“The late Spanish philosopher Jos’ Ortega y Gasset . . . felt that the eye, with its lids and sockets, its iris and pupil, was equivalent to a ‘whole theatre with its stage and actors.’

The eye muscles, Ortega said, are marvelously subtle and because of this every glance is minutely differentiated from every other glance. There are so many different looks that it is nearly impossible to name them, but he cited, ‘the look that lasts but an instant and the insistent look; the look that slips over the surface of the thing looked at and the look that grips it like a hook; the direct look and the oblique look whose extreme form has its own name, ‘looking out of the corner of one’s eye.’’”

—Julius Fast, Body Language, 1970.