Quotes about Blindness

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish it's source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.

Mais les yeux sont aveugles. Il faut chercher avec le couer. (But eyes are blind. You have to look with the heart.)

            “Beliefs can easily cause us to become blind to the obvious.  Recent research on ‘inattentional blindness’ has shown that even minor tweaks to one’s expectations can cause a form of blindness.  A simple experiment developed by University of Illinois psychologist Daniel Simons provided a dramatic demonstration of this effect.  …

            Simon’s experiment consists of a twenty-five second video clip of six people playing a basketball game.  Three are dressed in white T-shirts and three in black T-shirts.  The white team is passing a basketball amongst themselves, and the black team is doing likewise.  During the game, a person dressed in a black gorilla suit calmly walks into the middle of the game, beats its chest, and then walks off.  The gorilla is not understated or camouflaged – it’s blatantly obvious.  And yet the majority of people viewing the clip do not see the gorilla provided they’re given a very simple instruction:  count the number of basketballs tossed between the members wearing white T-shirts.  This minor deflection of attention is enough to cause complete blindness to something as obvious as a gorilla.  The power of deflecting attention is well known to stage magicians, who specialize in creating such illusions.”

For a boy, I had been doing extraordinary things, which caused much wonder. Before I could walk, I could play on the piano, with one finger, any tunes that I heard, then, gradually, with all fingers, even the complex melodies played by blind Mr. Maynard, who, to me, was the greatest man in all the world.
Mr. Maynard lived in the dark but walked and talked with God in the Light. And what the soul of Creation told his Soul, he told me – and I walked and talked with God in those early days in His wonderlands of Peat Meadow and the huge oaks down in Bachelder’s wilds where nobody went but me, for no one else in all My World heard what I heard there – nor saw what I saw there – so it was mine alone, all that glory just mine alone.

The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.

The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.

Hate and mistrust are the children of blindness.

Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind; and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind.

Let us sit and mock the good housewife Fortune from her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally, I would we could do so; for her benefits are mightily misplaced; and the bountiful blind girl doth most mistake in her gifts to women. "Tis true; for those that she makes fair she scarce makes honest; and those that she makes honest she makes very ill-favouredly. Nay, now thou goest from Fortune's office to Nature's. Fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of Nature.

First Witch Round about the cauldron go; In the poison'd entrails throw. Toad, that under cold stone Days and nights has thirty-one Swelter'd venom sleeping got, Boil thou first i' the charmed pot. ALL Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble. Second Witch Fillet of a fenny snake, In the cauldron boil and bake; Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg and owlet's wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble. ALL Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble. Third Witch Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, Witches' mummy, maw and gulf Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark, Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark, Liver of blaspheming Jew, Gall of goat, and slips of yew Silver'd in the moon's eclipse, Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips, Finger of birth-strangled babe Ditch-deliver'd by a drab, Make the gruel thick and slab: Add thereto a tiger's chaudron, For the ingredients of our cauldron. ALL Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble. Second Witch Cool it with a baboon's blood, Then the charm is firm and good.

The prohibition is general. No clause in the constitution could by any rule of construction be conceived to give congress a power to disarm the people. Such a flagitious attempt could only be made under some general pretence by a state legislature. But if in any blind pursuit of inordinate power, either should attempt it, this amendment may be appealed to as a restraint on both.

I am content to live it all again And yet again, if it be life to pitch Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch.

Little Fly, Thy summer's play My thoughtless hand Has brushed away. Am I not like thee Or art not thou A man like Me? For I dance and drink and sing, Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing.

The human mind cannot go beyond the gift of God, the Holy Ghost. To suppose that art can go beyond the finest specimens of art that are now in the world is not knowing what art is; it is being blind to the gifts of the spirit.

Companies which get misled by their own success are sure to be blind sided.

The nearer I approach the end, the clearer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. It is marvelous yet simple. For half a century I have been writing my thoughts in prose, verse, history, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode and song - I have tried all; but I feel that I have not said a thousandth part of that which is in me. When I go down to the grave I can say like many others, "I have finished my day's work" but I cannot say, "I have finished my life's work"; my day's work will begin the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley. It is an open thoroughfare. It closes in the twilight to open in the dawn. My work is only beginning; my work is hardly above its foundation. I would gladly see it mounting forever. The thirst for the infinite proves infinity.

