Eyes

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The eyes have one language everywhere. ~ George Herbert

Eyes are sensory organs of the face responsible for sight.

Contents

Quotes [edit]

In every object there is inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it what the eye brings means of seeing. ~ Thomas Carlyle
Why has not man a microscopic eye?
For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly. ~ Alexander Pope
The fringed curtains of thine eye advance,
And say what thou seest yond. ~ William Shakespeare in The Tempest
  • A gray eye is a sly eye,
    And roguish is a brown one;
    Turn full upon me thy eye,—
    Ah, how its wavelets drown one!
    A blue eye is a true eye;
    Mysterious is a dark one,
    Which flashes like a spark-sun!
    A black eye is the best one.
    • William R. Alger, "Mirtsa Schaffy on Eyes", Poetry of the Orient (1865), p. 228.
  • Not in mine eyes alone is Paradise.
  • Parean l'occhiaje anella senza gemme.
    • Their eyes seem'd rings from whence the gems were gone.
    • Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio (1321), XXIII. 31.
  • There are whole veins of diamonds in thine eyes,
    Might furnish crowns for all the Queens of earth.
  • The night has a thousand eyes,
    And the day but one;
    Yet the light of the bright world dies
    With the dying sun.
  • The learned compute that seven hundred and seven millions of millions of vibrations have penetrated the eye before the eye can distinguish the tints of a violet.
  • The Chinese say that we Europeans have one eye, they themselves two, all the world else is blinde.
  • Her eye (I'm very fond of handsome eyes)
    Was large and dark, suppressing half its fire
    Until she spoke, then through its soft disguise
    Flash'd an expression more of pride than ire,
    And love than either; and there would arise,
    A something in them which was not desire,
    But would have been, perhaps, but for the soul,
    Which struggled through and chasten'd down the whole.
  • With eyes that look'd into the very soul—
    * * * * * *
    Bright—and as black and burning as a coal.
  • In every object there is inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it what the eye brings means of seeing.
    • Thomas Carlyle, The French Revolution. A History (1837), Volume I, p. 5. People's ed. Heroes and Hero-Worship, The Hero as Poet; Miscellaneous Essays, Volume VI; Review of Vernhagen von Ense's Memoirs, P. 241. Same idea in Goethe's Zahme Xeniem, III.
  • Look babies in your eyes, my pretty sweet one.
    • John Fletcher, The Loyal Subject, (licensed 16 November 1618; revised c. 1633; published 1647).
  • The eyes have one language everywhere.
  • Those true eyes
    Too pure and too honest in aught to disguise
    The sweet soul shining through them.
    • Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), Lucile (1860), Part II, Canto II, Stanza 3.
  • When I consider how my light is spent,
    Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
    And that one talent which is death to hide
    Lodged with me useless.
  • Why has not man a microscopic eye?
    For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly.
    Say, what the use, were finer optics giv'n,
    T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav'n?
  • Bright as the sun her eyes the gazers strike,
    And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.
  • Thou tell'st me there is murder in mine eye;
    'Tis pretty, sure, and very probable,
    That eyes, that are the frail'st and softest things,
    Who shut their coward gates on atomies,
    Should be call'd tyrants, butchers, murderers!
  • The image of a wicked heinous fault
    Lives in his eye: that close aspect of his
    Does show the mood of a much troubled breast.
  • You have seen
    Sunshine and rain at once. * * * those happy smilets,
    That play'd on her ripe lip, seem'd not to know
    What guests were in her eyes; which parted thence,
    As pearls from diamonds dropp'd.
  • Her eyes, like marigolds, had sheath'd their light;
    And, canopied in darkness, sweetly lay,
    Till they might open to adorn the day.
    • Rape of Lucrece, line 397.
  • Her eyes in heaven
    Would through the airy region stream so bright,
    That birds would sing and think it were not night.
  • If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
    And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
    The age to come would say, "This poet lies;
    Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces."
  • Her two blue windows faintly she up-heaveth,
    Like the fair sun, when in his fresh array
    He cheers the morn, and all the earth relieveth;
    And as the bright sun glorifies the sky,
    So is her face illumin'd with her eye.
  • When you look into eyes, forget about romance, creation, and the windows into the soul. With their molecules, genes, and tissues derived from microbes, jellyfish, worms, and flies, you see an entire menagerie.
    • Neil Shubin, Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body.
  • The sight of you is good for sore eyes.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations [edit]

