Richard Wilbur Quotes

I wish the children could be taught early on that our thinking creates our experience.

We all have mental models: the lens through which we see the world that drive our responses to everything we experience. Being aware of your mental models is key to being objective.

Our thoughts and our feelings, of course, are not wholly objective, they're inherently subjective. And that's the danger, and I think as long as we're aware of it and can push back against it, I don't think that these two views are necessarily incompatible.

We have been so blinded by thinking and feeling that we have never seen the World.

Distrust your judgment the moment you can discern the shadow of a personal motive in it.

You don't want to know the Truth, you want to know the truth as you understand it. This is the greatest barrier to your enlightenment. You think you already know the truth! You think you already understand how it is. So you agree with everything you see or hear or read that falls into the paradigm of your understanding, and reject everything which does not.

It's almost heartening to think that the attachment you have can define your perception as much as any other influence.

A wise man heedeth all things, and in his own eyes is a fool.

We are not conscious of most things until we ask ourselves questions about them.

I made you take time to look at what I saw and when you took time to really notice my flower, you hung all your associations with flowers on my flower and you write about my flower as if I think and see what you think and see—and I don't.

Consciousness is a much smaller part of our mental life than we are conscious of, because we cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of.

It is difficult to see a situation for what it is when you are in the midst of it,” Tsukiko says. “It is too familiar. Too comfortable.

Beware of the temptation to see yourself as unfairly treated.

People think that they see, but they don't.

It is as easy to deceive one's self without perceiving it, as it is difficult to deceive others without their finding out.

What we think is less than what we know; What we know is less than what we love; What we love is so much less than what there is. And to that precise extent we are so much less than what we are.

It's very interesting to think about the distinction with mind, which I just made in very general terms, but it can be made more profound when we think that there are many species, many creatures on earth that are very likely to have a mind, but are very unlikely to have a consciousness in the sense that you and I have.

Life in the true sense is perceiving or thinking.

It seems to me that the real problem is the mind itself and not the problem which the mind has created and tries to solve.

Until we take how we see ourselves (and how we see others) into account, we will be unable to understand how others see and feel about themselves and their world. Unaware, we will project our intentions on their behavior and call ourselves objective.

I am thing that thinks: that is, a things that doubts,affirms, denies, understands a few things, is ignorant of many things, is willing, is unwilling, and also which imagines and has sensory perceptions.

Before you attempt to set things right, make sure you see things right.

Always, the eye sees more than the mind can comprehend, and we go through life self-blinded to much that lies before us. We want a simple world, but we live in a magnificently complex one, and rather than open ourselves to it, we perceive the world through filters that make it less daunting.

How hard I find it to see what is right in front of my eyes!

All we can go on is what we think, how we see the world. If you can't trust your own mind what can you trust?