You walk for days among trees and among stones. Rarely does the eye light on a thing, and then only when it has recognized that thing as the sign of another thing: a print in the sand indicates the tiger's passage; a marsh announces a vein of water; the hibiscus flower, the end of winter. All the rest is silent and interchangeable; trees and stones are only what they are. Italo Calvino
About This Quote

The eyes can detect all manner of things; the ears pick up information about sounds; the nose is able to sniff out food; and the tongue can taste things. But there is one sense that stands out as being less reliable than all the others. The eye can see everything around it, but it cannot see itself. The eyes are only able to detect what is in front of them.

However, once you have found your way around a tree or stone, you will have seen something that no human eye has ever seen before. You will have discovered a new kind of thing, one so unique that the world never knew it existed before.

Source: Invisible Cities

Some Similar Quotes
  1. The sunlight claps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea: what are all these kissings worth, if thou kiss not me? - Percy Bysshe Shelley

  2. In youth, it was a way I had, To do my best to please. And change, with every passing lad To suit his theories. But now I know the things I know And do the things I do, And if you do not like me... - Dorothy Parker

  3. If I were a tree, I would have no reason to love a human. - Maggie Stiefvater

  4. A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous. - Ingrid Bergman

  5. This life is yours. Take the power to choose what you want to do and do it well. Take the power to love what you want in life and love it honestly. Take the power to walk in the forest and be a part of... - Susan Polis Schutz

More Quotes By Italo Calvino
  1. If one wanted to depict the whole thing graphically, every episode, with its climax, would require a three-dimensional, or, rather, no model: every experience is unrepeatable. What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open,...

  2. Sections in the bookstore- Books You Haven't Read- Books You Needn't Read- Books Made for Purposes Other Than Reading- Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong to the Category of Books Read Before Being Written- Books That If You Had More Than...

  3. I was living and dying in all the fibers of what is chewed and digested and in all the fibers that absorb the sun, consuming and digesting. Under the thatched arbor of a restaurant on a river-bank, where Olivia had waited for me, our teeth...

  4. What matters is not the enclosure of the work within a harmonious figure, but the centrifugal force produced by it -- a plurality of language as a guarantee of a truth that is not merely partial.

  5. It's better not to know authors personally, because the real person never corresponds to the image you form of him from reading his books.

Related Topics