Lillian was reminded of the talmudic words: "We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are."
With Nin's description of the statement as "Talmudic" it afterwards began to be attributed to the Jewish Talmud, without any cited version or passage.
• Similar statements appear in You Can Negotiate Anything (1982) by Herb Cohen: "You and I do not see things as they are. We see things as we are"; and in Awareness (1992) by Anthony de Mello: "We see people and things not as they are, but as we are".
• Another similar statement without cited source is also attributed to Nin: We see the world as "we" are, not as "it" is; because it is the "I" behind the "eye" that does the seeing.
We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are.
What It Means
This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are." in the context of "The Seduction of the Minotaur (1961); the documentation of the conflicting citations available on this page (HNet) seems very thorough, and in the end attributes the quote to this novel, which includes the line:
Lillian was reminded of the talmudic words: "We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are."
With Nin's description of the statement as "Talmudic" it afterwards began to be attributed to the Jewish Talmud, without any cited version or passage.
• Similar statements appear in You Can Negotiate Anything (1982) by Herb Cohen: "You and I do not see things as they are. We see things as we are"; and in Awareness (1992) by Anthony de Mello: "We see people and things not as they are, but as we are".
• Another similar statement without cited source is also attributed to Nin: We see the world as "we" are, not as "it" is; because it is the "I" behind the "eye" that does the seeing." to mean that wisdom is timeless.
About Anaïs Nin