kar vasselage par sens nen est folie, Mielz valt mesure que ne fait estultie."

"Life cannot move forward just by being drenched in emotions."

"I am one, my liege, Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world Have so incens'd that I am reckless what I do to spite the world."

"Αὐτῶν γὰρ σφετέρῃσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὄλοντο."

"Ay, to those lofty beings, be they who they will, who look down from their starry thrones on the strange figures flitting to and fro over this earth of ours, the wild recklessness of us mortals with each other may well lose its painful interest."

"You better check yo self before you wreck yo self."

"If a king is energetic, his subjects will be equally energetic. If he is reckless, they will not only be reckless likewise, but also eat into his works. Besides, a reckless king will easily fall into the hands of his enemies. Hence the king shall ever be wakeful."