Inspirational quotes about Vision

Hymn to Vision

Where [there is] no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy [is] he.
Proverbs 29:18 (900 BC).

 The master of the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which; he simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both.
Buddha (563 – 483 BC), Indian spiritual teacher and philosopher

Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it.
Confucius (551 – 479 BC), Chinese spiritual teacher and philosopher

The eyes are more exact witnesses than the ears.
Heraclitus (born c. 540 BCE—c. 480), Greek philosopher

Enhance and intensify one’s vision of that synthesis of truth and beauty which is the highest and deepest reality.
Ovid (20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), Roman poet

 Never did eye see the sun unless it had first become sun-like, and never can the soul have vision of the First Beauty unless itself be beautiful.
Plotinus (c. 204/5 – 270), Greek-speaking philosopher

The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.
Leonardo da Vinci (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519), Italian Renaissance painter and polymath

In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn than to contemplate.
René Descartes (March 31, 1596 –February 11, 1650), French philosopher and mathematician

The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands.
Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790), American author, political theorist, scientist, polymath

Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt.
Immanuel Kant (April 22, 1724 –February 12, 1804), German philosopher

There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on how one looks at it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (August 28, 1749 –March 22, 1832), German poet

As a man is, so he sees. As the eye is formed, such are its powers.
William Blake (November 28, 1757 –August 12, 1827), English poet and painter

Every man who observes vigilantly, and resolves steadfastly, grows unconsciously into genius.
Edward George Bulwer-Lytton (25 May 1803 – 18 January 1873), English novelist, poet, playwright

Genius is but fine observation strengthened by fixity of purpose.
Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

What is life but the angle of vision? A man is measured by the angle at which he looks at objects. What is life but what a man is thinking all…
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), American Transcendentalist philosopher, essayist

I would give all the wealth of the world, and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision.
Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862), American poet, transcendentalist philosopher

An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.
James Whistler (July 10, 1834 – July 17, 1903), American artist

Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910), American psychologist and philosopher

A visionary is one who can find his way by moonlight, and see the dawn before the rest of the world.
Oscar Wilde (October 16, 1854 –November 30, 1900), Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet

No man that does not see visions will ever realize any high hope or undertake any high enterprise.
Woodrow Wilson (December 28, 1856 – February 3, 1924), American politician and the 28th President of the United States

Where there is no vision, there is no hope.
George Washington Carver (1860s – January 5, 1943), American botanist and inventor

Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your Vision is the promise of what you shall one day be. Your Ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.
James Allen (November 28, 1864 –January 24, 1912), British philosophical writer known as a pioneer of the self-help movement

The real voyage of discovery consists of not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust (July 10, 1871 –November 18, 1922), French novelist, critic and essayist

Vision looks inward and becomes duty. Vision looks outward and becomes aspiration. Vision looks upward and becomes faith.
Stephen S. Wise (March 17, 1874 – April 19, 1949), American Reform rabbi

It is said Helen Keller was once asked if there was anything worse than being blind. She replied, “Having no vision.”
“Holy Clues” by Stephen Kendrick. Helen Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968), American author

The best success I can dream for my life: to have spread a new vision of the world.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (May 1,1881 –April 10 ,1955), French philosopher and Jesuit priest

 Cherish your vision and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.”
Napoleon Hill (October 26, 1883 – November 8, 1970), American self-help author

Genius is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.
Ezra Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972), American poet and critic

There is more to us than we know. If we can be made to see it, perhaps for the rest of our lives we will be unwilling to settle for less.
Kurt Hahn (June 5, 1886 –December 14, 1974), German educator and philosopher

I have always fought for ideas – until I learned that it isn’t ideas but grief, struggle, and flashes of vision which enlighten.
Margaret Caroline Anderson (November 24, 1886 – October 19, 1973), American editor and publisher

To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.”
Thomas Stearns Eliot (September 26,1888 –January 4, 1965), British essayist, poet, playwright

Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980), American writer

Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing.
Dodie Smith (3 May 1896 – 24 November 1990) was an English hildren’s novelist and playwright

Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps, down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision.
Ayn Rand (February, 2 1905 – March 6, 1982), Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright

The real function of artists is to give fresh vision to their own generation.
Doris McCarthy (July 7, 1910 – November 25, 2010), Canadian artist

Only a vision – that is what one must have.
Ernst Haas (March 2, 1921 – September 12, 1986) was a photo journalis tand a pioneering color photographer

