Life & Wisdom Quote by Christina G. Rossetti

The line lands like a slammed door: evidence is useless when the listener is invested in not seeing. Rossetti stages an almost comic courtroom moment - “facts as plain as day” - then punctures it with a bitter diagnosis: blindness here is chosen, not fated. The speaker isn’t worried about the clarity of the proof; she’s naming the psychology of refusal. “Where? What?” mimics the childish, performative confusion of someone buying time, dodging implication, pretending the obvious is abstract. The final gesture, “turn away,” is the real verdict: denial is physical, an act of self-protection.

Rossetti’s intent is less to persuade than to expose the futility of persuasion under certain moral conditions. Victorian culture prized sincerity and moral vision, but it also trafficked in compartmentalization - respectable surfaces, private compromises. Against that backdrop, “blind eyes” reads as ethical critique: the problem isn’t ignorance, it’s willful unknowing. The speaker’s frustration carries a theological undertone common in Rossetti’s work: spiritual truth can be presented, even embodied, yet still rejected because acceptance would demand change.

What makes it work is the precision of its everyday rhetoric. Instead of grand pronouncements, Rossetti uses the language of argument and evasion we still recognize in politics, relationships, and faith: bring receipts, get shrugged off. The line doesn’t flatter reason; it indicts the audience’s motives. Facts aren’t defeated by counterfacts, but by the quiet power of looking away.