"Hearken unto me, my people; and give ear unto me, for a law shall proceed from me, and I will make my judgment to rest for a light of the Gentiles."
A knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear.
The distant sounds of music, that catch new sweetness as they vibrate through the long-drawn valley, are not more pleasing to the ear than the tidings of a far-distant friend.
Painting manifests its essence to thee in an instant of time,--its essence by the visual faculty, the very means by which the perception apprehends natural objects, and in the same duration of time,--and in this space of time the sense-satisfying harmony of the proportion of the parts composing the whole is formed. And poetry apprehends the same things, but by a sense inferior to that of the eyesight, which bears the images of the objects named to the perception with greater confusion and less speed. Not in such wise acts the eye (the true intermediary between the object and the perception), for it immediately communicates the true semblance and image of what is represented before it with the greatest accuracy; whence that proportion arises called harmony, which with sweet concord delights the sense in the same way as the harmony of diverse voices delights the ear; and this harmony is less worthy than that which delights the eye, because for every part of it that is born a part dies, and it dies as fast as it is born. This {74} cannot occur in the case of the eye; because if thou presentest a beautiful living mortal to the eye, composed of a harmony of fair limbs, its beauty is not so transient nor so quickly destroyed as that of music; on the contrary it has permanent duration, and allows thee to behold and consider it; and it is not reborn as in the case of music which is played many times over, nor will it weary thee: on the contrary, thou becomest enamoured with it, and the result it produces is that all the senses, together with the eye, would wish to possess it, and it seems that they would wish to compete with the eye: it appears that the mouth desires it for itself, if the mouth can be considered as a sense; the ear takes pleasure in hearing its beauty; the sense of touch would like to penetrate into all its pores; the nose also would like to receive the air it exhales.
Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice; / Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
A science is more useful in proportion as its fruits are more widely understood, and thus, on the other hand, it is less useful in proportion as it is less widely understood. The fruits of painting can be apprehended by all the populations of the universe because its results are subject to the power of sight, and it does not pass by the ear to the brain, but by the same channel by which {62} sight passes. Therefore it needs no interpreters of diverse tongues, as letters do, and it has instantly satisfied the human race in the same manner as the works of nature have done. And not only the human race, but other animals; as was shown in a picture representing the father of a family to whom little children still in the cradle gave caresses, as did the dog and the cat in the same house; and it was a wonderful thing to see such a sight.
Chia decided to change the subject. “What’s your brother like? How old is he?” “Masahiko is seventeen,” Mitsuko said. “He is a ‘pathological - techno - fetishist - with - social - deficit,” ’ this last all strung together like one word, indicating a concept that taxed the lexicon of the ear-clips. Chia wondered briefly if it would be worth running it through her Sandbenders, whose translation functions updated automatically whenever she ported. “A what?” “Otaku,” Mitsuko said carefully in Japanese.
One who was in the act of drinking leaves his glass in its place, and turns his head towards the speaker. Another, twisting the fingers of his hands together, turns with stern brows to his companions. Another, with his hands spread out, shows their palms, and shrugs his shoulders towards his ears; his mouth expresses amazement. Another speaks in the ear of his neighbour, and he, as he listens to him, turns towards him, lending him his ear, while he holds a knife in one hand and {138} a piece of bread in the other, half cut through by the knife. Another, in turning with a knife in his hand, has upset a glass on the table. Another lays his hands on the table and looks fixedly. Another puffs out his cheeks, his mouth full. Another leans forward to see the speaker, shading his eyes with his hand. Another draws back behind him who is leaning forward and sees the speaker between the wall and the man who is leaning forward.
I couldn’t be Mason’s girlfriend because when I imagined someone holding me and whispering dirty things in my ear, he had a Russian accent.
The soul which has no correspondence with the spiritual environment is spiritually dead. It may be that it never possessed . . . the spiritual ear, or a heart which throbbed in response to the love of God. If so, having never lived, it cannot be said to have died. But not to have these correspondences is to be in the state of Death. To the spiritual world, to the Divine Environment, it is dead--as a stone which has never lived is dead to the environment of the organic world. Natural Law, p. 177.
Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear.
Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale, / Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.
The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was.
But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue Within, and they that lustre have imbibed In the sun's palace-porch, where when unyoked His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave: Shake one, and it awakens; then apply Its polisht lips to your attentive ear, And it remembers its august abodes, And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.
Is not God always acting thus? He comes to us by His Holy Spirit as He did to these two disciples. He speaks to us through the preaching of the Gospel, through the Word of God, through the various means of grace and the providential circumstances of life; and having thus spoken, He makes as though He would go further. If the ear be opened to His voice and the heart to His Spirit, the prayer will then go up, "Lord, abide with me." But if that voice makes no impression, then He passes on, as He has done thousands of times, leaving the heart at each time harder than before, and the ear more closed to the Spirit's call.--_F. Whitfield._
Dark night, that from the eye his function takes, / The ear more quick of apprehension makes.
He who has no ear for poetry is a barbarian, be he who he may.
It was the nightingale, and not the lark / That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear.
The mind of the greatest man on earth is not so independent of circumstances as not to feel inconvenienced by the merest buzzing noise about him; it does not need the report of a cannon to disturb his thoughts. The creaking of a vane or a pulley is quite enough. Do not wonder that he reasons ill just now; a fly is buzzing by his ear; it is quite enough to unfit him for giving good counsel.
What is specially true of love is, that it is a state of extreme impressionability; the lover has more senses and finer senses than others; his eye and ear are telegraphs; he reads omens in the flower and cloud and face and form and gesture, and reads them aright.
From the low prayer of want and plaint of woe / O never, never turn away thine ear! / Forlorn is this bleak wilderness below, / Ah! what were man should heaven refuse to hear!
The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue.
Loquacity storms the ear, but modesty takes the heart.
Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
Joy is the sweet voice, joy the luminous cloud. We in ourselves rejoice! And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, All melodies the echoes of that voice, All colours a suffusion from that light.
The gradualness of growth is a characteristic which strikes the simplest observer. Long before the word Evolution was coined Christ applied it in this very connection--"First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear." It is well known also to those who study the parables of Nature that there is an ascending scale of slowness as we rise in the scale of Life. Growth is most gradual in the highest forms. Man attains his maturity after a score of years; the monad completes its humble cycle in a day. What wonder if development be tardy in the Creature of Eternity? A Christian's sun has sometimes set, and a critical world has seen as yet no corn in the ear. As yet? "As yet," in this long Life, has not begun. Grant him the years proportionate to his place in the scale of Life. "The time of harvest is NOT YET." Natural Law, p. 92.
He strokes my hair and tells me stories and tucks me close like he's afraid I'll disappear. He paints pictures of people and places until I'm drowning in a drug of dreams to escape a world with no refuge, no relief, no release but his reassurances in my ear.
The eye in its given distances and by its given means deceives itself in the performance of its functions less than any other sense, because it sees in straight lines which form a cone, the base of which is the object it perceives, and transmits it to the eye, as I intend to prove. But the ear greatly deceives itself as to the position and distance of the objects it apprehends, because the sonorous waves do not reach it in straight lines, like those of the eye, but by tortuous and reflex lines, and often the most remote seem to be nearest, owing to the peregrinations of such waves, although the voice of the echo is transmitted to the sense by straight lines only. The smell is less certain of the spot whence the odour arises, but {184} taste and touch alone come into direct contact with the object which they apprehend.
Never is the deep, strong voice of man, or the low, sweet voice of woman, finer than in the earnest but mellow tones of familiar speech, richer than the richest music, which are a delight while they are heard, which linger still upon the ear in softened echoes, and which, when they have ceased, come, long after, back to memory, like the murmurs of a distant hymn.--_Henry Giles._
Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.
Poetry surpasses painting in the representation of words, and in the representation of actions painting excels poetry; and painting is to poetry as actions are to words, because actions depend on the eye and words on the ear; and thus the senses are in the same proportion one to another as the objects on which they depend; and on this account I consider painting to be superior to poetry. But since those who practised painting were for long ignorant as to how to explain its theory, it lacked advocates for a considerable time; because it does not speak itself, but reveals itself and ends in action, and poetry ends in words, which in its vainglory it employs for self-praise.
The giant Bolg settled back again. “By the sea. “Twas jammed in the sand between them shipwrecks we told you about. Thought o’ you and that you might like it, ’specially when the dreams are too strong.” Tears glinted in her eyes again. “You are the most wonderful Bolg that ever lived, did you know that?” You are the most wonderful girl in the world. “Damn right,” said Grunthor smugly. Rhapsody laughed, blinking away the tears. “Now, put your ’ead back down and cover your up-ear with it. Maybe it’ll sing you to sleep.
O thou! whatever title please thine ear, Dean, Drapier, Bickerstaff, or Gulliver! Whether thou choose Cervantes' serious air, Or laugh and shake in Rabelais' easy-chair.
The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them — words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller, but for want of an understanding ear.
Thou, too curious ear, that fain / Wouldst thread the maze of Harmony, / Content thee with one simple strain, / ... Till thou art duly trained, and taught / The concord sweet of Love divine.
O, now, for ever Farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content! Farewell the plumed troop and the big wars That make ambition virtue! O, farewell! Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump, The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, The royal banner, and all quality, Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war! And, O you mortal engines, whose rude throats The immortal Jove's dread clamours counterfeit, Farewell! Othello's occupation 's gone!
The right ear, that is fill'd with dust, / Hears little of the false or just.
The eye, which is called the window of the soul, is the principal means by which the brain can most abundantly and splendidly contemplate the infinite works of nature; and the ear is the next in order, which is ennobled by hearing the recital of the things seen by the eye. If you, historians and poets, or mathematicians, had not seen things with the eyes, you could not report of them in writing. If thou, O poet, dost tell a story with thy painting pen, the painter will more easily give satisfaction in telling it with his brush and in a manner less tedious and more easily understood. And if thou callest painting mute poetry, the painter can call poetry blind painting. Now consider which is the greater loss, to be blind or dumb? Though the poet is as free as the painter in his creations and compositions, they are not so satisfactory to men as paintings, because if poetry is able to describe forms, actions and places in words, the painter deals with the very {65} semblance of forms in order to represent them. Now consider which is nearer to man, the name of man or the image of man? The name of man varies in diverse countries, but death alone changes his form. If thou wast to say that painting is more lasting, I answer that the works of a coppersmith, which time preserves longer than thine or ours, are more eternal still. Nevertheless there is but little invention in it, and painting on copper with colours of enamel is far more lasting.
A jest's prosperity lies in the ear Of him that hears it, never in the tongue Of him that makes it.
Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck, And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes, And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two And sleeps again.
How hard it is= (for the Byron, for the Burns), =whose ear is quick for celestial messages, to "take no counsel with flesh and blood," and instead of living and writing for the day that passes over them, live and write for the eternity that rests and abides over them!
L'oreille est le chemin du c?ur=--The ear is the road to the heart.
He who conforms to the rule which the genius of the human understanding whispers secretly in the ear of every new-born being, viz., to test action by thought and thought by action, cannot err; and if he errs, he will soon find himself again in the right way.
I was all ear, And took in strains that might create a soul Under the ribs of death.
Das glucklichste Wort es wird verhohnt, / Wenn der Horer ein Schiefohr ist=--The happiest word is scorned, if the hearer has a twisted ear.
Love sees what no eye sees; hears what no ear hears; and what never rose in the heart of man love prepares for its object.
Sacco pieno rizza l'orecchio=--A full sack pricks up (
Time in a few years destroys this harmony, but this does not occur in the case of beauty depicted by the painter, because time preserves it for long; and the eye, as far as its function is concerned, receives as much pleasure from the depicted as from the living beauty; touch alone is lacking to the painted beauty,--touch, which is the elder brother of sight; which after it has attained its purpose does not prevent the reason from considering the divine beauty. And in this case the picture copied from the living beauty acts for the greater part as a substitute; and the {75} description of the poet cannot accomplish this.--the poet who is now set up as a rival to the painter, but does not perceive that time sets a division between the words in which he describes the various parts of the beauty, and that forgetfulness intervenes and divides the proportions which he cannot name without great prolixity; he cannot compose the harmonious concord which is formed of divine proportions. And on this account beauty cannot be described in the same space of time in which a painted beauty can be seen, and it is a sin against nature to attempt to transmit by the ear that which should be transmitted by the eye.
Poets are never young, in one sense. Their delicate ear hears the far-off whispers of eternity, which coarser souls must travel towards for scores of years before their dull sense is touched by them. A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.
I have, God wot, a large field to ear; / And weake the oxen in my plough.
On the ear Drops the light drip of the suspended oar.
~Request.~--No music is so charming to my ear as the requests of my friends, and the supplications of those in want of my assistance.--_Cæsar._
From this confusion it results that one declares the essence of justice to be the authority of the legislator, another, the convenience of the sovereign, another, existing custom, and this is the most sure; nothing which follows reason alone is just in itself, all shifts and changes with time; custom creates equity, by the simple reason that this is received. It is the mystical foundation of its authority, whoever carries it back to first principles annihilates it. Nothing is so faulty as those laws which correct faults. Whoever obeys them because they are just, obeys an imaginary justice, not law in its essence; it is altogether self-contained, it is law and nothing more. Whoever will examine its motive will find it so feeble and so slight that if he be not used to contemplate the marvels of human imagination, he will wonder that a single century has gained for it so much pomp and reverence. It is the art of disturbance and of revolution to shake established customs, sounding them to their source, to mark their want of authority and justice. We must, it is said, return to the primitive and fundamental laws of the State, abolished by unjust custom. It is a game wherein we are sure to lose all; in this balance nothing would be true, yet the people easily lends an ear to such talk as this. They shake off the yoke as soon as they recognise it, and the great profit by its ruin, and by the ruin of those who have too curiously examined recognised customs. This is why the wisest of law givers said that it was often necessary to cheat men for their good, and another, a good politician, _Quum veritatem qua liberetur ignoret, expedit quod fallatur_. We ought not to feel the truth that law is but usurpation; it was once introduced without reason, and has become reasonable; it is necessary to cause it to be regarded as eternal and authoritative, and to conceal the beginning if we do not wish it should soon come to an end.
And be these juggling fiends no more believ'd, That palter with us in a double sense: That keep the word of promise to our ear And break it to our hope.
He ceas'd; but left so pleasing on their ear His voice, that list'ning still they seem'd to hear.
And for the few that only lend their ear, That few is all the world.
I have seen A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract Of inland ground, applying to his ear The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell, To which, in silence hushed, his very soul Listened intensely; and his countenance soon Brightened with joy, for from within were heard Murmurings, whereby the monitor expressed Mysterious union with his native sea.
The popular ear weighs what you are, not what you were.
If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die. That strain again! it had a dying fall: O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour!
One soul was ours, one mind, one heart devoted, That, wisely doating, ask'd not why it doated. And ours the unknown joy, which knowing kills. But now I find how dear thou wert to me; That man is more than half of nature's treasure, Of that fair beauty which no eye can see, Of that sweet music which no ear can measure; And now the streams may sing for other's pleasure, The hills sleep on in their eternity.
Calm on the listening ear of night Come Heaven's melodious strains, Where wild Judea stretches far Her silver-mantled plains.
The hollow sea-shell which for years hath stood / On dusty shelves, when held against the ear / Proclaims its stormy parent.
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear.
Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve.
Man is like an ear of wheat shaken by the wind--sometimes up and sometimes down.
You are taking the wrong sow by the ear.
"The Lord hath given me the tongue of the learned that I should know how to uphold by word him that is weary. He hath wakened my ear, and I have heard him as a master.
Some to church repair, Not for the doctrine, but the music there. These equal syllables alone require, Though oft the ear the open vowels tire; While expletives their feeble aid to join, And ten low words oft creep in one dull line.
Heav'n finds an ear when sinners find a tongue.
Of the ear, old worrier. Water mollifies the flint lip, And daylight lays its sameness on the wall. The grafters are cheerful, Heating the pincers, hoisting the delicate hammers. A current agitates the wires Volt upon volt. Catgut stitches my fissures. A workman walks by carrying a pink torso. The storerooms are full of hearts. This is the city of spare parts. My swaddled legs and arms smell sweet as rubber. Here they can doctor heads, or any limb.
Even if we resign ourselves to the thought that the likenesses and likelihoods which we project upon the unseen and unknown, nay, that the hope of our meeting again as we once met on earth, need not be fulfilled exactly as we shape them to ourselves, where is the argument to make us believe that the real fulfilment can be less perfect than what even a weak human heart devises and desires? This trust that whatever is will be best, is what is meant by faith, true, because inevitable, faith. We see traces of it in many places and many religions, but I doubt whether anywhere that faith is more simply and more powerfully expressed than in the Old and New Testaments: 'For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside Thee, what He hath prepared for him that waiteth for Him' (Isaiah lxiv. 4). 'As it is written, Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him' (1 Cor. ii. 9).
The Christian apologist never further misses the mark than when he refuses the testimony of the Agnostic to himself. When the Agnostic tells me he is blind and deaf, dumb, torpid, and dead to the spiritual world, I must believe him. Jesus tells me that. Paul tells me that. Science tells me that. He knows nothing of this outermost circle; and we are compelled to trust his sincerity as readily when he deplores it as if, being a man without an ear, he professed to know nothing of a musical world, or being without taste, of a world of art. Natural Law, Death, p. 160.
Invidus, iracundus, iners, vinosus, amator, / Nemo adeo ferus est, ut non mitescere possit, / Si modo cultur? patientem commodet aurem=--The envious, the passionate, the indolent, the drunken, the lewd--none is so savage that he cannot be tamed, if he only lend a patient ear to culture.