Visions

This page is about the religious experience. For the ability to see things, see Vision.

Visions are inspirational renderings in mysticism and spirituality, generally of a future state and/or of a supernatural being and are believed (by followers of certain religions) to come from a deity, sometimes directly or indirectly via prophets, and serve to inspire or prod believers as part of a revelation or an epiphany. Some take the word vision to be synonymous with apparitional experience. Religious visions are generally categorized as miracles and or enigmatic happenings.

Quotes

• The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme!
  The young men's vision, and the old men's dream!
  • John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel (1681), Part I, line 238.

• It is a dream, sweet child! a waking dream,
  A blissful certainty, a vision bright,
  Of that rare happiness, which even on earth
  Heaven gives to those it loves.
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Spanish Student (1843), Act III, scene 5.

• Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimæras dire.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book II, line 628.

• O visions ill foreseen! Better had I
  Liv'd ignorant of future, so had borne
  My part of evil only.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book XI, line 763.

• Hence the fool's paradise, the statesman's scheme,
  The air-built castle, and the golden dream,
  The maid's romantic wish, the chemist's flame,
  And poet's vision of eternal fame.
  • Alexander Pope, Dunciad (1813), Book III, line 9.

• Our revels now are ended. These, our actors,
  As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
  Are melted into air, into thin air;
  And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
  The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
  The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
  Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
  And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
  Leave not a rack behind.
  • William Shakespeare, The Tempest (c. 1610-1612), Act IV, scene 1, line 148.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 839-40.

• Circa beatitudinem perfectam, quæ in Dei visione consistit.
  • Concerning perfect blessedness which consists in a vision of God.
  • Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologie. Probably the origin of the phrase "beatific vision".

• And like a passing thought, she fled
  In light away.
  • Robert Burns, The Vision, last lines.

• So little distant dangers seem:
  So we mistake the future's face,
  Ey'd thro' Hope's deluding glass;
  As yon summits soft and fair,
  Clad in colours of the air,
  Which to those who journey near,
  Barren, brown, and rough appear.
  • John Dyer, Gronger Hill, line 884.

• Visions of glory, spare my aching sight!

Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul.

• • Thomas Gray, The Bard, III. 1, line 11.

• I wonder if ever a song was sung but the singer's heart sang sweeter!
  I wonder if ever a rhyme was rung but the thought surpassed the meter!
  I wonder if ever a sculptor wrought till the cold stone echoed his ardent thought!
  Or, if ever a painter with light and shade the dream of his inmost heart portrayed!
  • James C. Harvey, Incompleteness.

• I have multiplied visions, and used similitudes.
  • Hosea, XII. 10.

• Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
  Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
  And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
  Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
  An angel, writing in a book of gold;
  Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
  And to the presence in the room he said—
  "What writest thou?" The Vision raised its head,
  And, with a look made all of sweet accord,
  Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."
  • Leigh Hunt, Abou Ben Adhem and the Angel.

• And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.
  • Joel, II. 28. Acts, II. 17.

• An angel stood and met my gaze,
  Through the low doorway of my tent;
  The tent is struck, the vision stays;
  I only know she came and went.
  • James Russell Lowell, She Came and Went.

• My thoughts by night are often filled
  With visions false as fair:
  For in the past alone, I build
  My castles in the air.
  • Thomas Love Peacock, Castles in the Air, Stanza 1.

• Where there is no vision, the people perish.
  • Proverbs, XXIX. 18.

• Hence, dear delusion, sweet enchantment hence!
  • Horace and James Smith, Rejected Addresses, An Address without a Phœnix. By "S.T.P." (Not an imitation. Initials used to puzzle critics).

• But shapes that come not at an earthly call,
  Will not depart when mortal voices bid.
  • William Wordsworth, Dion, V.

• Fond man! the vision of a moment made!
  Dream of a dream! and shadow of a shade!
  • Edward Young, Paraphrase on Part of the Book of Job, line 187. Shadow of a shade is found in the prologue of Nobody and Somebody, a play acted by the servants of Queen Elizabeth. Not the shadow of the shade of history said by Paul Bourget—On Cœur de Femme, p. 186. (Ed. 1890).