C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Blindness

O loss of sight, of thee I most complain!
Blind among enemies, O worse than chains,
Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age!

Milton.

None so blind as those that will not see.

Mathew Henry.

He that is strucken blind cannot forget
The precious treasure of his eyesight lost.

Shakespeare.

But love is blind, and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit.

Shakespeare.

O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark! total eclipse,
Without all hope of day.

Milton.

He whom nature thus bereaves,
Is ever fancy’s favourite child;
For thee enchanted dreams she weaves
Of changeful beauty, bright and wild.

Mrs. Osgood.

Oh, say! what is that thing called light,
Which I must ne’er enjoy?
What are the blessings of the sight?
Oh, tell your poor blind boy!

Colley Cibber.

Ye have a world of light,
When love in the loved rejoices;
But the blind man’s home is the house of night,
And its beings are empty voices.

Bulwer-Lytton.

These eyes tho’ clear
To outward view of blemish or of spot,
Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot.
Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear
Of sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year,
Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not
Against Heaven’s hand or will, nor have a jot
Of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer
Right onward.

Milton.

O, happiness of blindness! now no beauty
Inflames my lust; no other’s goods my envy,
Or misery my pity; no man’s wealth
Draws my respect; nor poverty my scorn,
Yet still I see enough! man to himself
Is a large prospect, raised above the level
Of his low creeping thoughts; if then I have
A world within myself, that would shall be
My empire; there I’ll reign, commanding freely,
And willingly obey’d, secure from fear
Of foreign forces, or domestic treasons.

Denham.

The blindness of men is the most dangerous effect of their pride; it seems to nourish and augment it; it deprives them of knowledge of remedies which can solace their miseries and can cure their faults.

La Rochefoucauld.

This fellow must have a rare understanding;
For nature recompenseth the defects
Of one part with redundance in another;
Blind men have excellent memories, and the tongue
Thus indisposed, there’s treasure in the intellect.

Shirley.

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