Quotes About Observation

If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been due more to patient attention, than to any other talent

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

Hypotheses non fingo (Latin for "I feign no hypotheses", "I frame no hypotheses", or "I contrive no hypotheses")

One cannot simply perceive everything, to be able to perceive everything would be to tedious

The tulip and the butterfly Appear in gayer coats than I: Let me be dressed fine as I will, Flies, worms, and flowers exceed me still.

Problems arise for the introverts because they often do not look closely enough at the outer situation and, therefore, do not really see it. The extraverts often do not stop looking at the specific situation long enough to see the underlying idea.

Most people see only the side introverts present to the outer world, which is mostly their auxiliary process, their second best.

I study life by being close to it, this "native life" about which so little is known, and which is so disfigured by the descriptions of those who, not knowing it, insist on describing it anyway.

The view that the truth is one and undivided, and the same for all men everywhere at all times, whether one finds it in the pronouncements of sacred books, traditional wisdom, the authority of churches, democratic majorities, observation and experiment conducted by qualified experts, or the convictions of simple folks uncorrupted by civilisation---this view, in one form or another, is central to western thought, which stems from Plato and his disciples.

Sindoor in our partings, bindis on our forehead and dupattas drawn over our faces we sat demurely in a corner. We stole glances at each other's face and were struck by our own beauty. This made us all the more bashful.

In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions inferred by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions. This rule we must follow, that the argument of induction may not be evaded by hypotheses.

A person who walks well does not move his body from his waist up, but rather walks with his legs. Thus, his body is serene, his internal organs are not stressed, and he is not worn out. You should observe the manner in which men carry heavy loads.

These things are endless. When you try fixing your mind on the places you contact with your eyes and ears, you'll find that everything between Heaven and Earth can become the seed of some resourcefulness. There is nothing under Heaven that cannot be said to be your teacher. Everything is important to you, so search it out. When there is absolutely nothing important enough for you to search out, there will be nothing left for you to receive from mankind.

Everyone loves justice in the affairs of another.

You only have to start saying of something : 'Ah, how beautiful ! We must photograph it !' and you are already close to the view of the person who thinks that everything that is not photographed is lost, as if it never existed, and therefore in order to really live you must photograph as much as you can, and to photograph as much as you can you must either live in the most photographable way possible, or else consider photographable every moment of your life.

You walk for days among trees and among stones. Rarely does the eye light on a thing, and then only when it has recognized that thing as the sign of another thing: a print in the sand indicates the tiger's passage; a marsh announces a vein of water; the hibiscus flower, the end of winter. All the rest is silent and interchangeable; trees and stones are only what they are.

If you want to know how much darkness there is around you, you must sharpen your eyes, peering at the faint lights in the distance.

We live in a country where causes are always seen but never effects.

He was staring hard, not at his wife and me but at his daughter watching us. In his cold pupil, in the firm twist of his lips, was reflected Madame Miyagi's orgasm reflected in her daughter's gaze.

With my spyglass I can observe a woman who is reading on a terrace in the valley," I told her. "I wonder if the books she reads are calming or upsetting." "How does the woman seem to you? Calm or upset?" "Calm." "Then she reads upsetting books.

So our efforts led us to become those perfect objects of a sense whose nature nobody quite knew yet, and which later became perfect precisely through the perfection of its object, which was, in fact, us. I'm talking about sight, the eyes; only I had failed to foresee one thing: the eyes that finally opened to see us didn't belong to us but to others.

Or else, given that there is world that side of the window and world this side, perhaps the "I," the ego, is simply the window through which the world looks at the world.

Long-time inhabitant of steeples, accustomed to contemplating, from his perch on a rainspout, the expanse of roofs, he knew that the souls of cities are more substantial and more lasting than those of all their inhabitants put together.

Her friends' lips were red, their teeth white, and their tongues and gums were pink. Pink, too, were the tips of their breasts. Their eyes were aquamarine blue, cherry-black, hazel and maroon.