34 Sight-Inspired Quotes

In a world filled with vibrant landscapes, striking moments, and captivating visions, our sense of sight allows us to explore and appreciate the beauty that surrounds us. It gives depth to our experiences and colors to our memories. Poets, philosophers, and artists alike have long reflected on the power of vision, capturing its essence in poignant words. In this post, we've curated a collection of the top 34 sight-inspired quotes that celebrate the wonder and significance of what we see. Join us as we journey through these insightful reflections on sight and the profound impressions it leaves on our lives.

1. “The first men to be created and formed were called the Sorcerer of Fatal Laughter, the Sorcerer of Night, Unkempt, and the Black Sorcerer … They were endowed with intelligence, they succeeded in knowing all that there is in the world. When they looked, instantly they saw all that is around them, and they contemplated in turn the arc of heaven and the round face of the earth … [Then the Creator said]: 'They know all … what shall we do with them now? Let their sight reach only to that which is near; let them see only a little of the face of the earth!… Are they not by nature simple creatures of our making? Must they also be gods?” - Anonymous

2. “We live by faith and not by sight.” - Anonymous

3. “There are poisons that blind you, and poisons that open your eyes.” - August Strindberg

4. “You two are too cute,” the counter girl said, setting two cups piled with whipped cream on the counter. She had a sort of lopsided, open smile that made me think she laughed a lot. “Seriously. How long have you been going out?”Sam let go of my hands to get his wallet and took out some bills. “Six years.”I wrinkled my nose to cover a laugh. Of course he would count the time that we’d been two entirely different species.Whoa.” Counter girl nodded appreciatively. “That’s pretty amazing for a couple your age."Sam handed me my hot chocolate and didn’t answer. But his yellow eyes gazed at me possessively—I wondered if he realized that the way he looked at me was far more intimate than copping a feel could ever be.I crouched to look at the almond bark on the bottom shelf in the counter. I wasn’t quite bold enough to look at either of them when I admitted, “Well, it was love at first sight.”The girl sighed. “That is just so romantic. Do me a favor, and don’t you two ever change. The world needs more love at first sight.” - Maggie Stiefvater

5. “It’s ever been the way of the man of science or philosophy. Most folks stay in the dark and then complain they can’t see nothing.” – Snipes (185)” - Ron Rash

6. “I don't think it had ever occurred to me that man's supremacy is not primarily due to his brain, as most of the books would have one think. It is due to the brain's capacity to make use of the information conveyed to it by a narrow band of visible light rays. His civilization, all that he had achieved or might achieve, hung upon his ability to perceive that range of vibrations from red to violet. Without that, he was lost.” - John Wyndham

7. “You collect art: you must know that the miniature artists, at the end of careers spent painting the tiniest, most exacting details that no one would ever look at, would often put their eyes out with needles. Too much beauty, yes, but also too much seeing. They were tired of seeing. The dark was safe and warm and comfortable. Blindness was a gift. I still have seeing to do.” - Ian McDonald

8. “We end up stumbling our way through the forest, never seeing all the unexpected and wonderful possibilities and potentials because we're looking for the idea of a tree, instead of appreciating the actual trees in front of us.” - Charles de Lint

9. “You are the king no doubt, but in one respect,at least, I am your equal: the right to reply.I claim that privilege too.I am not your slave. I serve Apollo.I don't need Creon to speak for me in public.So,you mock my blindness? Let me tell you this.You with your precious eyes,you're blind to the corruption in your life,to the house you live in, those you live with-who are your parents? Do you know? All unknowingyou are the scourge of your own flesh and blood,the dead below the earth and the living here above,and the double lash of your mother and your father's cursewill whip you from this land one day, their footfalltreading you down in terror, darkness shroudingyour eyes that now can see the light!Soon, soon,you'll scream aloud - what haven won't reverberate?What rock of Cithaeron won't scream back in echo?That day you learn the truth about your marriage,the wedding-march that sang you into your halls,the lusty voyage home to the fatal harbor!And a crowd of other horrors you'd never dreamwill level you with yourself and all your children.There. Now smear us with insults - Creon, myselfand every word I've said. No man will everbe rooted from the earth as brutally as you.” - Robert Fagles

