What we do see depends mainly on what we look for...
in the same field the farmer will notice the crop,
the geologists the fossils,
botanists the flowers,
artists the colouring,
sportsmen the cover for the game.
Though we may all look at the same things,
it does not all follow that we should see them.
John Lubbock
To learn to see-
to accustom the eye to calmness,
to patience,
and to allow things to come up to it;
to defer judgment,
and to acquire the habit of approaching
and grasping an individual case from all sides.
This is the first preparatory schooling of intellectuality.
One must not respond immediately to a stimulus;
one must acquire a command
of the obstructing and isolating instincts.
Friedrich Nietzsche
There is a brief period of twilight of which I am especially fond,
little more than a moment,
when I see what seems to be color without light,
followed by another brief period of light without color.
The earlier period, like a dawn of night,
calls up such sights as at all other times are hidden,
wistful half-formless presences neither of day nor night,
that draw up with them similar presences in the mind.
