But man must light for man
The fires no other can,
And find in his own eye
Where the strange crossroads lie.
- David McCord
Communion [1950]


Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
- Wystan Hugh Auden
[In Memory of W. B. Yeats III, st. 1] Ib. st.3 [1940],


In a dark time, the eye begins to see.
- Theodore Roethke
[In a Dark Time [1964], st. 1


Hew not too high lest the chips fall in thine eye.
- Anonymous
Proverb [14th Century]


Around the world thoughts shall fly
In the twinkling of an eye.
- Anonymous
[Attributed to Mother Shipton] Ib.


While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
- William Wordsworth
[Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey [1798], l. 27] Ib.l. 47


The harvest of a quiet eye.
- William Wordsworth
[A Poet's Epitaph [1800], st.5] Ib. st. 13


That inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude.
- William Wordsworth
[I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud [1807], st. 1] Ib. st. 4


Wher'er she lie,
Locked up from mortal eye,
In the shady leaves of destiny.
- Richard Crashaw
[ Steps to the Temple [1648]. Two Went Up into the Temple


The eye of the trilobite tells us that the sun shone on the
old beach where he lived; for there is nothing in nature
without a purpose, an when so complicated an organ was made
to receive the light, there must have been light to enter it.
- Jean Louis Rudolphe Agassiz
Geological Sketches [1870], ch.2


Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf
Than that I may not disappoint myself,
That in my action I may soar as high
As I can now discern with this clear eye.
- Henry David Thoreau
A Prayer [1842], st. 1


Take a pair of sparkling eyes.
- Sir William Schwenck Gilbert
[The Gondoliers [1889], act] Ib.


These things shall be--a loftier race
Than e'er the world hath known shall rise
With flame of freedom in their souls,
And light of knowledge in their eyes.
- John Addington Symonds
[The Days That Are To Be] Ib.


So we die before our own eyes; so we see some chapters of
ourlives come to their natural end.
- Sarah Orne Jewett
[The Country of the Pointed Firs 1896], ch. 5] Ib.


And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.
- Francis William Bourdillon
Among the Flowers [1878]. The Night Has a Thousand Eyes.


Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
Alone, important and wise,
And lifts to the changing moon
His changing eyes.
- William Butler Yeats
[The Wild Swans at Coole [1919].The Wild Swans at Coole, st. 1] Ib. The Cat and the Moon


Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,
Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.
- William Butler Yeats
[Last Poems [1936-1939]. Lepis Lazuli, st. 2] Ib. st.5


One's eyes are what one is, one's mouth what one becomes..
- John Galsworthy
Over the River [1933], ch.1
- George Seferis [Giorgios Sefiriades], [Mythistorema [1935],] Ib. XBI


Look at an infantryman's eyes and you can tell how much war
he has seen.
- Bill [William Henry] Mauldin
[Up Front [1944]. Caption for cartoon] Ib.


What poor astronomers are they
Take women's eyes for stars!
- Anonymous
From John Dowland, The Third Book of Songs or Airs [1603]


The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled
with hearing.
- Ecclesiastes 1:9


The light of the body is the eye.
- Matthew 6:22


I do not distinguish by the eye, but by the mind, which is
the proper judge of the man.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
[Moral Essays. On Providence,5,9] Ib. On the Happy Life, 2,2


Our bodily eye findeth never an end, but is vanquished by
the immensity of space.
- Giordano Bruno
[On The Infinite Universe and Worlds [1584], introductory epistle] Ib.


A sweet attractive kind of grace,
A full assurance given by looks,
Continual comfort in a face,
The lineaments of Gospel books;
I trow that countenance cannot lie.
Whose thoughts are legible in the eye.
- Matthew Royden
[The Phoenix Nest [1593]; An Elegy, or Friend's Passion for His Astrophil] Ib.


Was never eye, did see that face,
Was never ear, did hear that tongue,
Was never mind, did mind his grace,
That ever thought the travel long,
But eyes, and ears, and ev'ry thought,
Were with his sweet perfections caught.
The heavenly rhetoric of thine eye.
- Love's Labour's Lost
IV, iii, 60


For where is any author in the world
Teaches such beauty as a woman's eye?
Learning is but an adjunct to ourself.
- Love's Labour's Lost
IV, iii, 312 4


My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in faces rest,
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp North, without declining west?
- John Donne
[The Good Morrow, st. 1] Ib. st. 3


Music that gentler on the spirit lies,
than tired eyelids upon tired eyes.
- Alfred Lord Tennyson
(The Lotos-Eaters (1832),st.1) Ib. Choric Song, st. 1


We are as much as we see. Faith is sight and knowledge.
The hands only serve the years.
- Henry David Thoreau
Journal [1906]. April 9, 1841.


From those great eyes
The soul has fled:
When faith is lost, when honor dies,
The man is dead!
- John Greenleaf Whittier
Ichabod [1850], st. 1


The whole secret of the study of nature lies in learning how
to use one's eyes.
- George Sand
Nouvelles Lettres d'un Voyageur [1869]


The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
[Journal December 20, 1822] Ib. May 1845.


Our eye-beams twisted, and did thread
Our eyes, upon one double string;
So to entergraft our hands, as yet
Was all the means to make us one,
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.
- John Donne
The Extasy, 1-7.


The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without
speaking confess the secrets of the heart.
- St. Jerome
[Letter 54] Ib.


But what is Whiggery?
A leveling, rancorous, rational sort of mind
That never looked out of the eye of a saint
Or out of a drunkard's eye.
- William Butler Yeats


Among men, Hinnissy, wet eye manes dhry heart.
- Finley Peter Dunne
[Mr. Dooley's Opinions [1900], Christian Science] Ib.


All seems infected that th' infected spy,
As all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.
- Alexander Pope
[An Essay on Criticism [1711], pt. I, l. 9] Ib. l. 358


Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in eternity.
- William Blake
[Poems from the Pickering Manuscript [c. 1805]. The Smile, st. 1] Ib. l. 67


I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part
of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of
the sea. My soul knows that I am part of the human race, my
soul is an organic part of the great human race, as my
spirit is part of my nation. In my own very self, I am part
of my family.
- David Herbert Lawrence
[Apocalypse [1931]] Ib.


I burned my life, that I might find
A passion wholly of the mind.
Thought divorced from eyes
- Unknown

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