What is art but a way of seeing?
Thomas Berger (July 20, 1924 – July 13, 2014) was an American novelist

Learn to see and then you’ll know that there is no end to the new worlds of our vision.
Carlos Castaneda (December 25, 1925 –April 27, 1998), American author and anthropologist

In order to carry a positive action we must develop here a positive vision.
Dalai Lama (born July,6 1935), spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism

The man don’t make the vision; the vision makes the man.
Pastor Yonggi Cho (born February 14, 1936), South Korean Christian minister

Don’t underestimate the power of your vision to change the world.
Leroy Hood (born October 10, 1938), American biologist

Champions aren’t made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them A desire, a dream, a vision.
Muhammad Ali (January 17, 1942 – June 3, 2016) was an American professional boxer and activist

Though most of us don’t hunt, our eyes are still the great monopolists of our senses. To taste or touch your enemy or your food, you have to be unnervingly close to it. To smell or hear it, you can risk being further off. But vision can rush through the fields and up the mountains, travel across time, country, and parsecs of outer space, and collect bushel baskets of information as it goes. Animals that hear high frequencies better than we do. 
Diane Ackerman (born October 7, 1948), American poet, essayist, and naturalist

I think that the greatest gift God ever gave man is not the gift of sight but the gift of vision. Sight is a function of the eyes, but vision is a function of the heart.
Myles Munroe (April 20, 1954 –November 9, 2014), Bahamian Evangelical Christian evangelist

To come to be you must have a vision of Being, a Dream, a Purpose, a Principle. You will become what your vision is.
Peter Nivio Zarlenga (born in 1941), American author and a businessman

Have a vision. It is the ability to see the invisible. If you can see the invisible, you can achieve the impossible.
Shiv Khera ( born August 23, 1961 ), Indian author of self-help books and an activist

As an Artist, I would tell you that Vision is my Greatest asset. But actually, it’s my mind that I value the most, I think I can do Okay as long as that one hangs around a little while longer…
Kris Courtney, American artist and author

Have a Vision, a Dream.
Believe in that Vision.
Live that Vision with every fiber of your being.
Jonathan Lockwood Huie, American author of self-awareness books

There is no earthly substitute for the creative vision, seen personally and externally expressed.
Morton Leeds, British author

Vision limitations

The eyes of the soul of the multitudes are unable to endure the vision of the divine.
Plato (427–347 BC), Greek philosopher

As a rule, men worry more about what they can’t see than about what they can.
Julius Caesar (13 July 100 BC – 15 March 44 BC), Roman politician, general and author

Look to this day For it is life, the very life of life. For yesterday is but a dream And tomorrow is only a vision But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness And tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore, to this day Such is the salutation of the dawn.
Kalidasa (5th century CE) Indian Classical Sanskrit writer, poet and dramatist

Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.
Japanese proverb

Man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.
William Blake (November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827), English poet and painter

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
Arthur Schopenhauer (February 22, 1788 –September 21, 1860), German philosopher

No man sees far, most see no farther than their noses.
Thomas Carlyle (December 4, 1795 – February 5,1881), Scottis philosopher, historian, writer, essayist

Weak eyes are fondest of glittering objects.
Thomas Carlyle

The most pathetic person in the world is some one who has sight but no vision.
Helen Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968), American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was known as a deaf-blind genius

The field cannot be seen from within the field.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), American Transcendentalist philosopher, essayist

We are immensed in beauty, but our eyes have no clear vision. 
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Objects close to the eye shut out much larger objects on the horizon; and splendors born only of the earth eclipse the stars. So it is with people who sometimes cover up the entire disc of eternity with a dollar, and so quench transcendent glories with a little shining dust.
Edwin Hubbel Chapin (December 29, 1814 – 1880), American preacher and editor

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.
George Eliot (November 22, 1819 – December 22, 1880), English novelist and journalist

We see but dimly through the mists and vapors; Amid these earthly damps what seem to us but sad, funeral tapers may be heaven’s distant lamps.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (February 27, 1807 – March 24, 1882), American poet

Small minds cannot grasp great ideas; to their narrow comprehension, their purblind vision, nothing seems really great and important but themselves.
James George Frazer (January 1,1854 –May 7, 1941), Scottish social anthropologist

The typical eye sees the ten per cent bad of an idea and overlooks the ninety per cent good.
Charles F. Kettering (August 29, 1876 – November 24 or 25, 1958), American inventor, engineer, businessman