I feel within me the future life. I am like a forest that has been razed; the new shoots are stronger and brisker. I shall most certainly rise toward the heavens. The sun's rays bathe my head. The earth gives me its generous sap, but the heavens illuminate me with the reflection of-of worlds unknown. Some say the soul results merely from bodily powers. Why, then, does my soul become brighter when my bodily powers begin to waste away? Winter is above me, but eternal spring is within my heart. I inhale even now the fragrance of lilacs, violets, and roses, just as I did when I was twenty. The nearer my approach to the end, the plainer is the sound of immortal symphonies of worlds which invite me. It is wonderful yet simple. It is a fairy tale; it is history. For half a century I have been writing my thoughts in prose and in verse; history, philosophy, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode, and song; all of these have I tried. But I feel that I haven't given utterance to the thousandth part of what lies within me. When I go to the grave I can say as others have said, "I have finished my day's work." But I cannot say, "I have finished my life." My day's work will begin again the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley; it is a thoroughfare. It closes on the twilight, but opens on the dawn.

Not blind opposition to progress, but opposition to blind progress.

Life wounds all of us. At best there is sorrow enough to go round. Yet because the deepest wounds are those of the soul and hidden to mortal sight, we keep hurting each other day by day, inflicting wounds that time mercifully scars over. But the scars remain, ready at a touch to throb angrily and ache again with the old gnawing wild pain. You remember that day in school when the teacher laughed? You were only a little fellow, shy and silent, sitting in the shadow of the big boys, wistfully looking toward the day when you would shine as they did. That day you were sure your chance had come. You were sure that you had just what the teacher wanted on the tip of your tongue, and you jumped up and shouted it out loudly and eagerly, triumphantly - and you were very, very wrong. There followed a flash of astonishment, an instant of dreadful silence, and then the room rang with mirth. You heard only the teacher's laughter, and it drowned your heart. Many years have gone over head since that day, but the sight of a little lad trudging along to school brings it back, and the old pain stirs and beats against the scar. You cover it over, hush it to quiet once more with a smile. "I must have been funny. She couldn't help it." But you wish she had. And there was that time when your best friend failed you. When the loose-tongued gossips started the damaging story and he was pressed for a single word in your defense, he said, "Oh, he's all right. Of course, he's all right, but I don't want to get mixed up in this thing. Can't afford it. Have to think of my own name and my own family, you understand. Good fellow, but I have to keep out of this." You felt forsaken. For weeks and weeks you carried the pain in your heart. The story was bad enough but would right itself. The idea that he should fail you, that he had not, rushed to your side at the first hint of trouble was bad enough, was unbearable. He came back again after it was all over, but the sight of him renewed the ache in your breast and the throb of pain in your throat. The scar was thin, and the hurt beneath it quivered. We all bear scars. Life is a struggle, and hurts must come. But why the unnecessary ones? Why hurt the souls of little children? Why say things to them that they must remember with pain all their lives? Why say the smart, tart thing that goes straight to the heart of someone we love because we would relieve ourselves of the day's tension and throw off a grain of the soul's bitterness? Who are we to inflict wounds and suffering and scars on those about us? Staggering, blind mortals, groping our way from somewhere "here" to somewhere "there" conscious of little but the effort to stay "here" a little longer! It behooves us to travel softly, regardful of one another's happiness, particularly where our path crosses that of those dependent upon us for comfort or enters into the heart of little children.

Progress is a simple thing And all that it requires Is a certain moral blindness To the evil that transpires.

[The Prajnaparmita, Mother of the Bodisattvas, Mother of the Buddhas . . . ] She is a source of light, and from everyone in the triple world. She removes darkness. . . . She brings light to the blind, She brings light, so that all fear and distress may be forsaken. She has gained the Five Eyes, and She shows the path to all beings. She Herself is an organ of vision.

A blind man inched his way along the busy street during the rush hour until he felt the curb with his foot. He paused until he sensed a person standing next to him, then he said: "May I accompany you across the street?" "Yes, certainly" came the reply from an elderly woman as she took his arm. The two persons walked safely across the street as cars and pedestrians whirled about them. When they came to the sidewalk on the other side of the street, the blind man turned to thank his escort, but before he could phrase his appreciation she said, "Thanks for the safe crossing. Being blind is made bearable because of people's kindness."

Crashing silent, broken down, falling into night Who gave up and who gave in, I'll go without a fight Cut me down or cut me dead, cut me in or out Kiss me blind time after time, take away my doubt.

And the blind will lead the blind and all Those too scared to see I am afraid beware the masque And the truth it conceals.

Mother Nature couldn't make us perfect, so she did the next best thing- she made us blind to our own thoughts.

America is a land of divine destiny. The almighty has every intention of keeping it so. But human blindness, human wickedness, human rebellion against God, can seriously interfere even with God's plan.

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits Like a taxi throbbing waiting I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives.

Envy is blind. -Caeca invidia est

That's what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another. Now you know - that's the happy existence you wanted to go back to. Ignorance and blindness.