The article considers, on the one hand, phraseological units with the eye-components, capable of characterizing various manifestations of the psychoemotional aspect of the human person, the manner of behavior and the peculiarities of relations between people. In the field of our attention is the nature of the changes observed in the frequency of idioms usage in the speech, and especially in the speech of writers, all range of the used phraseological units, the main vectors of their comprehension. Modern discourse - mostly fragments of the novels and stories - shows the variety of possibilities for using the characteristics of the eyes as a pair organ, as an important attribute of the “decoration” of the face, as a “mirror” capable of hiding / revealing the person's intentions and thoughts, reflecting mental activity and intellectual abilities or their absence and so on. At the same time for some writers, the reception of the eyes “life” is very important - and not only for creating memorable portraits of characters (with a mention of color, shape and size of the eyes), but also to show a peculiar manner of behavior, character traits, physical or mental state.