Joseph Addison Quotes

Of all the senses, sight must be the most delightful.

It is my eyes which see, and the sight of my eyes grants beauty to the earth.

Sight is the noblest sense of man.

Heaven may have happiness as utterly unknown to us as the gift of perfect vision would be to a man born blind. If we consider the inlets of pleasure from five senses only, we may be sure that the same Being who created us could have given us five hundred, if He had pleased.

The eye is the most refined of our senses, the one which communicates most directly with our mind, our consciousness.

To love beauty is to see light.

The eye must be easy, before it can be pleased.

Beauty, my dear Sir, is not so much a quality of the object beheld, as an effect in him who beholds it. If our sight were longer or shorter, or if our constitution were different, what now appears beautiful to us would seem misshapen, and what we now think misshapen we should regard as beautiful. The most beautiful hand seen through the microscope will appear horrible. Some things are beautiful at a distance, but ugly near;

For the eye has this strange property: it rests only on beauty.

The eye is the jewel of the body.

The more perfect the sight is the more delightful the beautiful object. The more perfect the appetite, the sweeter the food. The more musical the ear, the more pleasant the melody. The more perfect the soul, the more joyous the joys of heaven, and the more glorious that glory.

We are as much as we see. Faith is sight and knowledge. The hands only serve the eyes.

The ever-present phenomenon ceases to exist for our senses. It was a city dweller, or a prisoner, or a blind man suddenly given his sight, who first noted natural beauty.

But we have been taught to see before our eyes have found out a way of seeing for themselves.

Some of us come on earth seeing – some of us come on earth seeing color.

It is only with the eyes open that a corporeal form returns, and assembles itself firmly around the hard core of sight.

O the eye's light is a noble gift of Heaven! All beings live from light, each fair created thing; the very plants turn with a joyful transport to the light.

For sight is woman-like and shuns the old.

What happens behind your eyes is more important than what happens in front of them. This is a reversal from the way that we have been taught and the way that we had experienced the world as five sensory humans.

Though ugliness be the opposite of beauty, it is not the opposite to proportion and fitness; for it is possible that a thing may be very ugly with any proportions, and with a perfect fitness for any use.

The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen if the eye is too near.

It has been said that beauty is a promise of happiness. Conversely, the possibility of pleasure can be a beginning of beauty.

Sight is by much the noblest of the senses. We receive our notices from the other four, through the organs of sensation only. We hear, we feel, we smell, we taste, by touch. But sight rises infinitely higher. It is refined above matter, and equals the faculty of spirit.

Life may as properly be called an art as any other.