Glance is the enemy of vision.
Ezra Pound

Man’s basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the act of unfocusing his mind, the suspension of his consciousness, which is not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know.
Ayn Rand

Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see …each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition– all such distortions within our own egos– condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other. That’s how it is in all living relationships except when there is that rare case of two people who love intensely enough to burn through all those layers of opacity and see each other’s naked hearts.
Tennessee Williams (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), American playwright

The only limits are, as always, those of vision.
James Broughton (November 10, 1913 – May 17, 1999), American poet and poetic filmmaker

Leaders are limited by their vision rather than by their abilities.
Roy T. Bennett (February 8, 1939 – December 6, 2014), American politician

Creatures of a very particular making, we need to know the cultural blinders that narrow our world view as well as the psychological blinders that narrow our view of our personal experience.
Christina Baldwin (born April,6 1946), American writer

I’ve learned that fear limits you and your vision. It serves as blinders to what may be just a few steps down the road for you. The journey is valuable, but believing in your talents, your abilities, and your self-worth can empower you to walk down an even brighter path. Transforming fear into freedom – how great is that?
Soledad O’Brien (born September 19, 1966), American broadcast journalist

It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born.
James Augustine (born February 27, 1984), American professional basketball player

Let not your vision become an illusion of time.
Zakaria Abdul Hakim (born on January 29, 1996), Ghanaian writer and poet

Methaphisics of Vision

Spiritual Vision

Embracing Tao, you become embraced.
Supple, breathing gently, you become reborn.
Clearing your vision, you become clear.
 Laozi (6c. BC),  Chinese spiritual teacher and philosopher

There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but the view is always the same.
Chinese Proverb

Who could be so lucky? Who comes to a lake for water and sees the reflection of moon.
Jelaluddin Rumi (September 30, 1207 – December 17, 1273), Persian poet, Muslim theologian and Sufi mystic

Looking up gives light, although at first it makes you dizzy.
Rumi

Keep your intelligence white-hot
and your grief glistening, so your life will stay fresh.
Cry easily like a little child.
Let body needs dwindle and soul decisions increase.
Diminish what you give your physical self.
Your spiritual eye will begin to open.
Rumi

The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.
Meister Eckhart (c. 1260 – c. 1328), German theologian, philosopher and mystic

In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.
Baruch Spinoza (November 24, 1632 –February 21,1677), Dutch philosopher

What a curious workmanship is that of the eye, which is in the body, as the sun in the world; set in the head as in a watch-tower, having the softest nerves for receiving the greater multitude of spirits necessary for the act of vision!
Stephan Charnock (1628–1680), English Puritan Presbyterian clergyman

When the doors of perception are cleansed, man will see things as they truly are, infinite.
William Blake (November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827), English poet and painter

To see a world in a grain of sand, and heaven in a wild flower; to hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour–is inspiration.
William Blake

Stop a moment, cease your work, and look around you.
Thomas Carlyle (December 4, 1795 –February 5,1881), Scottish philosopher, historian,
writer, essayist

For I dipped into the future, as far as human eye could see, saw a vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.
Alfred Lord Tennyson (August 6, 1809 –October 6, 1892) , English poet

Once a man’s will is set, he need no longer rely on others or expect anything from the world. His vision encompasses Heaven and earth, past and present, and the tranquility of his heart is undisturbed.
Yoshida Shoin (September 20, 1830 – November 21, 1859), Japanese politician, philosopher, teacher

When the divine vision is attained, all appear equal; and there remains no distinction of good and bad, or of high and low.
Ramakrishna (February 17, 1836 –August 16, 1886), Indian mystic and yogi

Unity is vision; it must have been part of the process of learning to see.
Henry Adams (February 16, 1838 – March 27, 1918), American historian

Unity is vision; it must have been part of the process of learning to see.
Henry Adams

A very great vision is needed and the man who has it must follow it as the eagle seeks the deepest blue of the sky.
Crazy Horse (ca. 1840 – 5 September 1877), Indian mystic, war leader of the Oglala Lakota (Sioux).

