Quotes About Observation

It often happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves.

A woman will flirt with anybody in the world as long as other people are looking on.

The wind shook some blossoms from the trees, and the heavy lilac blooms, with their clustering stars, moved to and fro in the languid air. A grasshopper began to chirp by the wall, and like a blue thread a long, thin dragonfly floated past on its brown gauze wings. Lord Henry felt as if he could hear Basil Hallward's heart beating, and wondered what was coming.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

As I lounged in the Park, or strolled down Piccadilly, I used to look at everyone who passed me, and wonder, with mad curiosity, what sort of lives they led. some of them fascinated me. Others filled me with terror.

Women are wonderfully practical,' murmured Lord Henry, 'much more practical than we are. In situations of that kind we often forget to say anything about marriage, and they always remind us.

My first impressions of people are invariably right.

When I see a spade I call it a spade. I'm glad to say I have never seen a spade!

He was like a common gardener walking with a rose.

The birds did not understand a single word of what he was saying, but that made no matter, for they put their heads on one side, and looked wise, which is quite as good as understanding a thing, and very much easier.

By the way, is there any difference between 'grey' and 'gray'? I believe there is, but I don't know what it is. In one place in the poem Smithers suggests 'gray'. In others he leaves 'grey'. Perhaps he is seeing red. I believe they are sympathetic colours in spectroscope investigations.

The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play.

You cut life to pieces with your epigrams.

He watched it with that strange interest in trivial things that we try to develop when things of high import make us afriad.

All I want now is to look at life. You may come and look at it with me, if you care to

People are so annoying. All my pianists look exactly like poets; and all my poets look exactly like pianists.

I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky

The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit at their ease and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of defeat. They live as we all should live—undisturbed, indifferent, and without disquiet. They neither bring ruin upon others, nor ever receive it from alien hands.

I had been foolish in imagining that I had seen anything in it, more than that you were extremely good looking, and that I could paint.

I don't see anybody here to-night whom one could possibly call a serious purpose.

To become the spectator of one's own life, as Harry says, is to escape the suffering of life. I

É o espectador, e não a vida, que a arte, na verdade, espelha.

Suddenly we find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators

For nearly twenty minutes, neither of the men spoke. A fly buzzed noisily about the room, and the ticking of the clock was like the beat of a hammer.