You Know What! For they in thee a thousand errors note, But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise. William Shakespeare And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. William Shakespeare Thomas Fuller - English Proverbs They say love is blind … it was certainly true in our case … although, marriage turned out to be a bit of an eye-opener! (Quipping about meeting and marrying his partially blind wife, Pearl, after he'd lost his own sight through an accident) what is not there than in not seeing what is. Peter De Vries it sees more, it is willing to see less. Rabbi Julius Gordon Love is not "blind" but visionary: it sees into the very heart of its object, and sees the "real self" behind and in the midst of the frailties and shortcomings of the person. so love with its joys clears and sharpens the vision. Helen Keller A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind; William Shakespeare It is commonly thought that, of all people, lovers behold one another in the most unrealistic light, and that in their encounter is but the mutual projection of extravagant ideals. But may it not be that nature has allowed them to see for the first time what a human being is, and that the subsequent disillusion is not the fading of dream into reality but the strangling of reality with all too eager embrace? How can I?… by seeing beyond what is visible to the eye. Now there are those, of course, who do not share my perceptions, it's true; when I say that all my women are dazzling beauties, they object-the nose of this one is too large-the hips of another, they are too wide-perhaps, the breasts of a third, they are too small. But I see these women for how they truly are … glorious, radiant, spectacular and perfect because I am not limited by my eyesight. Women react to me the way that they do, Don Octavio, because they sense that I search out the beauty that dwells within them, until it overwhelms everything else and then they cannot avoid their desire to release that beauty and envelope me in it. Love stories have so overworked the power of love's gaze, that finally people agreed to discount it. We hardly dare, nowadays, to admit that two human beings loved one another because they looked at one another. Yet-love dawns thus, and only thus. The rest-comes afterwards. Nothing is more true, more real, than the primeval magnetic disturbances that two souls may communicate to one another, through the tiny sparks of a moment's glance. Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outwards together in the same direction. There is no comradeship except through union in the same high effort. Publilius Syrus - Sententiae And love comes in at the eye; That's all we know for truth Before we grow old and die. I lift my glass to my mouth I look at you, and I sigh. W B Yeats - A Drinking Song |