“
Life is like a prism. What you see depends on how you turn the glass.
”
”
Jonathan Kellerman
“
When I set a glass prism on a windowsill and allow the sun to flood through it, a spectrum of colors dances on the floor. What we call "white" is a rainbow of colored rays packed into a small space. The prism sets them free. Love is the white light of emotion.
”
”
Diane Ackerman (A Natural History of Love)
“
Truth is not a transparent process. What we see are shadows behind mat glass, a vaporous representation of reality. Truth is not as such, what we think it is. Truth is a prism with many sides, that only let us guess. In fact , truth is perhaps not true. Maybe it is just a lie. Taking our truth for “the” truth could lead to many erroneous interpretations.
”
”
Erik Pevernagie
“
She took off her dark glasses and squinted at me. It was as though her eyes were shattered prisms, the dots of blue and gray and green like broken bits of sparkle.
”
”
Truman Capote (Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories)
“
Walking into the library, I took in my breath sharply and stopped: glass fronted bookcases and Gothic panels, stretching fifteen feet to a frescoed and plaster-medallioned ceiling. In the back of the room was a marble fireplace, big as a sepulchre, and a globed gasolier--dripping with prisms and strings of crystal beading--sparkled in the dim.
There was a piano, too, and Charles was playing, a glass of whiskey on the seat beside him. He was a little drunk; the Chopin was slurred and fluid, the notes melting sleepily into one another. A breeze stirred the heavy, moth-eaten velvet curtains, ruffling his hair.
”
”
Donna Tartt (The Secret History)
“
To deal with the chaos of life, I escape into the prism of glass, dancing to the visual music in my mind. My photographs express my interior movement from darkness into light and back.
”
”
Polly Norman (Dances Through Glass)
“
There was a crash like the falling parts of a dream fashioned out of warped glass, mirrors, and crystal prisms.
”
”
Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)
“
Everyone dreams, but only some people are dreamers. The non-dreamers, by far more numerous, are those who see the world as it is. Then there are the few dreamers, who see the world as they are. The moon, the river, the train station, the sound of rain, and even something as mundane as porridge become something else with many layers. The world feels like an oil painting rather than a photograph, and the dreamers are forever seeing hidden colors where others just see the top shade. The nondreamers look through glasses, and the dreamers through a prism
”
”
Juhea Kim (Beasts of a Little Land)
“
When the sands were running out of the glass, delayed justice was as bad as injustice.
”
”
Brent Weeks (The Black Prism (Lightbringer, #1))
“
Everyone carries this thick prism of gunk that they see the world through. Each person has layers of stuff, making it hard to see anyone clearly. So until someone invents soul glasses that will remove all distortions from their perceptions? Worrying about what people think? Is a complete waste of time.
”
”
Jessica Bendinger (The Seven Rays)
“
How we hate to admit that we would like nothing better than to be the slave! Slave and master at the same time! For even in love the slave is always the master in disguise. The man who must conquer the woman, subjugate her, bend her to his will, form her according to his desires—is he not the slave of his slave? How easy it is, in this relationship, for the woman to upset the balance of power! The mere threat of self-dependence, on the woman’s part, and the gallant despot is seized with vertigo. But if they are able to throw themselves at one another recklessly, concealing nothing, surrendering all, if they admit to one another their interdependence, do they not enjoy a great and unsuspected freedom? The man who admits to himself that he is a coward has made a step towards conquering his fear; but the man who frankly admits it to every one, who asks that you recognize it in him and make allowance for it in dealing with him, is on the way to becoming a hero. Such a man is often surprised, when the crucial test comes, to find that he knows no fear. Having lost the fear of regarding himself as a coward he is one no longer: only the demonstration is needed to prove the metamorphosis. It is the same in love. The man who admits not only to himself but to his fellowmen, and even to the woman he adores, that he can be twisted around a woman’s finger, that he is helpless where the other sex is concerned, usually discovers that he is the more powerful of the two. Nothing breaks a woman down more quickly than complete surrender. A woman is prepared to resist, to be laid siege to: she has been trained to behave that way. When she meets no resistance she falls headlong into the trap.
