Quotes on Senses

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind... The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only through their union can knowledge arise.

Geology, perhaps more than any other department of natural philosophy, is a science of contemplation. It requires no experience or complicated apparatus, no minute processes upon the unknown processes of matter. It demands only an enquiring mind and senses alive to the facts almost everywhere presented in nature. And as it may be acquired without much difficulty, so it may be improved without much painful exertion.

One of the effects of fear is to disturb the senses and cause things to appear other than what they are.

The source of genius is imagination alone, the refinement of the senses that sees what others do not see, or sees them differently.

We need silence to be able to touch souls.

All this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us the by senses and experience.

A certain sense of cruelty towards oneself and others is Christian; hatred of those who think differently; the will to persecute. Mortal hostility against the masters of the earth, against the 'noble', that is also Christian; hatred of mind, of pride, courage, freedom, libertinage of mind, is Christian; hatred of the senses, of joy in general, is Christian.

God's silences are His answers. If we only take as answers those that are visible to our senses, we are in a very elementary condition of grace.

No man in his senses can hesitate in choosing to be free, rather than a slave.

It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair's breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance ... To perceive freshly, with fresh senses is to be inspired.

But all art is sensual and poetry particularly so. It is directly, that is, of the senses, and since the senses do not exist without an object for their employment all art is necessarily objective. It doesn't declaim or explain, it presents.

All the powers of soul and body,memory, understanding, and will, interior and exterior senses, thedesires of spirit and of sense, all workin and by love.

The lover is moved by the beloved object as the senses are by sensual objects; and they unite and become one and the same thing. The work is the first thing born of this union; if the thing loved is base the lover becomes base.

The wise man should restrain his senses like the crane and accomplish his purpose with due knowledge of his place, time and ability.

What can give us more sure knowledge than our senses? How else can we distinguish between the true and the false?

Love is the poetry of the senses.

We differ, blind and seeing, one from another, not in our senses, but in the use we make of them, in the imagination and courage with which we seek wisdom beyond all senses.

Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose_x000D_ _x000D_ he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it._x000D_ _x000D_ But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life_x000D_ _x000D_ that one exists for other people.

But actually time isn't a straight line. It doesn't ave a shape. In all senses of the term, it doesn't have any form. But since we can't picture something without form in our minds, for the sake of convenience we understand it as a straight line. At this point, humans are the only ones who can make that sort of conceptual substitution.

Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand.

I sometimes think that shame, mere awkward, senseless shame, does as much towards preventing good acts and straightforward happiness as any of our vices can do.