Touch

Touch is one of the sensations perceived by the somatosensory system which provide people and other animals the means to directly perceive objects, qualities and phenomena within their physical environment, and interact in what is called haptic communication. The word also indicates direct physical contact whether sensory or not, and metaphorically the term is often used to refer to the influences of emotions, especially feelings of empathy or sympathy.

Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch'd from… ~ Walt Whitman

For the television show, see Touch (TV series)

Quotes

All that I touch, I leave in love. I move through this world consciously and creatively. ~ Julia Cameron

Science and mathematics
Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it,
They never touch it... ~ Robinson Jeffers

Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God. ~ Jesus

• Touch me, hold me.
  How my open arms ache!
  Try to fall for me.
  • Kate Bush, in "The Saxophone Song" on The Kick Inside (1978)

• I'm dying for you just to touch me,
  And feel all the energy rushing right up-a-me.
  L'amour looks something like you.
  • Kate Bush, in "L'Amour Looks Something Like You" on The Kick Inside (1978)

• I only want to touch.
  But I must stay and find a way
  To stop before it gets too much!
  All my barriers are going.
  It's starting to show.
  • Kate Bush, in "The Infant Kiss" on Never for Ever (1980)

• See how the flower leans instinctively
  Toward the light.
  See how the heart reaches out instinctively
  For no reason but to touch…
  • Kate Bush, in "Reaching Out" on The Sensual World (1989)

• All that I touch, I leave in love. I move through this world consciously and creatively.
  • Julia Cameron, Blessings : Prayers and Declarations for a Heartful Life (1998)

• I act creatively and consciously to actively endorse and encourage the expansion of those whose lives I touch. Believing in the goodness of each, I add to the goodness of all. We bless each other even in passing.
  • Julia Cameron, Blessings : Prayers and Declarations for a Heartful Life (1998)

• She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah
  She reaches in, and grabs right hold of your heart.
  She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah
  It takes control and slowly tears you apart.
  • Phil Collins, in "Invisible Touch", on Invisible Touch (1986)

• Science and mathematics
  Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it,
  They never touch it: consider what an explosion
  Would rock the bones of men into little white fragments and unsky the world
  If any mind for a moment touch truth.
  • Robinson Jeffers, in "The Silent Shepherds" (1958)

• Μή μου ἅπτου, οὔπω γὰρ ἀναβέβηκα πρὸς τὸν πατέρα· πορεύου δὲ πρὸς τοὺς ἀδελφούς μου καὶ εἰπὲ αὐτοῖς· Ἀναβαίνω πρὸς τὸν πατέρα μου καὶ πατέρα ὑμῶν καὶ θεόν μου καὶ θεὸν ὑμῶν.
  • Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.
    • Jesus, in Gospel of John 20:17
  • Variant translations:
  • Noli me tangere.
    • Latin Vulgate
  • Do not wish to touch me.

• It was a great thing to bring a dead body back to life, but it is a greater miracle to bring a soul dead in sin back to life. My friends have you ever felt the touch of this Jesus? Oh! that we all might feel His touch, that we might look and be healed and live.
  • Abbott Eliot Kittredge, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 416

• In the course of some experiments I conducted from 1954 through 1956 I was suspended in water for several hours at a time, and I noticed that my skin gradually became more and more sensitive to tactile stimuli and an intense sense of pleasure resulted. However, if the stimulation was carried too far it became intensely irritating, I reasoned that the dolphin is suspended in water all of his life, twenty four hours a day, and possibly had developed an intensely sensitive skin.
  • John C. Lilly, Man and Dolphin (1961), p.172; as quoted in The Sounding of the Whale: Science and Cetaceans in the Twentieth Century (2012), by D. Graham Burnett, p.580

• I’ve touched some sentences
  and have kissed some words.
  • Suman Pokhrel, in ‘While Parting’

• And the heart that is soonest awake to the flowers
  Is always the first to be touch'd by the thorns.
  • Thomas Moore, O Think Not My Spirits.
• What heart touched is what is touched
  what heart experienced is what is experienced
  where heart lived is what is lived.
  • Suman Pokhrel, I shall bid no Farewell
• Will you touch, will you mend me Christ?
  Won't you touch, will you heal me Christ?
  • Tim Rice, in Jesus Christ Superstar (1970)

• Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touch'd from,
  The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,
  This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.
  • Walt Whitman, in Leaves of Grass, Song of Myself § 24