To be able to give oneself wholly and completely is the greatest luxury that life affords. Real love only begins at this point of dissolution. The personal life is altogether based on dependence, mutual dependence. Society is the aggregate of persons all interdependent. There is another richer life beyond the pale of society, beyond the personal, but there is no knowing it, no attainment possible, without firs traveling the heights and depths of the personal jungle. To become the great lover, the magnetiser and catalyzer, the blinding focus and inspiration of the world, one has to first experience the profound wisdom of being an utter fool. The man whose greatness of heart leads him to folly and ruin is to a woman irresistible. To the woman who loves, that is to say. As to those who ask merely to be loved, who seek only their own reflection in the mirror, no love however great, will ever satisfy them. In a world so hungry for love it is no wonder that men and women are blinded by the glamour and glitter of their own reflected egos. No wonder that the revolver shot is the last summons. No wonder that the grinding wheels of the subway express, though they cut the body to pieces, fail to precipitate the elixir of love. In the egocentric prism the helpless victim is walled in by the very light which he refracts. The ego dies in its own glass cage…
”
”
Henry Miller (Sexus (The Rosy Crucifixion, #1))
“
Insomniacs should not be forced to exist in a realm with reflective glass. From the first look I’m boxed in a prism, rainbows charming the other dark-circled self into sharing my prison. One eye turns on the other, each accusing the other of being responsible for an appearance oddly elfin, before exiting head and bouncing like lottery balls through the mirror walls and then drifting up and out the open and unguarded Well of the Wyrd. There, everyone with mirrors and mushrooms is waiting for me, faded and dissolved into giggles.
”
”
Amanda Sledz (Psychopomp Volume One: Cracked Plate)
“
In the egocentric prism the helpless victim is walled in by the very light which he refracts. The ego dies in its own glass cage...
”
”
Henry Miller (Sexus (The Rosy Crucifixion, #1))
“
God was showing me
the code through a prism.
I fractured the glass
on purpose because
I did not want to know.
”
”
Melissa Broder (Scarecrone)
“
childhood memories are prisms, not panes of glass. Details may loom large in the eyes of our smaller selves, while important events lie beyond our vision or understanding.
”
”
Gloria Steinem (Marilyn: Norma Jeane)
“
Agnes shut her eyes, clenched her fists, opened her mouth and screamed.
It started low. Plaster dust drifted down from the ceiling. The prisms on the chandelier chimed gently as they shook.
It rose, passing quickly through the mysterious pitch at fourteen cycles per second where the human spirit begins to feel distinctly uncomfortable about the universe and the place in it of the bowels. Small items around the Opera House vibrated off shelves and smashed on the floor.
The note climbed, rang like a bell, climbed again. In the Pit, all the violin strings snapped, one by one.
As the tone rose, the crystal prisms shook in the chandelier. In the bar, champagne corks fired a salvo. Ice jingled and shattered in its bucket. A line of wine-glasses joined in the chorus, blurred around the rims, and then exploded like hazardous thistledown with attitude.
There were harmonics and echoes that caused strange effects. In the dressing-rooms the No. 3 greasepaint melted. Mirrors cracked, filling the ballet school with a million fractured images.
Dust rose, insects fell. In the stones of the Opera House tiny particles of quartz danced briefly...
Then there was silence, broken by the occasional thud and tinkle.
Nanny grinned.
'Ah,' she said, 'now the opera's over.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Maskerade (Discworld, #18; Witches, #5))
“
Art is not a diversion, it is the summit of human understanding. Literature is not the construction of a beautiful though frail glittering glass ornament. It is the creation of a prism through which we are able to see the world we live in in a way we never have before. It is not the plaything of ivory tower intellectuals nor an escapist drug for bored housewives, but the raw, pulsing stuff of life, the essence, the soul.
