Sighting

“ Watch, I say, how a troubled ray, low on life's horizon, at last becomes a star in the world of men, high fixed and resplendent—to be seen by human eyes as long as there shall be human eyes to see anything. ”

“ In the eye, for example, how wide a scene is open to us, wherever our glance maybe turned?—woods, fields, mountains, rivers, the whole atmosphere of light, and that magnificent luminary, which converts into light the whole space through which it moves, as if incapable of existing but in splendour. The mere opening of our eyelid is like the withdrawing of a veil, which before covered the universe:—It is more; it is almost like saying to the universe, which had perished, Exist again! ”

“ They saw as they had never seen before, with sight beyond what they had ever thought to be possible. Our eyes gather in light, and with the little rays of light that they bring us we gather a few images of things as we suppose them to be. ”

“ Even in moonlight our eyes are blundering things; but our hearing, smell, and touch are so quickened by the alertness of night that, with a little training, the imagination quite takes the place of sight—a new sense, swift and vivid, that adds an excitement and freshness to the pleasure of out-of-door study, impossible to get through our two straightforward, honest day eyes. ”

“ A prolonged and steady looking at an object or at objects near the eye, though at proper distance, without rest or frequent change of the visual focus, as in long and absorbed novel-reading, intense study, or persistent diligence in needlework.
4. The practice of reading or otherwise using the sight at too short range. This results in part from insufficient light; or from its faulty direction, so that the hand or body throws a shadow on the page; or so that the direct rays fall upon the eye, causing undue contraction of the pupil, while the page is in shadow. ”

“ Each summer, for a month, to these shores I come to renew and perfect the spirit’s vision, which, even like natural sight, is cleared by good free air and sunshine; and as men with glasses have seen ten hundred living things upon a pin’s point, so I, with spiritual lenses, have seen the past, present, and future, each in proper order, marshalled upon a space no larger than a spectacle glass. ”

“ Sometimes day and night there flash before my eyes—my mind's eyes—pictures of you and me in places unfamiliar, landscapes never before seen, activities uncomprehended and unknown, bright, alluring glimpses of some second being, some possible, maybe never-to-be-realised future, alas! ”

“ But such inspiration comes not from one object or another, however great or fair, but from the whole “mighty world of eye and ear,” and it must be supported continuously, or it perishes. You may see a thousand sights never before seen by human eye, at every step you take, wherever be your path ”

“ When a novice, or one that has lately obtained the second sight, sees a vision in the night-time without doors, and comes near a fire he presently falls into a swoon.
“Some find themselves as it were in a crowd of people, having a corpse, which they carry along with them; and after such visions the seers come in sweating, and describe the vision that appeared. ”

“ True seeing, observing, is a double process, partly objective or outward—the thing seen and the retina,—and partly subjective or inward—the picture mysteriously transferred to the mind's representative, the brain, and there received and affiliated with other images. Illustrations of such seeing with the "mind's eye" are not far to seek. Wherever the beauties and conformations of natural scenery invite the eye of man, does he discover familiar forms and faces; the forces of nature have rough-hewn the rocks, but the human eye detects and often creates the resemblances. ”

“ Whereas we maintain that the only eye that we have—the only eye we can form any conception of—is the visible eye that belongs to the visible body, as a part does to a whole; whether this eye be originally revealed to us by the touch, by the sight, by the reason, or by the imagination. ”

“ The eye, more susceptible of multifarious impressions than the other senses, ‘takes in at once the landscape of the world,’ and enables us to distinguish, in a moment, the shapes and forms of all its objects, their relative positions, the colours that adorn them, their diversified aspect, and the motions by which they are transported from one portion of space to another. ”

“ I spent the next two weeks doing nothing but looking at our world. Do you think you really appreciate your sight? If you knew you had but a few weeks of sight left, what would you do with it? Visit famous landmarks? See the country? If you thought about it, I think you'd do the same as I did. I began to enjoy what was close at hand, the surroundings I had lived in. Everyday sights held a certain fascination for me. The stark black and white mosaic of a city at the tag end of winter; the sheer, raucous color of the magazines at your local newsstand ”

“ What a curious workmanship is that of the eye, which is in the body, as the sun in the world; set in the head as in a watchtower, having the softest nerves for the receiving the greater multitude of spirits necessary for the act of vision! How is it provided with defence, by the variety of coats to secure and accommodate the little humor and part whereby the vision is made! ”

“ We know that the point of sight is the eye of the spectator; and if you ask, how is a series of subjects, such as the life of a saint, to be represented, in different compartments on the same wall? I answer, that you are to place the principal event in the largest compartment, and make the point of sight as high as the eye of the spectator. ”

“ Assuming as proved or evident that the sight cannot inform us of distance in a direct line outwards, inasmuch as all the points in such a line are projected upon a single point in the retina, he argues that all sight involves foresight ; that an apparently simple perception involved an infererence founded upon association, and that the visual sensations are merely signs of of corresponding tactual sensations. ”

“ Or we turn our gaze from the water to the sky. Above us, further than eye can travel, it extends. It is studded with innumerable stars. We may know the names of some of them, and have learned about their movements and their distance from the earth ”

“ Here, there are eyes that watch you all the time, but they are hidden; and if you have a listening ear you may hear voices that call. The gods come close in the hills. They go whispering about in the night and calling your name. ”

“ The sight of a man walking is a familiar spectacle to us. We perceive it as a connected whole, and at most notice the most striking of its peculiarities. Strong attention is required, and a special choice of the point of view, in order to feel the perpendicular and lateral oscillations of such a walking figure. We must choose fitting points or lines in the background with which to compare the positions of its head, but if a distant walking man be looked at through an astronomical telescope (which inverts the object) , what a singular hopping and rocking appearance he presents! ”