We do not need more intellectual power, we need more spiritual power. We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen
John Calvin Coolidge Jr. ( July 4, 1872 – January 5, 1933), the30th President of the United States

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Oscar Wilde

Her soul from earth to Heaven lies, Like the ladder of the vision, Wheron go To and fro, In ascension and demission, Star-flecked feet of Paradise.
Francis Thompson (December 16,1859 –November 13, 1907), English poet and ascetic

Vision looks upward and becomes faith.
Stephen Samuel Wise (March 17, 1874 – April 19, 1949) was an American Reform rabbi

We have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions.
Carl G. Jung (July 26,1875 –June 6, 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst

I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.
Helen Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968), American author, political activist, and lecturer

As selfishness and complaint pervert the mind, so love with its joy clears and sharpens the vision.
Helen Keller

Vision: It reaches beyond the thing that is, into the conception of what can be. Imagination gives you the picture. Vision gives you the impulse to make the picture your own.
Robert Collier (April 19, 1885– 1950), American author of self-help and New Thought metaphysical books

History is a vision of God’s creation on the move.
Arnold J. Toynbee (April 14, 1889 –October 22, 1975), British historian, philosopher of history

Get yourself to a vantage point of seclusion and view the world with your eyes alone. Think of the infinite spaces of the skies and the world beneath.
Charles Burchfield (April 9, 1893 – January 10, 1967), American painter and visionary artist

You can just drift unhappily towards this vision of heaven on earth, and ultimately that is what architecture is a vision of: Heaven on earth, at it’s best.
Ben Nicholson (April 10,1894 –February 6,1982), British painter

My life’s purpose is to write poetry — but behind the poetry must be the vision of a fresh revelation for men.
William Soutar (April 28,1898 –October 15, 1943), Scottish poet and diarist

To pray is to dream in league with God, to envision His holy visions.
Abraham Joshua Heschel (January 11, 1907 – December 23, 1972), Polish-born American Jewish theologian

The best vision is insight.
Malcolm Forbes (August 19, 1919 –February 24, 1990), American entrepreneur, the publisher of Forbes magazine

And then, “from his own juices,” as it is said, a vision may come, perhaps at that moment, perhaps not. Perhaps at some time in the future when he least expects it, a time when his heart is open and his spirit becomes aware of itself, the Great Mystery will speak to him in a way that is unique, powerful, unimaginable, and truly sacred.
Gabriel Horn (December 9,1927 – August 2, 2012), British neuroscientist

When I think of vision, I have in mind the ability to see above and beyond the majority.
Charles Swindoll (born October 18, 1934), American Christian pastor, author, educator

Natural writers will often try to force themselves into a form – novel, story, screenplay, or poem – that is not necessarily the appropriate form for the way they see the world… if, in fact, they are writing from the artist’s impulse, which is a deep, inchoate vision of some sort of order behind the apparent chaos of life on planet earth, they’ll be driven then to express that vision in the creation of the object – the art object.
Robert Olen Butler (born January 20, 1945), American fiction writer

Magical places are always beautiful and deserve to be contemplated … Always stay on the bridge between the invisible and the visible.
Paulo Coelho (born August 24, 1947), Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Vision connects you. But it also separates you. In my work, and my life, I feel a desire to merge. Not in terms of losing my own identity… but there’s a feeling that life is interconnected, that there’s life in stones and rocks and trees and dirt, like there is in us.
Bill Viola (born 1951), American contemporary video artist

May a good vision catch me
May a benevolent vision take hold of me, and move me
May a deep and full vision come over me, and burst open around me
May a luminous vision inform me, enfold me.
David Abram (born June 24, 1957), American philosopher, cultural ecologist, and performance artist

Vision gets the dreams started. Dreaming employs your God-given imagination to reinforce the vision. Both are part of something I believe is absolutely necessary to building the life of a champion, a winner, a person of high character who is consistently at the top of whatever game he or she is in. 
Emmitt Smith (born May 15, 1969), American athlet, a professional football icon, actor 

Opening my mind to Spirit, I trust my intuition to deliver powerful visions of my inspired future.
Jonathan Lockwood Huie, American author of self-awareness books

Vision of Invisible and Vision of the Mystery

Faith is to believe what you do not yet see; the reward for this faith is to see what you believe.
Saint Augustine of Hippo (November 13, 354 – August 28, 430), early Christian theologian and philosopher

As one who sees in dreams and wakes to find the emotional impression of his vision still powerful while its parts fade from his mind – Just such am I, having lost nearly all the vision itself, while in my heart I feel the sweetness of it yet distill and fall.
Dante Alighieri (c. 1265 – September 14, 1321), Italian poet

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
Michelangelo Buonarroti (March 6, 1475 – February 18, 1564), Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter

The job of the artist is to deepen the mystery.
Francis Bacon (January 22,1561 –April 9, 1626), English philosopher, statesman, scientist