”
”
James Rozoff
“
He must turn to something solid, because if he didn't, who knew where his mind or his soul could blow away to, like a balloon without ballast.... He raised the binoculars and scoured the island for more signs of life: he needed to see the goats, the sheep; to count them. Stick to the solid. To the brass fittings which had to be polished, the glass which had to be cleaned—first the outer glass of the lantern, then the prisms themselves. Getting the oil in, keeping the cogs moving smoothly, topping up the mercury to let the light glide. He gripped each thought like the rung of a ladder by which to haul himself back to the knowable; back to this life.
”
”
M.L. Stedman (The Light Between Oceans)
“
I like the disaster of the night sky, stars spilling this way and that as if they were upturned from a glass. I like the way good madness feels. I like the way laughter always spills. That's the word for it. It never just comes, it spills. I like the word 'again'. Again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again. I like the quiet sound a coffee cup makes when it's set down on a wooden table. So hushed. So inviting. Like morning light yawning through the window and stretching out onto the kitchen floor. I like the way girls' lips look like they're stained with berries. I like the way morning light breaks like a prism through the empty wine bottles on our dusty apartment floor. Glasses empty except for the midnight hour. I like the way blueberries stain my fingers during the summer. I like the way light hits your eyes and turns it into a color that doesn't exist anywhere else other than in this moment. I want it all. I want the breeze to call my name as it rushes down my street, looking for me. I want to feel grass underneath my bare feet and I want to feel the sun kiss freckles onto my cheeks. I want to hear you yell hello as you make your way towards me, not goodbye as you have to go.
That's just a little bit about me.
”
”
Marlen Komar (Ugly People Beautiful Hearts)
“
In the shadowy room, a single blade of sun pierced between the curtains and struck across the room, where it caught and blazed up in a tray of cut glass decanters, casting prisms that flickered and shifted this way and that and wavered high on the walls like paramecia under a microscope.
”
”
Donna Tartt (The Goldfinch)
“
And as Bi'ul leaped at him, a shimmering prism of rage, Dairy swung.
The world went black for one long moment, and there was only the sound of glass breaking, a glass containing all the oceans in the world, and those oceans held back the fires of a thousand suns, and it all burst forth in one massive wave of power that spread across creation in an instant.
”
”
Patrick Weekes (The Palace Job (Rogues of the Republic, #1))
“
Marie Antoinette would have loved this place!"
Piper Donovan stood agape, her green eyes opened wide, as she took in the magical space. Crystal chandeliers, dripping with glittering prisms, hung from the mirrored ceiling. Gilded moldings crowned the pale pink walls. Gleaming glass cases displayed vibrant fruit tarts, puffy éclairs, and powdered beignets. Exquisitely decorated cakes of all flavors and sizes rested on pedestals alongside trays of pastel meringues and luscious napoleons. Cupcakes, cookies, croissants, and cream-filled pastries dusted with sugar or drizzled with chocolate beckoned from the shelves.
"It's unbelievable," she whispered. "I feel like I've walked into a jewel box---one made of confectioners' sugar but a jewel box nonetheless.
”
”
Mary Jane Clark (That Old Black Magic (Wedding Cake Mystery, #4))
“
Something Rich and Strange
She takes a step and the water rises higher on her knees. Four more steps, she tells herself. Just four more and I'll turn back. She takes another step and the bottom is no longer there and she is being shoved downstream and she does not panic because she has passed the Red Cross courses. The water shallows and her face breaks the surface and she breathes deep. She tries to turn her body so she won' t hit her head on a rock and for the first time she's afraid and she's suddenly back underwater and hears the rush of water against her ears. She tries to hold her breath but her knee smashes against a boulder and she gasps in pain and water pours into her mouth. Then for a few moments the water pools and slows. She rises coughing up water, gasping air, her feet dragging the bottom like an anchor trying to snag waterlogged wood or rock jut and as the current quickens again she sees her family running along the shore and she knows they are shouting her name though she cannot hear them and as the current turns her she hears the falls and knows there is nothing that will keep from it as the current quickens and quickens and another rock smashes against her knee but she hardly feels it as she snatches another breath and she feels the river fall and she falls with it as water whitens around her and she falls deep into the whiteness and she rises her head scrapes against a rock ceiling and the water holds her there and she tells herself don't breathe but the need rises inside her beginning in the upper stomach then up through her chest and throat and as that need reaches her mouth her mouth and nose open and the lungs explode in pain and then the pain is gone as bright colors shatter around her like glass shards, and she remembers her sixth-grade science class, the gurgle of the aquarium at the back of the room, the smell of chalk dust that morning the teacher held a prism out the window so it might fill with color, and she has a final, beautiful thought - that she is now inside that prism and knows something even the teacher does not know, that the prism's colors are voices, voices that swirl around her head like a crown, and at that moment her arms and legs she did not even know were flailing cease and she becomes part of the river.
”
”
Ron Rash (Nothing Gold Can Stay: Stories)
“
The Vicar stood aghast, with his smoking gun in his hand. It was no bird at all, but a youth with an extremely beautiful face, clad in a robe of saffron and with iridescent wings, across whose pinions great waves of colour, flushes of purple and crimson, golden green and intense blue, pursued one another as he writhed in his agony. Never had the Vicar seen such gorgeous floods of colour, not stained glass windows, not the wings of butterflies, not even the glories of crystals seen between prisms, no colours on earth could compare with them. Twice the Angel raised himself, only to fall over sideways again. Then the beating of the wings diminished, the terrified face grew pale, the floods of colour abated, and suddenly with a sob he lay prone, and the changing hues of the broken wings faded swiftly into one uniform dull grey hue. “Oh!
”
”
H.G. Wells (The Wonderful Visit)
“
This argument, however, is far from proving that the reality is unknowable, or that it lies hidden behind appearances or presentations. Take, for instance, a reality which appears as a ray of the sun. When it goes through a pane of glass it appears to be colourless, but it exhibits a beautiful spectrum when it passes through a prism. Therefore you assume that a reality appearing as the rays of the sun is neither colourless nor coloured in itself, since these appearances are wholly due to the difference that obtains between the pane of glass and the prism. We contend, however, that the fact does not prove the existence of the reality named the sun's ray beyond or behind the white light, nor its existence beyond or behind the spectrum. It is evident that the reality exists in white light, and that it is known as the white light when it goes through a pane of glass; and that the same reality exists in the spectrum, and is known as the spectrum when it goes through the prism. The reality is known as the white light on the one hand, and as the spectrum on the other. It is not unknowable, but knowable. Suppose
”
”
Kaiten Nukariya (The Religion of the Samurai A Study of Zen Philosophy and Discipline in China and Japan)
“
The length of a glass Tree has an End in his prism.
”
”
Petra Hermans
“
God’s radiance shines through you, through the uniqueness of you. Everything about the way He’s created you, He did it with the purpose of making you a prism for His light. You’re like an intricately designed stained glass window made of beautiful and unique details, distinct in certain ways from all others. And through you, through the carefully constructed window of your life’s uniqueness and experiences (even the hard ones), He wants to show Himself to the world.
”
”
Priscilla Shirer (Radiant: His Light, Your Life for Teen Girls and Young Women)
“
Ninth Floor
she ran across the parquet slipped the flokati mat
crashed the window
no
she stood at the window prism looked up at sky bruise night
spread her
no
she tilted dived swanning spinning
tip-toed ink air broke fingers first
no
she climbed the small gap the window gave
hung her finger joints clotted the view with frightened breath
fell ligament torn and sorry
no
she wandered to the glass hatch to watch tranquilised lights sputtering
leaned too hard fell faster than a bottle of Jack
no
this is how it was:
drunk screaming she crashed the parquet with grief
roared the ungiving window frames which gave
she spangled spaghetti-like ribbon-voiced
street lights crashed on her
no.
She did nothing.
”
”
Karin Schimke
“
When I try to distil my thoughts into cogent, straightforward prose, I see Aubrey in my mind’s eye, and everything seems to go slightly out of focus. It’s not an entirely unpleasant sensation. I would liken it to reaching for a pair of reading glasses and picking up a prism instead. You wouldn’t be able to read a newspaper through it, but you’d be treated to a beautiful array of light and color, all the same…
”
”
Georgina Guthrie (The Record of My Heart (Words, #3.5))
“
She looked at the broken pieces of glass that were reflecting the light like tiny prisms. “It’s hard to be brave when you don’t even know what you’re fighting against,” she confessed sincerely.