“ Now, as the earnest search after this thing call'd Demonstration fill'd me with Desires of seeing every thing, so my Observations of the strange multitude of Mysteries I met with in all Men's Actions here, spurr'd my Curiosity to examine, if the Great Eye of the World had no People to whom he had given a clearer Eye-sight, or at least, that made a better use of it than we had here. ”

“ The great gray eyes, wide open beneath their level brows, were steadfastly fixed upon some point far out at sea, the vanishing point of earth’s curve, the point where the straightforward look of human eyes glides off the surface of the globe and penetrates the ether beyond. ”

“ Light comes into those open windows, the moving panorama of external nature passes before them, but distinct vision, which recognizes and individualizes objects, is something more than a mere passive, bodily sensation. ”

“ A luminous point then made its appearance in the midst of the clouds, which gradually became the figure of a man, increasing in size every instant, until it seemed to be about to precipitate itself on to the spectators. ”

“ We are enabled to see in the daytime, because the light within our eyes pours out through the centre of them and commingles with the light without. The two being thus confounded together transmit movements from every object they touch through the eye inward to the soul, and thus bring about the sensation of the sight.' Grote's Plato iii. ”

“ The sight, as it is called, of figure, or distance, appearing as it does a simple sensation, is in reality a complex state of consciousness—a sequence in which the antecedent, a sensation of color, and the consequent, a number of ideas, are so closely combined by association that they appear not one idea, but one sensation. ”

“ We notice that it required a separate intention of the eye, a more free and abstracted vision, to see the reflected trees and the sky, than to see the river bottom merely; and so are there manifold visions in the direction of every object, and even the most opaque reflect the heavens from their surface. Some men have their eyes naturally intended to the one and some to the other object.
“A man that looks on glass, On it may stay his eye, Or, if he pleaseth, through it pass, And the heavens espy.” ”

“ Sight and hearing then exercise themselves more perfectly than in the condition called waking, and possibly without the aid of those organs which are the sheaths for those luminous swords called sight and hearing! ”

“ And so the vision came, from above as all good visions do, but it came while walking in the pathway of duty, in the unfolding of a larger experience. He who follows the dawning light will see the vision. ”

“ At the sight of a vision, the eye-lids of the person are erected, and the eyes continue staring until the object vanish. This is obvious to others who are by, when the persons happen to see a vision, and occurred more than once to my own observation, and to others that were with me. ”

“ To find oneself transported in the darkness of night, in the midst of vast solitudes of air, unknown, unperceived, in secret and in silence, exploring territories, traversing kingdoms, watching towns which come into view, and pass out of it before one can examine them in detail—these circumstances are enough in themselves to render sublime a science which, independent of these adjuncts, would be so interesting. ”

“ Its aim is to teach the unscientific observer how to make use of his eye,—'how to look, and what to look at;' and to show him how much of wonder and beauty lies everywhere around him, if he could only recognise it. ”

“ As we ascend them, and as our vision ranges more and more widely over the tops of wooded hills, along the courses of streams, over cultivated valleys, and to the shores of the blue sea itself, our mental vision widens too. ”

“ But the sight, though it awes us, does not depress us or deter us. We are keyed up by high anticipation when we arrive on the threshold of this secluded region, and a fierce joy seizes us as we first set eyes on these mountains. ”

“ In SIGHT, the organ is very conspicuous, and has an appropriate name, the Eye.
In ordinary language, the object of sight is the body which is said to be seen. This is a similar error to those which we have detected in the vulgar language relating to the senses of smell and hearing. It is Light alone which enters the eye; and Light, with its numerous modifications, is the sole object on sight. ”

“ But the science of seeing has now found favour in our eyes; and blessings be with them who can discover, discern, and describe the least as the greatest of Nature's works—who can see as distinctly the finger of God in the lustre of the humming-bird murmuring round a rose-bush, as in that of the star of Jove shining sole in heaven. ”

“ In his mind’s eye he sees what has happened or what is likely to happen to him, ‘as in a map the voyager his course.’ Those who read the times and seasons in the aspect of the heavens and the configurations of the stars, who count by moons and know when the sun rises and sets, are by no means ignorant of their own affairs or of the common concatenation of events. ”

“ Among the many universal propensities in human nature, the love of sight-seeing is about as universal as any. Now, sight-seeing gratifies us in different ways. First, there is the pleasure of novelty; secondly, either that of admiration or fault-finding—the latter a very animated enjoyment. ”

“ Suppose further, that the first exploring party has set forth on a voyage of discovery, and has reached a point high in our sky from which objects on the earth’s surface begin to be distinguishable. Of course the huge landmarks, cities, lakes, and rivers, have been in view for a long while, and now the explorers are on the lookout for signs of living things. They are watching, just as we would be, for moving objects. ”

“ Like every other sense, that of sight improves by use under healthy conditions, and therefore the people who have the greatest exercise of their vision in the open air, under light of the sun, have the best eyesight. ”

“ If you present the point in the dark you will see, sometimes at a foot distance, and more, a light gather upon it like that of a fire-fly or glow-worm; the less sharp the point, the nearer you must bring it to observe the light ”

“ The observer, by lying perfectly still, may see them silently stealing forth from their burrows in the bright sunshine, and hunting diligently in the neighbourhood, ready to dart back on the faintest alarm, or if the sun should be temporarily obscured by a passing cloud. ”

“ Contrast the myopic and weak-eyed men of the day with the eagle-eyed men of the plain and forest, whose sight needs no screening from the sunlight, by broad visor and head-apparel or dainty parasols. To their unshrinking eyes light has no perils or disagreeableness. ”