Quotes about Perception

You might see nothing in him. I see everything in him.

Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are. That is the difference between the sexes.

The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own soul.

Mourn for Ophelia, if you like. Put ashes on your head because Cordelia was strangled. Cry out against Heaven because the daughter of Brabantio died. But don't waste your tears over Sibyl Vane. She was less real than they are.

Before Turner there was no fog in London.

Even now I cannot help feeling that it is a mistake to think that the passion one feels in creation is ever really shown in the work one creates.

To call an artist morbid because he deals with morbidity as his subject-matter is as silly as if one called Shakespeare mad because he wrote 'King Lear.

How does one cure the soul? Through the senses

Because you have the most marvellous youth, and youth is the one thing worth having. I don't feel that, Lord Henry. No, you don't feel it now. Some day, when you are old and wrinkled and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you will feel it terribly. Now, wherever you go, you charm the world.

The unread is always better than the unreadable.

A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on.

Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.