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 246-50.
  • In her eyes a thought
    Grew sweeter and sweeter, deepening like the dawn,
    A mystical forewarning.
  • The mind has a thousand eyes,
    And the heart but one;
    Yet the light of a whole life dies
    When love is done.
  • Thine eyes are springs in whose serene
    And silent waters heaven is seen.
    Their lashes are the herbs that look
    On their young figures in the brook.
  • There are eyes half defiant,
    Half meek and compliant;
    Black eyes, with a wondrous, witching charm
    To bring us good or to work us harm.
  • Oculi, tanquam, speculatores, altissimum locum obtinent.
    • The eyes, like sentinels, hold the highest place in the body.
    • Cicero, De Nat. Deorum, Book II. 56.
  • The love light in her eye.
  • In the twinkling of an eye.
    • I Corinthians, XV. 52. Merchant of Venice, Act II, scene 2.
  • Eyes, that displaces
    The neighbor diamond, and out-faces
    That sun-shine by their own sweet graces.
  • He kept him as the apple of his eye.
    • Deuteronomy, XXXII. 10.
  • With affection beaming in one eye and calculation shining out of the other.
  • And pictures in our eyes to get
    Was all our propagation.
  • A suppressed resolve will betray itself in the eyes.
    • George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (1860), Book V, Chapter XIV.
  • An eye can threaten like a loaded and levelled gun, or can insult like hissing or kicking; or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance with joy.
  • Eyes are bold as lions,—roving, running, leaping, here and there, far and near. They speak all languages. They wait for no introduction; they are no Englishmen; ask no leave of age or rank; they respect neither poverty nor riches, neither learning nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude, and come again, and go through and through you in a moment of time. What inundation of life and thought is discharged from one soul into another through them!
  • Scitum est inter cæcos luscum requare posse.
    • Among the blind the one-eyed man is king.
    • Erasmus, Adagia, Dignitas et Excellentia et Inequalitas, sub-division, Excel. et Ineq. (about 1500). Proverbs collected by Michael Apostolios, Cent. VII. 31. Latin given as: Cæcorum in patria luscus rex imperat omnis. Taken from the Greek. See Chiliades—Adagiorum, fifth centuria, third Chilias No. 96. Earliest use probably in G. Fullenius—Comedye of Acolastus, translation. by John Palsgrave from the Latin. (1540). Quoted by Edmund Campion—Rationes Decom. (1581). Carlyle, Frederick the Great, Book 4, Chapter II. Quoted as: Beati monoculi in regione cæcorum. Blessed are the one-eyed in the country of the blind. Herbert, Jacula Prudentum (1651). Also in Miscellanæ, Part II. Fourth Ed., p. 342. Juvenal—Satire X. 227, gives it as: Ambes Perdidit ille oculus et luscis invidet.
  • To sun myself in Huncamunca's eyes.
    • Henry Fielding, The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great, Act I, scene 3.
  • Ils sont si transparents qu'ils laissent voir votre ame.
    • Eyes so transparent,
      That through them one sees the soul.
    • Theophile Gautier, The Two Beautiful Eyes.
  • Tell me, eyes, what 'tis ye're seeking;
    For ye're saying something sweet,
    Fit the ravish'd ear to greet.
    Eloquently, softly speaking.
  • On woman Nature did bestow two eyes,
    Like Hemian's bright lamps, in matchless beauty shining,
    Whose beams do soonest captivate the wise
    And wary heads, made rare by art's refining.
  • Wenn ich in deine Augen seh'
    So schwindet all' mein Leid und Weh.
    • Whene'er into thine eyes I see,
      All pain and sorrow fly from me.
    • Heinrich Heine, Lyrisches Intermezzo, IV.
  • Die blauen Veilchen der Aeugelein.
    • Those blue violets, her eyes.
    • Heinrich Heine, Lyrisches Intermezzo, XXXI.
  • I everywhere am thinking
    Of thy blue eyes' sweet smile;
    A sea of blue thoughts is spreading
    Over my heart the while.
  • The ear is a less trustworthy witness than the eye.
  • Her eyes the glow-worme lend thee,
    The shooting starres attend thee;
    And the elves also,
    Whose little eyes glow
    Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee.
  • We credit most our sight; one eye doth please
    Our trust farre more than ten eare-witnesses.
  • It is an active flame that flies
    First to the babies in the eyes.
