Generally, about all perception, we can say that a sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of thin...gs without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet ring without the iron or gold.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is a mistake, to think the same thing affects both sight and touch. If the same angle or square, which is the object of touch, ...be also the object of vision, what should hinder the blind man, at first sight, from knowing it?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Did men but consider that the sun, moon, and stars, and every other object of the senses, are only so many sensations in their min...ds, which have no other existence but barely being perceived, doubtless they would never fall down and worship their own ideas; but rather address their homage to that eternal invisible Mind which produces and sustains all things.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and ...that also frequently strike themselves.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You did not sense the wings beyond the gate; you could not see,... you could not touch and feel, actually the sea-sand and the sea-shell.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The laying of fish on the embers, the taste of the fish,... the feel of the texture of bread, the round and the half-loaf, the grain of a petal, the rain-bow and the rain.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Cities give not the human senses room enough. We go out daily and nightly to feed the eyes on the horizon, and require so much sco...pe, just as we need water for our bath.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is puzzling to me that otherwise sensitive people develop a real docility about the obvious necessity of eating, at least once ...a day, in order to stay alive. Often they lose their primal enjoyment of flavors and odors and textures to the point of complete unawareness. And if ever they question this progressive numbing-off, they shrug helplessly in the face of mediocrity everywhere. Bit by bit, hour by hour, they say, we are being forced to accept the not-so-good as the best, since there is little that is even good to compare it with.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our ideas are the offspring of our senses; we are not more able to create the form of a being we have not seen, without retrospect... to one we know, than we are able to create a new sense. He whose fancy has conceived an idea of the most beautiful form must have composed it from actual existence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »