"Seeing is not believing -- it is only seeing" (click "read more" for context)
"Seeing is not believing -- it is only seeing" George MacDonald (The Princess and the Goblin) 1872 The quote from George MacDonald — "Seeing is not believing — it is only seeing" — is spot-on and beautiful. In the story, it's spoken by Irene's great-great-grandmother to explain why Curdie (a pragmatic, skeptical miner boy) can't yet grasp or trust the spiritual realities Irene experiences, even after witnessing some of them. He sees fragments but lacks the faith or openness to believe them as true. The grandmother notes that mere sight often leads people to dismiss or rationalize away what doesn't fit their expectations — they'd "rub their eyes, forget the half they saw, and call the other half nonsense." The eyes transmit astonishingly little of ultimate reality. They weren't built to reveal the nature of consciousness, the divine, or the fabric of existence. For that, something more is required: an inner turning, faith, contemp...