Quotes About Observation

Why this lack of penetration as to their personal affairs in men whose business it is to penetrate all things? Perhaps the mind cannot be complete at all points; perhaps artists of every kind live too much in the present moment to study the future; perhaps they are too observant of the ridiculous to notice snares, or they may believe that none would dare to lay a snare for such as they.

The alterations effected at La Baudraye made everybody eager to see the young mistress, all the more so because Dinah would never show herself, nor receive any company, before she felt quite settled in her home and had thoroughly studied the inhabitants, and, above all, her taciturn husband.

he began to weep on his own account. Observing this grief, the abbe dried his pupil's tears, bidding him observe that the good woman took her snuff most offensively, and was becoming so ugly and deaf and tedious that he ought to return thanks for her death.

Egész Párizs odagy?lik hozzá, ahogy a cs?cselék lepi el a Grève teret, ha kivégzés készül. Azért mennek oda, hogy lássák, tudja-e leplezni fájdalmát ez az asszony, tud-e szépen meghalni. Nem rémes?

The elder, Mademoiselle Virginie, was the very image of her mother. Madame Guillaume, daughter of the Sieur Chevrel, sat so upright in the stool behind her desk, that more than once she had heard some wag bet that she was a stuffed figure.

And lastly, here in Paris there is a spirit which you breathe in the air; it infuses the least details, every literary creation bears traces of its influence. You learn more by talk in a cafe, or at a theatre, in one half hour, than you would learn in ten years in the provinces. Here, in truth, wherever you go, there is always something to see, something to learn, some comparison to make.

Mademoiselle de Watteville, with a little flush of pride in thinking of the success of her Belvedere, discerned in herself a vast superiority over every one about her. No one guessed that a little girl, supposed to be a witless goose, had simply made up her mind to get a closer view of the lawyer Savaron's private study.

Paris is a queer place," said Lucien; it seemed to him that he saw self-interest squatting in every corner.

The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play the violin.

If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye.

Me, I trust people who show you what freaks they are. It's the ones who blend in that ya gotta watch out for.

All the world over we are very conscious of the trees in spring, and watch with delight how the network of twigs on the wych-elms is becoming spangled with tiny puce flowers, like little beetles caught in a spider's web, and how little lemon-colored buds are studding the thorn. While as to the long red-gold buds of the horse-chestnuts — they come bursting out with a sort of a visual bang. And now the beech is hatching its tiny perfectly-formed leaves

For however handsome and merry may be the face, however rich may be the background, in the first rough sketch of each portrait, yet with every added stroke of the brush, with every tiny readjustment of the "values," with every modification of the chiaroscuro, the eyes looking out at you grow more disquieting?

And he would gaze in terror at his furniture, his walls, his pictures - what strange scene might they one day witness, what awful experience might he one day have in their presence?

But, after these days of nightmare, there was something reassuring in discovering that there were still people in the world sane enough, and with quiet enough minds, to be put out by the holes in a pair of worsted stockings.

Have you ever noticed a little child of three or four walking hand in hand with its father through the streets? It is almost as if the two were walking in time to perfectly different tunes. Indeed, though they hold each other's hand, they might be walking on different planets … each seeing and hearing entirely different things.

the sun would set, and then our riders could watch the actual process of colour fading from the world. Was that tree still really green, or was it only that they were remembering how a few seconds ago it had been green?

Huizen werden tot het Stille Volk gerekend. Muren hebben oren, maar geen tong. Huizen, bomen en doden zwijgen als het graf.

You can tell a lot about a person's character over the phone. Not everything, but a lot. It's not always what they say but what they don't say that's the most telling,

A pauper in the midst of wealth.

Mr. [Thomas] Gray the poet has often observed to me that if a man were to form a Book of what he had seen and heard himself it must in whatever hands prove a most useful and entertaining one.

A bystander often sees more of the game than those that play

The farther I travel, the less I wonder at anything: a few days reconcile one to a new spot, or an unseen custom; and men are so much the same everywhere, that one scare perceives a change in situation.

The most remarkable thing I have observed since I came abroad, is, that there are no people so obviously mad as the English.