I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.
William Shakespeare (April 26, 1564–April 23, 1616), English poet and playwright

Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.
Jonathan Swift (November 30,1667 –October 19, 1745), Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist

If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks in his cavern. 
William Blake (November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827), English poet and painter

Mysteries are not to be solved. They eye goes blind when it only wants to see why.
William Blake

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?
John Keats (October 31,1795 –February 23,1821), English Romantic poet

Nothing is more imminent than the impossible . . . what we must always foresee is the unforeseen.
Victor Hugo (February 26, 1802 –May 22,1885), French poet, novelist, and dramatist

When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil.
Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849), American author and poet

A poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization of all the senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he exhausts within himself all poisons, and preserves their quintessences. Unspeakable torment, where he will need the greatest faith, a superhuman strength, where he becomes all men the great invalid, the great criminal, the great accursed–and the Supreme Scientist! For he attains the unknown! Because he has cultivated his soul, already rich, more than anyone! He attains the unknown, and if, demented, he finally loses the understanding of his visions, he will at least have seen them! So what if he is destroyed in his ecstatic flight through things unheard of, unnameable: other horrible workers will come; they will begin at the horizons where the first one has fallen! 
Arthur Rimbaud (October 20, 1854 –November 10,1891), French poet

We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen.
Calvin Coolidge (July 4, 1872 – January 5, 1933), the 30th President of the United States (1923–29)

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955), German-born theoretical physicist

To sense the invisible and to be able to create it, that is art.
Hans Hofmann (March 21, 1880 – February 17, 1966), German-born American abstract expressionist painter

The anxiety engendered by confronting the abyss of nothingness [of the loss of self] is more terrifying than the tortures of hell. In the vision of hell, I am punished and tortured—In the vision of nothingness I am driven to the border of madness—because I cannot say ‘I’ any more. 
Erich Fromm (March 23, 1900 – March 18, 1980), German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, philosopher

Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.
Salvador Dalí (May 11,1904 –January 23,1989), Spanish surrealist painter

Only he who can see the invisible can do the impossible.
Frank L. Gaines (September 25, 1921 – October 5, 2012), choir singer in Elizabeth Popular Spring P. B. Church

I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see.
Duane Michals (born February 18, 1932), American photographer

There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.
Leonard Cohen (September 21, 1934 – November 7, 2016), Canadian singer, poet and painter

A scene is not just a scene but a vision of possibilities inherent in the subject.
Robert Wade (born 1944), New Zealand political economy and development scholar

Men with sight see things as they are. Men with insight see things as they could be.
Joseph P. Martino (born May 1, 1946), American prelate of theRoman Catholic Church

When your eyes are tired the world is tired also. When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you. Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own. There you can be sure you are not beyond love.
David Whyte (born 2 November 1955), British poet

Vision Is The Art Of Seeing What Is Invisible To Others.
Ninon de Vere De Rosa, American actress and author

My friend has a kaleidoscope she sometimes uses in her counseling practice. She invites her client to look through the kaleidoscope to catch a new perspective. God’s Spirit within us is like this kaleidoscope; we need to be attentive to it so we can be transformed with new eyes.
Celeste Snowber Schroeder, American author

To awaken to the absolute view is profound and transformative, but to awaken from all fixed points of view is the birth of true non-duality. If emptiness cannot dance, it is not true emptiness. If moonlight does not flood the empty night sky and reflect in every drop of water, on every blade of grass, then you are only looking at your own empty dream.
Adyashanti (born Steven Gray in 1962), American spiritual teacher

Ontology of Vision

My mind withdrew its thoughts from experience, extracting itself from the contradictory throng of sensuous images, that it might find out what that light was wherein it was bathed…. And thus, with the flash of one hurried glance, it attained to the vision of That Which Is.
Saint Augustine of Hippo (November 13, 354 –August 28, 430), early Christian theologian and philosopher

The poet, therefore, is truly the thief of fire.
He is responsible for humanity, for animals even; he will have to make sure his visions can be smelled, fondled, listened to; if what he brings back from beyond has form, he gives it form; if it has none, he gives it none. A language must be found…of the soul, for the soul and will include everything: perfumes, sounds colors, thought grappling with thought”
Arthur Rimbaud (October 20,1854 –November 10,1891), French poet

I have desired, like every artist, to create a little world out of the beautiful, pleasant, and significant things of this marred and clumsy world, and to show in a vision something of the face of Ireland to any of my own people who would look where I bid them. I have therefore written down accurately and candidly much that I have heard and seen, and, except by way of commentary, nothing that I have merely imagined.
William Butler Yeats (June 13, 1865 –January 28, 1939), Irish poet

