Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Eyes
In her eyes a thought
Grew sweeter and sweeter, deepening like the dawn,
A mystical forewarning.
T. B. Aldrich—Pythagoras.
A gray eye is a sly eye,
And roguish is a brown one;
Turn full upon me thy eye,—
Ah, how its wavelets drown one!
A blue eye is a true eye;
Mysterious is a dark one,
Which flashes like a spark-sun!
A black eye is the best one.
W. R. Alger—Oriental Poetry. Mirtsa Schaffy on Eyes.
There are whole veins of diamonds in thine eyes,
Might furnish crowns for all the Queens of earth.
Bailey—Festus. Sc. A Drawing Room.
Look babies in your eyes, my pretty sweet one.
Beaumont and Fletcher—The Loyal Subject.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.
F. W. Bourdillon—Light.
Eyes of gentianellas azure,
Staring, winking at the skies.
E. B. Browning—Hector in the Garden.
Thine eyes are springs in whose serene
And silent waters heaven is seen.
Their lashes are the herbs that look
On their young figures in the brook.
Bryant—Oh, Fairest of the Rural Maids.
The learned compute that seven hundred and seven millions of millions of vibrations have penetrated the eye before the eye can distinguish the tints of a violet.
Bulwer-Lytton—What Will He Do With It? Bk. VIII. Ch. II.
The Chinese say that we Europeans have one eye, they themselves two, all the world else is blinde.
Burton—Anat. of Melancholy. Ed. 6. P. 40.
Her eye (I’m very fond of handsome eyes)
Was large and dark, suppressing half its fire
Until she spoke, then through its soft disguise
Flash’d an expression more of pride than ire,
And love than either; and there would arise,
A something in them which was not desire,
But would have been, perhaps, but for the soul,
Which struggled through and chasten’d down the whole.
Byron—Don Juan. Canto I. St. 60.
With eyes that look’d into the very soul—
******
Bright—and as black and burning as a coal.
Byron—Don Juan. Canto IV. St. 94.
In every object there is inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it what the eye brings means of seeing.
Carlyle—Hist. of the French Revolution. Vol. I. P. 5. People’s ed. Heroes and Hero-Worship, The Hero as Poet; Miscellaneous Essays, Vol. VI; Review of Vernhagen von Ense’s Memoirs, P. 241. Same idea in Goethe’s Zahme Xeniem. III.
There are eyes half defiant,
Half meek and compliant;
Black eyes, with a wondrous, witching charm
To bring us good or to work us harm.
Phebe Cary—Dove’s Eyes.
Oculi, tanquam, speculatores, altissimum locum obtinent.
The eyes, like sentinels, hold the highest place in the body.
Cicero—De Nat. Deorum. Bk. II. 56.
The love light in her eye.
Hartley Coleridge. No. CCXVIII, in Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics.
My eyes make pictures, when they are shut.
Coleridge—A Day-Dream.
In the twinkling of an eye.
I Corinthians. XV. 52. Merchant of Venice. Act II. Sc. 2.
Eyes, that displaces
The neighbor diamond, and out-faces
That sun-shine by their own sweet graces.
Richard Chashaw—Wishes. To his (Supposed) Mistress.
Not in mine eyes alone is Paradise.
Dante—Paradise. XVIII. 21.
Parean l’occhiaje anella senza gemme.
Their eyes seem’d rings from whence the gems were gone.
Dante—Purgatorio. XXIII. 31.
He kept him as the apple of his eye.
Deuteronomy. XXXII. 10.
With affection beaming in one eye and calculation shining out of the other.
Dickens—Martin Chuzzlewit. Ch. VIII.
And pictures in our eyes to get
Was all our propagation.
Donne—The Ecstacy.
My life lies in those eyes which have me slain.
Drummond—Sonnet XXIX. L. 14.
These lovely lamps, these windows of the soul.
Du Bartas—Divine Weekes and Workes. First Week. Sixth Day.
The love light in your eye.
Lady Dufferin—Irish Emigrant.
A suppressed resolve will betray itself in the eyes.
George Eliot—The Mill on the Floss. Bk. V. Ch. XIV.
