Quotes about Senses

"Divinity has one ultimate secret, which it will also whisper in your ear if your mind becomes quieter than the fog at sunset: the God of this world is found within, and you know it is found within: in those hushed silent times when the mind becomes still, the body relaxes into infinity, the senses expand to become one with the world- in those glistening times, a subtle luminosity, a serene radiance, a brilliantly transparent clarity shimmers as the true nature of all manifestation, erupting every now and then in a compassionate Radiance before whom all idols retreat, a love so fierce it adoringly embraces both light and dark, both good and evil, both pleasure and pain equally...."

You shall use all your senses to monitor very carefully all that goes on about you, inside and outside. -Sandy Woodward-

The Law of Self-Reflection-everything one senses and says is a perfect reflection of how one sees oneself and the world.

The life of the senses, when indulged so far, becomes extremely exacting.  It is simple enough to arouse one’s physical appetites, but not so easy to control them.  Nerves trained to excitement feel an unhealthy craving for it, and when the life of brain and senses has been accustomed to be fed continually from without by an unending flow of secondhand thoughts and images, of catchy tunes and twitching rhythms, it calls for these things because they render individual effort superfluous, and shake to pieces any notion of real values.  That is our modern world, dancing the infernal roundelay of haste, ever more deeply involved in the quest for variety and novelty.

            A mind trained to these frantic gymnastics will clearly show two characteristics; It will be insatiable, always preferring quantity to quality, and it will suffer from the need for speed.

If the Creator were to bestow a new set of senses upon us, or slightly remodel the present ones, leaving all the rest of nature unchanged, we should never doubt we were in another world, and so in strict reality we should be, just as if all the world besides our senses were changed.

""Lose your mind and come to your senses."

The bird of vision is flying towards You with the wings of desire.

The bird of vision is flying towards You with the wings of desire.

Oh! joy for he who has escaped from this world of perfumes and color!
For beyond these colors and these perfumes, these are other colors in the heart and the soul.

Hungry, you're a dog, angry and bad-natured.
having eaten your fill, you become a carcass;
you lie down like a wall, senseless.
At one time a dog, at another time a carcass,
how will you run with lions, or follow the saints?

When our knowing exceeds our sensing, we will no longer be deceived by the illusions of our senses.

There is danger for the eye in seeing too clearly, danger for the ear in hearing too sharply and danger to the heart from caring too greatly.

The mind’s capacity is limitless, and its manifestations are inexhaustible. Seeing forms with your eyes, hearing sounds with your ears, smelling odors with your nose, tasting flavors with your tongue, every movement or state is all your mind.

In the beginning was the Tao.
All things issue from it;
all things return to it.

To find the origin,
trace back the manifestations.
When you recognize the children
and find the mother,
you will be free of sorrow.

If you close your mind in judgements
and traffic with desires,
your heart will be troubled.
If you keep your mind from judging
and aren't led by the senses,
your heart will find peace.

Seeing into darkness is clarity.
Knowing how to yield is strength.
Use your own light
and return to the source of light.
This is called practicing eternity.

All the senses awaken and fall into harmony in poetic reverie. Poetic reverie listens to this polyphony of the senses, and the poetic consciousness must record it.

The moment my methods crystalize, is the moment I will have lost my senses, for no moral or value can ever be solidifed in an ever changing universe.

“Life has become a state of sensory overload.”

Unfortuneately, our senses are limited, therefore our view of the world is limited.  This is not a problem unless we start believing that what we perceive is all there is to be perceived.  It is not.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

Some of my cousins who had the great advantage of University education used to tease me with arguments to prove that nothing has any existence except what we think of it. . . . These amusing mental acrobatics are all right to play with. They are perfectly harmless and perfectly useless. . . . I always rested on the following argument. . . We look up to the sky and see the sun. Our eyes are dazzled and our senses record the fact. So here is this great sun standing apparently on no better foundation than our physical senses. But happily there is a method, apart altogether from our physical senses, of testing the reality of the sun. It is by mathematics. By means of prolonged processes of mathematics, entirely separate from the senses, astronomers are able to calculate when an eclipse will occur. They predict by pure reason that a black spot will pass across the sun on a certain day. You go and look, and your sense of sight immediately tells you that their calculations are vindicated. So here you have the evidence of the senses reinforced by the entirely separate evidence of a vast independent process of mathematical reasoning. We have taken what is called in military map-making "a cross bearing." . . . When my metaphysical friends tell me that the data on which the astronomers made their calculations, were necessarily obtained originally through the evidence of the senses, I say, "no." They might, in theory at any rate, be obtained by automatic calculating-machines set in motion by the light falling upon them without admixture of the human senses at any stage. When it is persisted that we should have to be told about the calculations and use our ears for that purpose, I reply that the mathematical process has a reality and virtue in itself, and that once discovered it constitutes a new and independent factor. I am also at this point accustomed to reaffirm with emphasis my conviction that the sun is real, and also that it is hot - in fact hot as Hell, and that if the metaphysicians doubt it they should go there and see.

BRUTUS: Be patient till the last. Romans, countrymen, and lovers! hear me for my cause, and be silent, that you may hear: believe me for mine honour, and have respect to mine honour, that you may believe: censure me in your wisdom, and awake your senses, that you may the better judge. If there be any in this assembly, any dear friend of Caesar's, to him I say, that Brutus' love to Caesar was no less than his. If then that friend demand why Brutus rose against Caesar, this is my answer: - Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more. Had you rather Caesar were living and die all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live all free men? As Caesar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honour him: but, as he was ambitious, I slew him. There is tears for his love; joy for his fortune; honour for his valour; and death for his ambition. Who is here so base that would be a bondman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so rude that would not be a Roman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so vile that will not love his country? If any, speak; for him have I offended. I pause for a reply.

O sleep! O gentle sleep! Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, That thou no more wilt weigh mine eyelids down And steep my senses in forgetfulness? Why, rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee, And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber, Than in the perfum'd chambers of the great, Under canopies of costly state, And lull'd with sound of sweetest melody?

A garden makes all our senses swim with pleasure.

Man has no body distinct from his soul; for that called body is a portion of the soul discern'd by the five senses, the chief inlets of the soul in this age.

Chocolate flows in deep dark, sweet waves, a river to ignite my mind and alert my senses

The greatest of all our human concepts is the immortality of the personality and the eternal glory of the human soul. Throughout eternity you will be yourself and I will be myself, with quickened senses amplified powers of perception, and vastly increased capacity for reason, understanding, love, and happiness, all of which are qualities we may develop now. Our machines wear out, our barns fall down, and our substance goes back to the dust, but our finest collection of personal qualities will have eternal life.

Of all the ingredients we employ in the creation of a garden, scent is probably the most potent and the least understood. Its effects can be either direct and immediate, drowning our senses in a surge of sugary vapor, or they can be subtle and delayed, slowly wafting into our consciousness, stirring our emotions and coloring our thoughts.

Scared out of his seven senses.

How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!

How he lies in his rights of a man! Death has done all death can. And absorbed in the new life he leads, He recks not, he heeds Nor his wrong nor my vengeance; both strike On his senses alike, And are lost in the solemn and strange Surprise of the change.