The Quotes canon

Sourced and curated.

Every quote has been curated by hand and carefully authenticated.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Adam Smith1 quote
The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life seems to arise from overrating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice overrates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vainglory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. — Adam Smith · 1759
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eyes. — Antoine de Saint-Exupery · 1943
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. — Arthur Schopenhauer · 1851
Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing! — Camille Pissarro · 1893
Epictetus1 quote
Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things are either what they appear to be; or they are neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not and yet appear to be. Rightly to aim in all these cases is the wise man's task. — Epictetus · 108
What is originality? To see something that has no name as yet and hence cannot be mentioned although it stares us all in the face. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1882
What do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? — George Berkeley · 1710
Every act of perception, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination. — Gerald M. Edelman · 2000
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen nor even touched, but just felt in the heart. — Helen Keller · 1891
Shut your eyes and see. — James Joyce · 1922
We must be careful of what we think we are, because we may become that. — James Q. Wilson · 1993
Vision is the art of seeing things invisible. — Jonathan Swift · 1745
Lex Luthor1 quote
Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe. — Lex Luthor · 1978
Patrick1 quote
You see things and you understand. You're a wallflower. — Patrick · 2012
Color is the place where our brain meets the universe. — Paul Cezanne
Seeing is forgetting the name of the things one sees. — Paul Valery · 1936
Learning that color is a fiction of light is one of the primary shocks of growing up: that this hitherto deeply physical thing is just a reflection and that nothing can keep its color under the cover of darkness, are monstrous things to understand, even for my adult mind. — Tacita Dean
If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. — William Blake · 1793