An eye can threaten like a loaded and levelled gun, or can insult like hissing or kicking; or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance with joy.
Emerson—Conduct of Life. Behavior.
Eyes are bold as lions,—roving, running, leaping, here and there, far and near. They speak all languages. They wait for no introduction; they are no Englishmen; ask no leave of age or rank; they respect neither poverty nor riches, neither learning nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude, and come again, and go through and through you in a moment of time. What inundation of life and thought is discharged from one soul into another through them!
Emerson—Conduct of Life. Behavior.
Scitum est inter cæcos luscum requare posse.
Among the blind the one-eyed man is king.
Erasmus—Adagia, Dignitas et Excellentia et Inequalitas, sub-division, Excel. et Ineq. (about 1500). Proverbs collected by Michael Apostolios, Cent. VII. 31. Latin given as: Cæcorum in patria luscus rex imperat omnis. Taken from the Greek. See Chiliades—Adagiorum, fifth centuria, third Chilias No. 96. Earliest use probably in G. Fullenius—Comedye of Acolastus, trans. by John Palsgrave from the Latin. (1540). Quoted by Edmund Campion—Rationes Decom. (1581). Carlyle—Frederick the Great. Bk. 4. Ch. II. Quoted as: Beati monoculi in regione cæcorum. Blessed are the one-eyed in the country of the blind. Herbert—Jacula Prudentum. Also in Miscellanæ. Pt. II. Fourth Ed. P. 342. Juvenal—Satire X. 227, gives it as: Ambes Perdidit ille oculus et luscis invidet.
To sun myself in Huncamunca’s eyes.
Henry Fielding—The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great. Act I. Sc. 3.
Ils sont si transparents qu’ils laissent voir votre ame.
Eyes so transparent,
That through them one sees the soul.
Theophile Gautier—The Two Beautiful Eyes.
Tell me, eyes, what ’tis ye’re seeking;
For ye’re saying something sweet,
Fit the ravish’d ear to greet.
Eloquently, softly speaking.
Goethe—April.
On woman Nature did bestow two eyes,
Like Hemian’s bright lamps, in matchless beauty shining,
Whose beams do soonest captivate the wise
And wary heads, made rare by art’s refining.
Robert Greene—Philomela. Sonnet.
Wenn ich in deine Augen seh’
So schwindet all’ mein Leid und Weh.
Whene’er into thine eyes I see,
All pain and sorrow fly from me.
Heine—Lyrisches Intermezzo. IV.
Die blauen Veilchen der Aeugelein.
Those blue violets, her eyes.
Heine—Lyrisches Intermezzo. XXXI.
I everywhere am thinking
Of thy blue eyes’ sweet smile;
A sea of blue thoughts is spreading
Over my heart the while.
Heine—New Spring. Pt. XVIII. St. 2.
The eyes have one language everywhere.
Herbert—Jacula Prudentum.
The ear is a less trustworthy witness than the eye.
Herodotus. 1. 8.
Her eyes the glow-worme lend thee,
The shooting starres attend thee;
And the elves also,
Whose little eyes glow
Like the sparks of fire, befriend thee.
Herrick—The Night Piece to Julia.
We credit most our sight; one eye doth please
Our trust farre more than ten eare-witnesses.
Herrick—Hesperides. The Eyes Before the Ears.
It is an active flame that flies
First to the babies in the eyes.
Herrick—The Kiss.
Thine eye was on the censer,
And not the hand that bore it.
Holmes—Lines by a Clerk.
Dark eyes—eternal soul of pride!
Deep life in all that’s true!
****
Away, away to other skies!
Away o’er seas and sands!
Such eyes as those were never made
To shine in other lands.
Leland—Callirhoe.
I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak but as the constitution is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am.
Speaker Lenthal to Charles I. As quoted by Wendell Phillips—Under the Flag. Boston, April 21, 1861.
Der Blick des Forschers fand
Nicht selten mehr, als er zu finden wünschte.
The eye of Paul Pry often finds more than he wished to find.
Lessing—Nathan der Weise. II. 8.