  • Dark eyes—eternal soul of pride!
    Deep life in all that's true!
    * * * *
    Away, away to other skies!
    Away o'er seas and sands!
    Such eyes as those were never made
    To shine in other lands.
  • I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak but as the constitution is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am.
    • Speaker Lenthal to Charles I. As quoted by Wendell Phillips, Under the Flag, Boston (April 21, 1861).
  • Der Blick des Forschers fand
    Nicht selten mehr, als er zu finden wünschte.
  • As President, I have no eyes but constitutional eyes; I cannot see you.
  • And thy deep eyes, amid the gloom,
    Shine like jewels in a shroud.
  • I dislike an eye that twinkles like a star. Those only are beautiful which, like the planets, have a steady, lambent light,—are luminous, but not sparkling.
  • O lovely eyes of azure,
    Clear as the waters of a brook that run
    Limpid and laughing in the summer sun!
  • Since your eyes are so sharpe, that you cannot onely looke through a milstone, but cleane through the minde.
    • John Lyly, Euphues and his England, p. 289.
  • The light of the body is the eye.
    • Matthew, VI. 22.
  • Where did you get your eyes so blue?
    Out of the sky as I came through.
  • Among the blind the one-eyed blinkard reigns.
  • And looks commercing with the skies,
    Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.
  • Ladies, whose bright eyes
    Rain influence.
  • Si vous les voulez aimer, ce sera, ma foi, pour leurs beaux yeux.
    • If you wish to love, it shall be, by my faith, for their beautiful eyes.
    • Molière, Les Précieuses Ridicules, XVI.
  • And violets, transform'd to eyes,
    Inshrined a soul within their blue.
  • Eyes of most unholy blue!
    • Thomas Moore, Irish Melodies, By that Lake whose Gloomy Shore.
  • Those eyes, whose light seem'd rather given
    To be ador'd than to adore—
    Such eyes as may have looked from heaven,
    But ne'er were raised to it before!
    • Thomas Moore, Loves of the Angels, Third Angel's Story, Stanza 7.
  • And the world's so rich in resplendent eyes,
    'Twere a pity to limit one's love to a pair.
  • All German cities are blind, Nurnberg alone sees with one eye.
    • Frederich Nüchter, Albrecht Dürer, p. 8. English Translation by Lucy D. Williams. (Given as a saying in Venice).
  • Thou my star at the stars are gazing
    Would I were heaven that I might behold thee with many eyes.
    • Plato, from Greek Anthology.
  • Pluris est oculatus testis unus, quam auriti decem.
    Qui audiunt, audita dicunt; qui vident, plane sciunt.
    • One eye-witness is of more weight than ten hearsays. Those who hear, speak of what they have heard; those who see, know beyond mistake.
    • Plautus, Truculentus, II. 6. 8.
  • The eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth.
    • Proverbs, XVII. 24.
  • Dark eyes are dearer far
    Than those that mock the hyacinthine bell.
  • Thine eyes are like the deep, blue, boundless heaven
    Contracted to two circles underneath
    Their long, fine lashes; dark, far, measureless,
    Orb within orb, and line through line inwoven.
  • Think ye by gazing on each other's eyes
    To multiply your lovely selves?
  • So when thou saw'st in nature's cabinet
    Stella thou straight'st look'st babies in her eyes.
  • But have ye not heard this,
    How an one-eyed man is
    Well sighted when
    He is among blind men?
    • John Skelton, Why come ye not to Courte? (writing against Wolsey).
  • Were you the earth dear love, and I the skies
    My love would shine on you like to the sun
    And look upon you with ten thousand eyes
    Till heaven waxed blind and till the world were done.
  • The Father of Heaven.
    Scoop, young Jesus, for her eyes,
    Wood-browned pools of Paradise—
    Young Jesus, for the eyes,
    For the eyes of Viola.
    Angels.
    Tint, Prince Jesus, a
    Duskèd eye for Viola!
  • But optics sharp it needs, I ween,
    To see what is not to be seen.
  • How blue were Ariadne's eyes
    When, from the sea's horizon line,
    At eve, she raised them on the skies!
    My Psyche, bluer far are thine.
  • Blue eyes shimmer with angel glances.
    Like spring violets over the lea.
  • The harvest of a quiet eye,
    That broods and sleeps on his own heart.

See also [edit]

External links [edit]

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