John Ruskin Quotes

It is the soul itself which sees and hears, and not those parts which are, as it were, but windows to the soul.

There are two ways of seeing: with the body and with the soul. The body's sight can sometimes forget, but the soul remembers forever.

Though the eye is small, the soul which sees through it is greater and vaster than all the things which it perceives. In fact, it is so great that it includes all objects, however large or numerous, within itself. For it is not so much that you are within the cosmos as that the cosmos is within you.

What has soul in it differs from what has not, in that the former displays life. Now this word has more than one sense, and provided any one alone of these is found in a thing we say that thing is living. Living, that is, may mean thinking or perception or local movement and rest, or movement in the sense of nutrition, decay and growth. Hence we think of plants also as living, for they are observed to possess in themselves an originative power through which they increase or decrease in all spatial directions.

The inner eye does not see upon command.

The eyes of my eyes are opened.

He will see most without who has the best eyes within; and he who only sees with his bodily organs sees but the surface.

...in every man there is an eye of the soul, which...is more precious far than ten thousand bodily eyes, for by it alone is truth seen.

We must close our eyes and invoke a new manner of seeing...a wakefulness that is the birthright of us all, though few put it to use.

This perceiving, active being is what I call mind, spirit, soul, or myself. By which words I do not denote any one of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein they exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby they are perceived; for the existence of an idea consists in being perceived.

To see, to hear, means nothing. To recognize (or not to recognize) means everything.

Two characteristic marks have above all others been recognized as distinguishing that which has soul in it from that which has not - movement and sensation.

We are all visionaries, and what we see is our soul in things.

Men who are devoid of the power of spiritual perception are unable to recognize anything that cannot be seen externally.

The source of all light is in the eye.

It is not possible that we should remember that we existed before our body, for our can bear no trace of such existence, neither can eternity be defined in terms of time or have any relation to time. But notwithstanding, we feel and know that we are eternal.

When I close my eyes my vision is even more powerful.

Then there is the further question of what is the relationship of thinking to reality. As careful attention shows, thought itself is in an actual process of movement. That is to say, one can feel a sense of flow in the stream of consciousness not dissimilar to the sense of flow in the movement of matter in general. May not thought itself thus be a part of reality as a whole? But then, what could it mean for one part of reality to 'know' another, and to what extent would this be possible?

The five senses are the ministers of the soul.

Clarity is the ability to see the soul in action in the physical world.

Shut your eyes and you will know what I mean by thought entombed in darkness. Light comes through the senses, and not only through the sense of sight. When you see without feeling, you are still partly blind; you lack the inner light that brings awareness. Awareness requires the interplay of every faculty, the use of your entire being as an eye.

The ensouled is distinguished from the unsouled by its being alive. Now since being alive is spoken of in many ways, even if only one of these is present, we say that the thing is alive, if, for instance, there is intellect or perception or spatial movement and rest or indeed movement connected with nourishment and growth and decay. It is for this reason that all the plants are also held to be alive . . .

Watching them opens your inner being. Just watching them opens your inner eye and that is the real eye; the outside eyes are of not much use. You are fortunate that you don't have them. You are blessed! Blessed are the blind for they shall not be forced to see this ugly world! And it is really ugly - believe me!