Perception quotes

The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I, First Book, §1, Haldane and Kemp translation, Project Gutenberg #38427. “Idea” translates Vorstellung in this historical philosophical vocabulary and should not be read as the everyday sense of a passing thought.

Phaedo, Benjamin Jowett translation; Socrates asks the question during the dialogue’s argument about visible bodies and the unseen soul.

The Principles of Success in Literature, chapter on Vision in Art, Project Gutenberg #10420; “Vision” is Lewes’s critical term for distinct mental apprehension.

Soliloquies in England, “Dickens”; Santayana uses caricature to describe the gap between living reality and conventional masks.

The Principles of Success in Literature, Chapter II, “The Principle of Vision,” Project Gutenberg #10420, in the 1891 volume edited by Fred Newton Scott. “All good Literature rests primarily on insight” opens Lewes’s claim that authentic literary expression depends on seeing and feeling for oneself. It is historical literary criticism rather than an experimentally established law of creativity.

The Sense of Beauty (1896), Part I, §11, ‘The definition of beauty,’ Project Gutenberg #26842; the represented section begins on printed page 49. ‘Beauty is pleasure regarded as the quality of a thing’ is Santayana’s summary definition after describing beauty as positive, intrinsic and objectified value. This remains historical naturalistic aesthetic theory / philosophical psychology, not a modern empirical test proving an object objectively beautiful.

The Renaissance, Preface; Project Gutenberg #2398. The following sentences extend the point across periods and schools of taste.

Pudd’nhead Wilson, Chapter V epigraph, introduced as a remark concerning upstarts in the Calendar sequence.

The World I Live In (1908), Chapter I, “The Seeing Hand,” printed page 7, Project Gutenberg #27683. Keller writes that ideas make the world we live in and impressions furnish ideas while explaining how touch-sensations, associations and imagination construct her experienced world.

Aurora Leigh, Book VII, printed page 304 / Wikisource scan leaf 313, scan-backed Chapman and Hall third edition (London, 1857), cross-checked against Project Gutenberg #56621. Aurora’s “Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God” belongs to an explicitly theistic argument about art, spiritual perception and the divine significance of ordinary nature. It remains poetic-religious narration rather than a scientific claim about nature.

Phaedo, Benjamin Jowett translation; Socrates is reasoning with Cebes about visibility, mortality and the proposed nature of soul and body.

Three Men in a Boat, Chapter I; after reading disease symptoms at the British Museum, the narrator concludes housemaid’s knee is the sole exception.

“A Light Exists in Spring,” in Poems: Third Series (1896), represented through Project Gutenberg #12242. The Gutenberg text reproduces an early edited Dickinson edition, so punctuation and the editorial title are edition-specific rather than claimed as manuscript-final.

The Hound of the Baskervilles, Chapter III, “The Problem,” Project Gutenberg #2852. Sherlock Holmes says that the world is full of obvious things nobody observes after inferring from Watson’s clean clothes and boots that he spent the rainy day indoors, then asks Watson to infer where Holmes himself has been. It remains fictional detective dialogue illustrating Holmes’s observational method rather than a universal scientific rule.

Symposium, Diotima’s ascent toward beauty as recounted by Socrates, Benjamin Jowett translation, Project Gutenberg #1600. This is one stage in an ancient philosophical account of beauty and love, not a modern psychological ranking of attractiveness.

The Republic, Book V; Socrates places opinion between knowledge and ignorance in the argument about what each apprehends.

The Renaissance, Preface; Project Gutenberg #2398, represented sixth-edition text. The phrase introduces Pater’s method of aesthetic criticism.

Emma, Volume II, Chapter VIII, scan-backed 1816 John Murray first edition on Wikisource. After Frank Churchill returns from an impulsive haircut, Emma “moralised to herself” that silly things can cease to seem silly when sensible people do them impudently. This is Emma Woodhouse’s ironic private judgment inside the novel, not Austen endorsing impudence as a general rule.

Three Men in a Boat, Chapter I; this sentence ends the British Museum self-diagnosis sequence.

The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I, Third Book, §36, Haldane and Kemp translation, Project Gutenberg #38427. The sentence immediately follows Schopenhauer’s answer that art is the kind of knowledge concerned with the Ideas outside ordinary relations.

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 14; Blake’s prose-poetic argument about the limits and cleansing of perception.

The Sense of Beauty (1896), Part IV, §48, ‘Expression defined,’ Project Gutenberg #26842. §48 begins on printed page 192 and §49 begins on page 198; the retained sentence occurs late in §48 after Santayana argues that expression depends on associations and on what the observer’s imagination can supply. No narrower printed page is asserted without an independently verified page break. This remains historical aesthetic/philosophical psychology, not modern intelligence testing, neuroscience or evidence that more intelligent observers always make objectively better interpretations.

Crime and Punishment, Part I, Chapter II, printed page 10 / Wikisource scan leaf 42, Constance Garnett translation in the scan-backed 1917 Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction / P. F. Collier & Son edition, cross-checked against Project Gutenberg #2554. The narrator observes that some chance meetings interest us before a word is spoken while introducing Raskolnikov’s first attention to Marmeladov in the tavern; this remains literary narration rather than an empirical psychological law.

How Substances Can Be Good in Virtue of Their Existence Without Being Absolute Goods (De Hebdomadibus), H. F. Stewart / E. K. Rand 1918 edition, Project Gutenberg #13316. The sentence introduces a metaphysical method by distinguishing mental abstraction from actual separation.

Three Men in a Boat, Chapter I; the narrator imagines medical students using his supposedly comprehensive collection of illnesses for training.

“The Darkling Thrush,” collected in Poems of the Past and the Present (1901), Project Gutenberg #3168. The poem first appeared at the turn of the century; this collection uses the represented collection as source identity.

“Beclouded,” in Poems: First Series (1890), Project Gutenberg #12242. Nature is personified in the poem; the editorial heading and punctuation reflect the early printed edition.

The Renaissance, Preface; Project Gutenberg #2398. “These impressions” refers to responses produced by art, landscape, personality and other aesthetic objects.

The Wisdom of Life, T. Bailey Saunders translation; Project Gutenberg #10741. The claim belongs to Schopenhauer’s philosophical account of personality and subjective experience.

The Renaissance, Preface; Project Gutenberg #2398. Pater is describing aesthetic criticism, not claiming that personal impression alone settles every factual question.

Three Men in a Boat, Chapter I; the narrator explains why every patent-medicine advertisement convinces him he has the advertised disease.