Walter Pater Quotes

We live on the leash of our senses.

Sensorial perception, for example, certainly occurs with greater or less accuracy according to the degree of interest; it is constantly given other directions by the change of external stimuli and by ideas.

You can live your whole life in your brain and not experience what's around you. You go crazy that way.

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.

Nothing we use or hear or touch can be expressed in words that equal what is given by the senses.

The nature of the human mind is such that unless it is stimulated by images of things acting upon it from without, all remembrance of them passes easily away.

We never see a tree except through the image that we have of it, the concept of that tree; but the concept, the knowledge, the experience, is entirely different from the actual tree. Look at a tree and you will find how extraordinarily difficult it is to see it completely, so that no image, no screen, comes between the seeing and the actual fact. By completely I mean with the totality of your mind and heart, not a fragment of it.

Use all of your senses.

The cause of Sense, is the External Body, or Object, which presseth the organ proper to each Sense, either immediately, as in theTaste and Touch; or mediately, as in Seeing, Hearing, and Smelling: which pressure, by the mediation of Nerves, and other strings, and membranes of the body, continued inwards to the Brain, and Heart, causeth there a resistance, or counter- pressure, or endeavor of the heart, to deliver it self: which endeavor because Outward, seemeth to be some matter without.

That's all a writer has to write about - what he sees and hears and what not.

Our life experiences area result of where our attention takes us.

Ineluctable modality of the visible; at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read.

To begin to understand the gorgeous fever that is consciousness, we must try to understand the senses and what they can tell us about the ravishing world we have the privilege to inhabit.

The imagination and the senses cannot be gratified at the same time.

The senses don't just make sense of life in bold or subtle acts of clarity, they tear reality apart into vibrant morsels and reassemble them into a meaningful pattern.

My experience is what I agree to attend to.

You heard me. You ain't blind.

People assume that they perceive reality as it is, that our senses accurately record the outside world. Yet the science suggests that, in important ways, people experience reality not as it is, but as they expect it to be.

Don't look at the world with your hands in your pockets. To write about it you have to reach out and touch it.

The senses are a kind of reason. Taste, touch and smell, hearing and seeing, are not merely a means to sensation, enjoyable or otherwise, but they are also a means to knowledge - and are, indeed, your only actual means to knowledge.

When we look at a rock what we are seeing is not the rock, but the effect of the rock upon us.

External images act on me, transmit movement to me, and I return movement: how could images be in my consciousness since I am myself image, that is, movement?

The heart lies and the head plays tricks on us, but the eyes see true. Look with your eyes. Hear with your ears. Taste with your mouth. Smell with your nose. Feel with your skin. Then comes the thinking, afterward, and in a way knowing the truth.

Sinnes are not knowne till they bee acted.

My hand feels touched as well as it touches; reality says this, and nothing more.