As President, I have no eyes but constitutional eyes; I cannot see you.
Lincoln to the South Carolina Commissioners.
And thy deep eyes, amid the gloom,
Shine like jewels in a shroud.
Longfellow—Christus. Golden Legend. Pt. IV.
The flash of his keen, black eyes
Forerunning the thunder.
Longfellow—Christus. Golden Legend. Pt. IV.
I dislike an eye that twinkles like a star. Those only are beautiful which, like the planets, have a steady, lambent light,—are luminous, but not sparkling.
Longfellow—Hyperion. Bk. III. Ch. IV.
O lovely eyes of azure,
Clear as the waters of a brook that run
Limpid and laughing in the summer sun!
Longfellow—Masque of Pandora. Pt. I.
Within her tender eye
The heaven of April, with its changing light.
Longfellow—Spirit of Poetry. L. 45.
Since your eyes are so sharpe, that you cannot onely looke through a milstone, but cleane through the minde.
Lyly—Euphues and his England. P. 289.
The light of the body is the eye.
Matthew. VI. 22.
Where did you get your eyes so blue?
Out of the sky as I came through.
Geo. MacDonald—Song in “At the Back of the North Wind.” Ch. XXXIII.
Those true eyes
Too pure and too honest in aught to disguise
The sweet soul shining through them.
Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton)—Lucile. Pt. II. Canto II. St. 3.
Among the blind the one-eyed blinkard reigns.
Andrew Marvel—Description of Holland.
And looks commercing with the skies,
Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.
Milton—Il Penseroso. L. 39.
Ladies, whose bright eyes
Rain influence.
Milton—L’Allegro. L. 121.
Si vous les voulez aimer, ce sera, ma foi, pour leurs beaux yeux.
If you wish to love, it shall be, by my faith, for their beautiful eyes.
Molière—Les Précieuses Ridicules. XVI.
And violets, transform’d to eyes,
Inshrined a soul within their blue.
Moore—Evenings in Greece. Second Evening.
Eyes of most unholy blue!
Moore—Irish Melodies. By that Lake whose Gloomy Shore.
Those eyes, whose light seem’d rather given
To be ador’d than to adore—
Such eyes as may have looked from heaven,
But ne’er were raised to it before!
Moore—Loves of the Angels. Third Angel’s Story. St. 7.
And the world’s so rich in resplendent eyes,
’Twere a pity to limit one’s love to a pair.
Moore—’Tis Sweet to Think.
All German cities are blind, Nurnberg alone sees with one eye.
Frederich Nüchter—Albrecht Dürer. P. 8. English Trans. by Lucy D. Williams. (Given as a saying in Venice.)
Thou my star at the stars are gazing
Would I were heaven that I might behold thee with many eyes.
Plato. From Greek Anthology.
Pluris est oculatus testis unus, quam auriti decem.
Qui audiunt, audita dicunt; qui vident, plane sciunt.
One eye-witness is of more weight than ten hearsays. Those who hear, speak of what they have heard; those who see, know beyond mistake.
Plautus—Truculentus. II. 6. 8.
Why has not man a microscopic eye?
For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly.
Say, what the use, were finer optics giv’n,
T’ inspect a mite, not comprehend the heav’n?
Pope—Essay on Man. Ep. I. L. 193.
Bright as the sun her eyes the gazers strike,
And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.
Pope—Rape of the Lock. Canto II. L. 13.
The eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth.
Proverbs. XVII. 24.
Dark eyes are dearer far
Than those that mock the hyacinthine bell.
J. H. Reynolds—Sonnet.
Thou tell’st me there is murder in mine eye;
’Tis pretty, sure, and very probable,
That eyes, that are the frail’st and softest things,
Who shut their coward gates on atomies,
Should be call’d tyrants, butchers, murderers!
As You Like It. Act III. Sc. 5. L. 10.
Faster than his tongue
Did make offence his eye did heal it up.
As You Like It. Act III. Sc. 5. L. 116.
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command.
Hamlet. Act III. Sc. 4. L. 57.
The image of a wicked heinous fault
Lives in his eye: that close aspect of his
Does show the mood of a much troubled breast.