”
”
Layla Soreyne (Arya and the Guardians of Azhira)
“
pan /pɑ̃/ nm - (also onomat) 1. (partie) (de falaise, maison) section; (de vie, problème) part; (d'obscurité, de ciel) patch • ~ de mur | section of wall • ~ de vitre | glass panel 2. (côté) (de tour, prisme) side • relever les ~s d'un rideau | to tie back the curtains • ~s d'un manteau | coat-tails • à ~s coupés | with cut-off corners 3. (bruit) (de coup de feu) bang!; (de coup de poing) thump!; (de fessée) whack! • je vais faire ~~ | (baby talk) I'll give you a smack 4. (marquant la soudaineté) pow! • tout allait bien, et ~! on nous a dit que… | everything was fine, and pow! we were told that… pan de chemise shirttail
”
”
Synapse Développement (Oxford Hachette French - English Dictionary (French Edition))
“
Everyone dreams, but only some people are dreamers. The non-dreamers, by far more numerous, are those who see the world as it is. Then there are the few dreamers, who see the world as are. The moon, the river, the train station, the sound of rain, and even something as mundane as porridge become something else with many layers. The world feels like an oil painting rather than a photograph, and the dreamers are forever seeing hidden colors where others just see the top shade. The nondreamers look through glasses, and the dreamers through a prism.
”
”
Juhea Kim (Beasts of a Little Land)
“
Everyone dreams, but only some people are dreamers. The non-dreamers, by far more numerous, are those who see the world as it is. Then there are the few dreamers, who see the world as are. The moon, the river, the train station, the sound of rain, and even something as mundane as porridge become something else with many layers. The world feels like an oil painting rather than a photograph, and the dreamers are forever seeing hidden colors where others just see the top shade. The nondreamers look through glasses, and the dreamers through a prism.
”
”
Juhea Kim (Beasts of a Little Land)
“
Goethe had actually performed an extraordinary set of experiments in his investigation of colors. Goethe began as Newton had, with a prism. Newton had held a prism before a light, casting the divided beam onto a white surface. Goethe held the prism to his eye and looked through it. He perceived no color at all, neither a rainbow nor individual hues. Looking at a clear white surface or a clear blue sky through the prism produced the same effect: uniformity. But if a slight spot interrupted the white surface or a cloud appeared in the sky, then he would see a burst of color. It is “the interchange of light and shadow,” Goethe concluded, that causes color. He went on to explore the way people perceive shadows cast by different sources of colored light. He used candles and pencils, mirrors and colored glass, moonlight and sunlight, crystals, liquids, and color wheels in a thorough range of experiments. For example, he lit a candle before a piece of white paper at twilight and held up a pencil. The shadow in the candlelight was a brilliant blue. Why? The white paper alone is perceived as white, either in the declining daylight or in the added light of the warmer candle. How does a shadow divide the white into a region of blue and a region of reddish-yellow? Color is “a degree of darkness,” Goethe argued, “allied to shadow.” Above all, in a more modern language, color comes from boundary conditions and singularities.
”
”
James Gleick (Chaos: Making a New Science)
“
What is beheld through glass seems glass.
The quality of what I am
Encases what I am not,
Smoothes the strange world.
I perceive it slowly,
In my time,
In my material,
As my pride,
As my possession:
The vision is love.
When life crashes like a cracked pane,
Still shall I love
Even the strange dead as the living once.
Death also sees, though distantly,
And I must trust then as now
A prism — of another kind,
Through which one may not put one's hands or touch.
”
”
Laura Riding
“
Newton discovered that if light from the sun passes through a triangular-shaped piece of glass, called a prism, it breaks up into its component colors (its spectrum) as in a rainbow.
”
”
Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time)
“
Fragments of memory rose out of forgetfulness like broke pieces of glass, reassembling themselves into a prism of images.
”
”
Niccolò Ammaniti (Anna)