10. “To be taught to read—what is the use of that, if you know not whether what you read is false or true? To be taught to write or to speak—but what is the use of speaking, if you have nothing to say? To be taught to think—nay, what is the use of being able to think, if you have nothing to think of? But to be taught to see is to gain word and thought at once, and both true.” - John Ruskin

11. “For this will cure him that is sick, and rouse him that is in dumps; one that has loved, it will remember of it; one that has not, it will instruct. For there was never any yet that wholly could escape love, and never shall there be any, never so long as beauty shall be, never so long as eyes can see. But help me that God to write the passions of others; and while I write, keep me in my own right wits.” - Longus (Longos)

12. “Stars and shadows ain't good to see by.” - Mark Twain

13. “To photograph: it is to put on the same line of sight the head, the eye and the heart.” - Henri Cartier-Bresson

14. “Sometimes seeing everything just gets in the way.” - Chris Lynch

15. “Sight is one of the most easily deceived senses. I could make a coin disappear and your eyes would believe it gone, even if it were merely up my sleeve.” - Megan Chance

16. “[The Old Astronomer to His Pupil]Reach me down my Tycho Brahe, I would know him when we meet,When I share my later science, sitting humbly at his feet;He may know the law of all things, yet be ignorant of howWe are working to completion, working on from then to now.Pray remember that I leave you all my theory complete,Lacking only certain data for your adding, as is meet,And remember men will scorn it, 'tis original and true,And the obloquy of newness may fall bitterly on you.But, my pupil, as my pupil you have learned the worth of scorn,You have laughed with me at pity, we have joyed to be forlorn,What for us are all distractions of men's fellowship and smiles;What for us the Goddess Pleasure with her meretricious smiles.You may tell that German College that their honor comes too late,But they must not waste repentance on the grizzly savant's fate.Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.What, my boy, you are not weeping? You should save your eyes for sight;You will need them, mine observer, yet for many another night.I leave none but you, my pupil, unto whom my plans are known.You 'have none but me,' you murmur, and I 'leave you quite alone'?Well then, kiss me, -- since my mother left her blessing on my brow,There has been a something wanting in my nature until now;I can dimly comprehend it, -- that I might have been more kind,Might have cherished you more wisely, as the one I leave behind.I 'have never failed in kindness'? No, we lived too high for strife,--Calmest coldness was the error which has crept into our life;But your spirit is untainted, I can dedicate you stillTo the service of our science: you will further it? you will!There are certain calculations I should like to make with you,To be sure that your deductions will be logical and true;And remember, 'Patience, Patience,' is the watchword of a sage,Not to-day nor yet to-morrow can complete a perfect age.I have sown, like Tycho Brahe, that a greater man may reap;But if none should do my reaping, 'twill disturb me in my sleepSo be careful and be faithful, though, like me, you leave no name;See, my boy, that nothing turn you to the mere pursuit of fame.I must say Good-bye, my pupil, for I cannot longer speak;Draw the curtain back for Venus, ere my vision grows too weak:It is strange the pearly planet should look red as fiery Mars,--God will mercifully guide me on my way amongst the stars.” - Sarah Williams

17. “And I look at him because he needs to be looked at. He needs to be seen. I hate that he has been on his own for so long painting graffiti moons in the dark keeping quiet about who he really is.” - Cath Crowley

18. “To be content, horse people need only a horse, or, lacking that, someone else who loves horses with whom they can talk. It was always that way with my grandfather. He took me places just so we could see horses, be near them. We went to the circus and the rodeo at Madison Square Garden. We watched parades down Fifth Avenue. Finding a horse, real or imagined, was like finding a dab of magic potion that enlivened us both. Sometimes I'd tell my grandfather about all the horses in my eleborate dreams. He'd lean over, smile, and assure me that, one day, I'd have one for real. And if my grandfather, my Opa, told me something was going to come true, it always did.” - Allan J. Hamilton