I don’t paint things. I only paint the difference between things.
Henri Matisse (December 31, 1869 –November 3,1954), French artist

The world is waiting for men with vision – it is not interested in mere pictures.
Charles Hawthorne (January 8, 1872 – November 29, 1930), American portrait and genre painter

The wisest keeps something of the vision of a child. Though he may understand a thousand things that a child could not understand, he is always a beginner, close to the original meaning of life.
John Macy (April 10, 1877-August 26, 1932), author, critic, and poet

The point of vision and desire are the same.
Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American Modernist poet

If I paint a wild horse, you might not see the horse… but surely you will see the wildness!
Pablo Picasso (October 25, 1881 – April 8, 1973) Spanish painter and sculptor

If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes
Pablo Picasso

Vision is the true creative rhythm.
Robert Delaunay (April 12, 1885 –October 25, 1941), French artist

Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.
Thomas Stearns Eliot (September 26,1888 –January 4, 1965), British essayist, poet, playwright

Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.
Aldous Huxley (July 26,1894 –November 22, 1963), English writer, novelist, philosopher

Mastery in poetry consists largely in the instinct for not ruining or smothering or tinkering with moments of vision.
Edmund Charles Blunden (November 1, 1896 –January 20, 1974), English poet, author and critic

My basic view of things is – not to have any basic view of things. From having been exceedingly dogmatic, my views on life have gradually dissolved. They don’t exist any longer…
Ingmar Bergman (July 14, 1918 –July 30, 2007), Swedish director, writer, and producer

My advice to any young person at the beginning of their career is to try to look for the mere outlines of big things with their fresh, untrained and unprejudiced mind.
Hans Selye (January 26, 1907 – October 16, 1982), Austrian-Canadian endocrinologist

The creative mind doesn’t have to have the whole pattern—it can have just a little piece and be able to envision the whole picture in completion.
Arthur Fry (born 19 August 1931), retired American inventor and scientist

You have to see the pattern, understand the order and experience the vision.
Michael E. Gerber (born June 20, 1936), American author

The visionary is the one who brings his or her voice into the world and who refuses to edit, rehearse, perform, or hide. It is the visionary who knows that the power of creativity is aligned with authenticity.
Angeles Arrien (1940 – April 24, 2014) American Cultural anthropologist and educator

You are wrong if you think that you can in any way take the vision and tame it… The vision is not so much destroyed, exactly, as it is, by the time you have finished, forgotten. It has been replaced by this changeling.
Annie Dillard (born April 30, 1945), American author

Smells detonate softly in our memory like poignant land mines hidden under the weedy mass of years. Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth.
Diane Ackerman (born October 7, 1948), American poet, essayist, and naturalist

The power to concentrate was the most important thing. Living without this power would be like opening one’s eyes without seeing anything.
Haruki Murakami (Born January 12, 1949), Japanese writer

If you don’t have a vision, nothing happens.
Christopher Reeve (September 25, 1952 – October 10, 2004) was an American actor, film director, producer

Vision and freedom are not necessarily on some far horizon – the values worth learning, building and keeping are closer than that.
Harry Robbins (September 9, 1957 – December 11, 2013), Canadian actor and professional wrestler

To see life from the perspective of intuition is to have vision. To see life from the perspective of intuition is to see life from the perspective of wholeness. It is to understand that life is basically one and that we are part of life. While the intellect can only see the details, intuition sees the whole. To see life from the perspective of intuition is like looking at life from the summit of the mountain, whereas seeing life only from the perspective of intellect is like looking at life from the foot of the mountain. Through learning to listen to our intuition, we learn to be in contact with the Whole.
Swami Dhyann, Sweden spiritual teacher and author

Your vision, rather than just your seeing, displays a thousand or more possible paintings in the simplest things.
Andrew Baker, American artist

Vision stands on the shoulders of what is actual
to get a better view of what is possible.
Mary Anne Radmacher, American author,artist and professional speaker

Best builders begin with the foundation, Vision plus Principles equal to greatness.
Anthony Ngabwe, Zambian poet

The awareness of individual finiteness seals the compulsion to “give body” to an invisible apparition shaping the figuration of an ontogenetic expression of human consciousness.
Giorgia Fiorio (born July 23, 1967), Italian independent artist, photographer, researcher