Flannery O'Connor Quotes

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

The things best to know are first principles and causes, but these things are perhaps the most difficult for men to grasp, for they are farthest removed from the senses.

Every man feels that perception gives him an invincible belief of the existence of that which he perceives; and that this belief is not the effect of reasoning, but the immediate consequence of perception. When philosophers have wearied themselves and their readers with their speculations upon this subject, they can neither strengthen this belief, nor weaken it; nor can they shew how it is produced. It puts the philosopher and the peasant upon a level; and neither of them can give any other reason for believing his senses, than that he finds it impossible for him to do otherwise.

People can drink with their eyes; I can eat with my nose.

Our senses are indeed our doors and windows on this world, in a very real sense the key to the unlocking of meaning and the wellspring of creativity.

A writer of fiction is really... a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of other men.

I shall try to tell the truth, but the result will be fiction.

All of science to me, everything that we have learned, is important to the extent that it brings us to our senses.

The senses are the organs by which man places himself in connexion with exterior objects.

My struggle has been to return painting to the tangible object, which is like returning the personality to touching and feeling the world around it, to offset the tendency to vagueness and abstraction. To remind people of practical activity, to suggest the sense and not to escape from the senses.

We live on the leash of our senses.

The greatest gift is our own eyes, sense of smell, and abilities to deduce.

However much, as readers, we lose ourselves in a novel or story, fiction itself is an experience on the order of memory -not on the order of actual occurrence.

All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

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

If he makes out Pierce to be either a brave or a great man, then it will be the greatest work of fiction he ever wrote.

Like all novelists, I'm interested in the filters between reality and the imagination.

If I, deaf, blind, find life rich and interesting, how much more can you gain by the use of your five senses!

I collect my tools: sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing, intellect. Night has fallen.

But magic is really only the utilization of the entire spectrum of the senses.

Who knows how to taste wine never drinks wine again, but tastes secrets instead

If a man cannot see a church, it is preposterous to take his opinion about its altar-piece or painted window.

All men naturally desire knowledge. An indication of this is our esteem for the senses; for apart from their use we esteem them for their own sake, and most of all the sense of sight. Not only with a view to action, but even when no action is contemplated, we prefer sight, generally speaking, to all the other senses. The reason of this is that of all the senses sight best helps us to know things, and reveals many distinctions.

Use all of your senses.

We become in part what our senses take in.