King John. Act IV. Sc. 2. L. 71.
You have seen
Sunshine and rain at once.***those happy smilets,
That play’d on her ripe lip, seem’d not to know
What guests were in her eyes; which parted thence,
As pearls from diamonds dropp’d.
King Lear. Act IV. Sc. 3. L. 19.
For where is any author in the world
Teaches such beauty as a woman’s eye?
Love’s Labour’s Lost. Act IV. Sc. 3. L. 312.
A lover’s eyes will gaze an eagle blind.
Love’s Labour’s Lost. Act IV. Sc. 3. L. 334.
Sometimes from her eyes
I did receive fair speechless messages.
Merchant of Venice. Act I. Sc. 1. L. 163.
I see how thine eye would emulate the diamond: thou hast the right archèd beauty of the brow.
Merry Wives of Windsor. Act III. Sc. 3. L. 58.
I have a good eye, uncle; I can see a church by daylight.
Much Ado About Nothing. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 85.
Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes.
Much Ado About Nothing. Act III. Sc. 1. L. 51.
Her eyes, like marigolds, had sheath’d their light;
And, canopied in darkness, sweetly lay,
Till they might open to adorn the day.
Rape of Lucrece. L. 397.
Her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright,
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
Romeo and Juliet. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 20.
Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye
Than twenty of their swords.
Romeo and Juliet. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 71.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes,
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say, “This poet lies;
Such heavenly touches ne’er touch’d earthly faces.”
Sonnet XVII.
The fringed curtains of thine eye advance,
And say what thou seest yond.
Tempest. Act I. Sc. 2. L. 407.
Her two blue windows faintly she up-heaveth,
Like the fair sun, when in his fresh array
He cheers the morn, and all the earth relieveth;
And as the bright sun glorifies the sky,
So is her face illumin’d with her eye.
Venus and Adonis. L. 482.
But hers, which through the crystal tears gave light,
Shone like the moon in water seen by night.
Venus and Adonis. L. 491.
Black brows they say
Become some women best, so that there be not
Too much hair there, but in a semicircle
Or a half-moon made with a pen.
Winter’s Tale. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 8.
Thine eyes are like the deep, blue, boundless heaven
Contracted to two circles underneath
Their long, fine lashes; dark, far, measureless,
Orb within orb, and line through line inwoven.
Shelley—Prometheus Unbound. Act II. Sc. 1.
Think ye by gazing on each other’s eyes
To multiply your lovely selves?
Shelley—Prometheus Unbound. Act VI. Sc. 4.
So when thou saw’st in nature’s cabinet
Stella thou straight’st look’st babies in her eyes.
Sir Philip Sidney—Astrophel and Stella.
But have ye not heard this,
How an one-eyed man is
Well sighted when
He is among blind men?
John Skelton—Why come ye not to Courte? (writing against Wolsey).
The sight of you is good for sore eyes.
Swift—Polite Conversation. Dialog. I.
Were you the earth dear love, and I the skies
My love would shine on you like to the sun
And look upon you with ten thousand eyes
Till heaven waxed blind and till the world were done.
J. Sylvester—Love’s Omnipotence.
Her eyes are homes of silent prayer.
Tennyson—In Memoriam. XXXII.
The Father of Heaven.
Scoop, young Jesus, for her eyes,
Wood-browned pools of Paradise—
Young Jesus, for the eyes,
For the eyes of Viola.
Angels.
Tint, Prince Jesus, a
Duskèd eye for Viola!
Francis Thompson—The Making of Viola. St. 2.
But optics sharp it needs, I ween,
To see what is not to be seen.
John Trumbull—McFingal. Canto I. L. 67.
How blue were Ariadne’s eyes
When, from the sea’s horizon line,
At eve, she raised them on the skies!
My Psyche, bluer far are thine.
Aubrey De Vere—Psyche.
Blue eyes shimmer with angel glances.
Like spring violets over the lea.
Constance F. Woolson—October’s Song.
The harvest of a quiet eye,
That broods and sleeps on his own heart.
Wordsworth—A Poet’s Epitaph. St. 13.