19. “Unity is vision; it must have been part of the process of learning to see.” - Henry Adams

20. “We see what we want to see. We idealize each other with our own fantasies.” - Eric Jerome Dickey

21. “Why do you like jellyfish so much?" I asked. "I don't know. I guess I think they're cute," she said. "But one thing did occur to me when I was really focused on them. What we see before us is just one tiny part of the world. We get into the habit of thinking, This is the world, but that's not true at all. The real world is in a much darker and deeper place than this, and most of it is occupied by jellyfish and things. We just happen to forget all that. Don't you agree? Two thirds of the earth's surface is ocean, and all we can see of it with the naked eye is the surface: the skin. We hardly know anything about what's beneath the skin.” - Haruki Murakami

22. “And, Kar, love is not a commandment, it is a need, as real as eating.” - David Clement-Davies

23. “I was used to feeling like I was never gonna see myself at the finish line.Hanging on to parts of me, hanging on at all. I was used to seeing no future in my sight line.” - Sara Quin

24. “At the moment of vision, the eyes see nothing.” - William Golding

25. “You are my king. You could command me to stop seeing her."Niall turned his gaze to Irial. "What would you do?""Blind myself, if you were foolish enough to use those words.” - Melissa Marr

26. “Poets are damned… but see with the eyes of angels.” - Allen Ginsberg

27. “How alive is thought, invisible, yet without thought there is no sight.” - Dejan Stojanovic

28. “There are no clear borders, Only merging invisible to the sight.” - Dejan Stojanovic

29. “To fulfill your vision, you must have hindsight, insight and foresight.” - Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

30. “Now, we see what we are shown. We have gotten used to being shown no matter what, within or beyond the limited range of human sight. This habituation to the monopoly of visualization-on-command strongly suggests that only those things that can in some way be visualized, recorded, and replayed at will are part of reality...The result is a strange mistrusts of our own eyes, a disposition to take as real only that which is mechanically displayed in a photograph, a statistical curve, or a table. Eyewitness testimony must be "substantiated" by records that have been acquired, and can be stored and then shown.” - Barbara Duden

31. “One of the best gifts you can give to someone, is a wider perspective. It's also one of the best gifts you can receive. So if you have given someone a wider perspective, don't feel bad about it (about taking their blindfolds off and having to watch them cringe in the newfound sunlight); I know it's hard, but you're doing them a lasting favor. And a wider perspective can be difficult for you yourself to accept, in the beginning (during the time that you squint while the sunlight stings your own eyes), but later you'll find yourself coming back to it, even if you abandoned it as something worthless; you'll look for it, one day. Or it will grow on you. Perspective.” - C. JoyBell C.

32. “Armed neutrality makes it much easier to detect hypocrisy.” - Criss Jami

33. “The human eye has to be one of the cruelest tricks nature ever pulled. We can see a tiny, cone-shaped area of light right in front of our faces, restricted to a very narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum. We can’t see around walls, we can’t see heat or cold, we can’t see electricity or radio signals, we can’t see at a distance. It is a sense so limited that we might as well not have it, yet we have evolved to depend so heavily on it as a species that all other perception has atrophied. We have wound up with the utterly mad and often fatal delusion that if we can’t see something, it doesn’t exist. Virtually all of civilization’s failures can be traced back to that one ominous sentence: ‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’ We can’t even convince the public that global warming is dangerous. Why? Because carbon dioxide happens to be invisible.” - David Wong

34. “Sophie has a gift," she said. "She has the Sight. She can see what others do not. In her old life she often wondered if she was mad. Now she knows that she is not mad but special.There, she was only a parlor maid, who would likely have lost her position once her looks had faded. Now she is a valued member of our household, a gifted girl with much to contribute.” - Cassandra Clare