Quotes About Observation

I said to Mum, "Vati is very very like David Beckham, isn't he? Apart from being porky, heavily bearded and crap at football.

I suppose this is what life will be like for me—never having a boyfriend, always just living through others

down quickly. I hope he didn't see me because I had an

what planet did you parachute in from

Good art means the ability of any one man to pin down in some permanent and intelligible medium a sort of idea of what he sees in Nature that nobody else sees. In other words, to make the other fellow grasp, through skilled selective care in interpretative reproduction or symbolism, some inkling of what only the artist himself could possibly see in the actual objective scene itself.

Though not a participant in the Business of life; I am, like the character of Addison and Steele, an impartial (or more or less impartial) Spectator, who finds not a little recreation in watching the antics of those strange and puny puppets called men.

My! ain't men blinder'n moles?

One officer's response to du Picq stated quite frankly that "a good many soldiers fired into the air at long distances," while another observed that "a certain number of our soldiers fired almost in the air, without aiming, seeming to want to stun themselves, to become drunk on rifle fire during this gripping crisis.

Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.

But what bothers me is that I only accidentally noticed them. What else have I missed? How many times in my life have I been, so to speak, on the back porch, not the front porch? What would have been said to me that I failed to hear? What love might there have been that I didn't feel?

I love houses, all the things they tell me, so that's one reason. I don't mind working as a cleaning woman. It's just like reading a book.

What if our bodies were transparent, like a washing machine window? How wondrous to watch ourselves. Joggers would job even harder, blood pumping away. Lovers would love more. God damn! Look at that old semen go! Diets would improve-- kiwi fruit and strawberries, borscht with sour cream.

Useimmat mainarit olivat suomalaisia, ja töistä tultuaan he menivät suihkuun ja saunaan. Saunan edessä oli puinen karsina, ja talvella he juoksivat ulos ja kieriskelivät lumessa. Ensin me tirkistelimme aidanraosta ja hihittelimme miesten sinisiä kaluja ja palleja, mutta sitten me nauroimme ääneen niin kuin hekin, silkasta riemusta, kun oli lunta ja sininen, sininen taivas.

The bus is late. Cars drive by. Rich people n cars never look at people on the street, at all. Poor ones always do ... in fact it sometimes seems they're just driving around, looking at people on the street. I've done that. Poor people wait a lot. Welfare, unemployment lines, laundromats, phone booths, emergency rooms, jails, etc.

Y si nuestro cuerpo fuera transparente, como la puerta de una lavadora? Qué prodigio observarnos por dentro. Los deportistas correrían con más ahínco, bombeando sangre a toda máquina. Los amantes harían más el amor. ¡Hostia! ¡Mira esa descarga de semen! Las dietas mejorarían: kiwi y fresas, remolacha cocida con crema agria. (Del cuento Temps perdu)

La mayoría de la gente no se fija en nada, y si se fija, no le importa.

Once when he [Demonax, a supposed Cynic sage] came upon two uncouth philosophers inquiring and wrangling with one another--one of them putting absurd questions, the other answering perfectly irrelevantly--he said "Don't you think, my friends, that one of these guys is milking a he-goat and the other putting a sieve underneath it?

So it is more useful to watch a man in times of peril, and in adversity to discern what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off, reality remains.

Pleasant it is, when over a great sea the winds trouble the waters, to gaze from shore upon another's great tribulation; not because any man's troubles are a delectable joy, but because to perceive you are free of them yourself is pleasant.

At this stage you must admit that whatever is seen to be sentient is nevertheless composed of atoms that are insentient. The phenomena open to our observation so not contradict this conclusion or conflict with it. Rather they lead us by the hand and compel us to believe that the animate is born, as I maintain, of the insentient.

It is more useful to watch a man in times of peril, and in adversity to discern what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off, reality remains.

Travel is the only context in which some people ever look around. If we spent half the energy looking at our own neighborhoods, we'd probably learn twice as much.

It is only the blind eye of the adult that finds the familiar uninteresting.

We know the man by the object[.] Even the moon, the sun, stars, … [t]hat he sees them is an evidence of his own nature.