Quotes About Observation

We always hit the bookstores & libraries in every city and small town, and I learned to tell a lot about a place by the kinds of books that were carried, or the attention given a library. The best I had ever seen was in NYC. The worst in Paoli, Indiana.

Hence when lightning fires the arch of heaven, and thunders rock the ground, when furious whirlwinds rend the howling air, and ocean, groaning from his lowest bed, heaves his tempestuous billows to the sky; amid the mighty uproar, while below the nations tremble, Shakespeare looks abroad from some high cliff, superior, and enjoys the elemental war.

Prayer turns us into first-class noticers. It helps us see what God wants us to notice. The more you pray, the more you notice; the less you pray, the less you notice. It's as simple as that. Let me explain how

It's not science fiction; it's fact. It's not a script; it's Scripture. It's not an accident; it's a divine appointment. Can I make a simple observation? Notice who's next to you! What you think is a seat assignment might be a divine assignment. The person two inches away may change your destiny, or you might change theirs!

It's one of those birds which very helpfully calls out its own name when it is flying. "Kea! Kea! Kea!" Birdwatchers love them for that. It would be great if the Pallas's grasshopper warbler would learn the same trick. Make warbler identification a lot easier.

But in a still life, there is no end to our looking, which has become allied with the gaze of the painter; we look in and in, to the world of things, in their ambiance of cool or warm light, in and in, as long as we can stand to look, as long as we take pleasure in looking.

Say what you see and you experience yourself through your style of seeing and saying.

objective perspective

Language, a great poem in and of itself, is all around us. We live in the lap of enormous wonder, but how rarely do most of us look up and smile in gratitude and pleasure?

Browning calls the poet God's spy and that's a complimentary way of putting it. We could say, more neutrally, that writers are almost always spies and have the kinds of lives that spying creates. They are constantly collecting information, making mental notes.

Meditation is not a means of forgetting the ego; it is a method of using the ego to observe and tame its own manifestations.

A traveller learns more than a passenger.

WILL'S RULES FOR LIVING #10: WHEN VISITING A FOREIGN LAND, IT IS ALWAYS WISE TO OBSERVE AND ABIDE BY THE CUSTOMS OF THE LOCAL CULTURE. UNLESS THEY'RE TRYING TO EAT YOU.

Actually, science has determined that a flipped coin is not strictly a fifty-fifty proposition," said Ajay. "Surprisingly, the coin will return to whichever side you're holding faceup in your hand before it is flipped, exactly fifty-one percent of the time.

Beware the inveterate punster, Doyle, it's a sure sign of brewing mental disturbance.

Sometimes an owl is just an owl.

What people say and do in the most innocent situations can speak volumes about their real selves.

Yet it is your insight into people that gives you the ability to predict the future

believe you can learn almost everything you need to know—and more than other people would like you to know—simply by watching and listening, keeping your eyes peeled, your ears open. And your mouth closed.

The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.

And then I thought that I had to be like Sherlock Holmes and I had to detach my mind at will to a remarkable degree so that I did not notice how much it was hurting inside my head.

Being clever was when you looked at how things were and used the evidence to work out something new.

Travel is like knowledge. The more you see, the more you know you haven't seen.

In a vacuum they both drop at the same rate.