Quotes About Observation

Tolstói rivaliza con él, en mi opinión, a la hora de detectar lo relevante y lo significativo donde, a primera vista, parece que no está.

I marvel at animal behaviour but it never surprises me. Nature has had a long time to hone its secret skills.

Women look their oldest at 3.30 p.m. on Wednesdays.

There are over 1,200 species of bat in the world and not one of them is blind. There are 4,800 species of frog in the world but only one of them goes 'ribbit'. Eight times as many people belong to the National Trust as to the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties combined. Every human being starts out life as an arsehole: it's the first part of the body to form in the womb.

To find out what color egg a hen will lay, examine her earlobes. Hens with white earlobes lay white eggs; hens with red earlobes lay brown ones.

I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.

began using that door. In 1880 Pasteur—who observed, "Chance favors the prepared mind"—

most important lesson for every man of science, not to be satisfied with loose thinking and half-proofs, not to speculate and theorize but to observe closely and carefully.

In 1881 he became the first to isolate the pneumococcus, a few weeks before Pasteur and Koch. (None of the three recognized the bacteria's full importance.) Sternberg also first observed that white blood cells engulfed bacteria, a key to understanding the immune system.

Paracelsus declared he would investigate nature "not by following that which those of old taught, but by our own observation of nature, confirmed by . . . experiment and by reasoning thereon.

In 1880 Pasteur—who observed, "Chance favors the prepared mind"—

Zelig-like penchant for being intimately involved in a series of key social and technological movements

Look behind you: What have you learned? Look around you: What is happening to others? Look above you: What does God expect of you? Look besides you: What resources are available to you?

Another mantra, which I still write in chalk on the blackboard, is "A Thousand Details Add Up to One Impression." It's actually a quote from Cary Grant.

I'd much rather watch people do what they do than talk to them across a desk.

George Sears, called Nessmuk, whose "Woodcraft," published in 1884, was the first American book on forest camping, and is written with so much wisdom, wit, and insight that it makes Henry David Thoreau seem alien, humorless, and French.

For nonfiction projects, ideas are everywhere. They just go by in a ceaseless stream.

Ideas are where you find them

Observation more than books and experience more than persons, are the prime educators.

It interests me tremendously to make copies... I started it by chance and I find it teaches me things.

My eye is educated to discover anything on the ground, as chestnuts, etc. It is probably wholesomer to look at the ground much than at the heavens.

A modest garden contains, for those who know how to look and to wait, more instruction than a library.

A great teacher never strives to explain his vision. He simply invites you to stand beside him and see for yourself.

It means to educate myself incessantly about the world around me.