Quotes About Observation

Eighth Doctor: I love humans. Always seeing patterns in things that aren't there.

Not every person with their eyes closed is asleep, and not every person with their eyes open can see.

Blanchet himself turned his attention to the rivers, establishing observation posts on the Chagres, Trinidad, Obispo, and the Río Grande; these were equipped with fluviographs, which confirmed the challenge that the rainy season would bring to the successful construction and running of the canal, with rivers rising 20 feet in as many hours and their rate of discharge increasing overnight from 3,000 to over 60,000 cubic feet per second. By

The true physician should have a therapeutic eye, which notices disease whenever it appears, not just when the time clock is running

Understanding that the essential nature of consciousness is neutral shows us that it is possible to change our mental universe. We can transform the content of our thoughts and experiences. The neutral and luminous background of our consciousness provides us with the space we need to observe mental events rather than being at their mercy. We then also have the space we need to create the conditions necessary to transform these mental events.

Try to rest in the present moment, free of concepts. Watch the nature of the gap between thoughts, which is free from mental constructs. Gradually extend the interval between the disappearance of one thought and the emergence of the next. Remain in a state of simplicity that is free of mental constructs, yet perfectly aware; beyond effort, yet alert and mindful. As you thus observe the wellspring of thoughts, it is possible to break their endless proliferation.

Instead of turning your attention to the "target," simply stare attentively at the emotion itself. You will see that it cannot sustain itself and soon runs out of steam.

Understanding that the essential nature of consciousness is neutral permits us to understand that it is possible to change our mental universe. We can transform the content of our thoughts and experiences. The neutral and luminous background of our consciousness provides us with the space we need to observe mental events, rather than being at their mercy, and then to create the conditions necessary to transform them.

One can paint a moment or time of day. Even the feeling of a moment. It is what Impressionism is--the painting of a moment. But how does one paint movement itself? Paint time passing? [Édouard Manet]

I believe he meant that my little ink sketch was a good approximation of reality--which is exactly how we appraise art when we are young. We want our horses to look like living beings, a loaf of bread to look edible, and a woman's dress to look like satin. We want a painting or a sketch of a thing to replicate it faithfully. The closer a work of art is to reality, the greater the power of the artist. All of that is perfectly acceptable and right--in children. [Édouard Manet]

From above, start with the privileged view.

I followed your footsteps," he said, in answer to the unspoken question. "Snow makes it easy." I had been tracked, like a bear. "Sorry to make you go to all that trouble," I said. "I didn't have to go that far, really. You're about three streets over. You just kept going in loops." A really inept bear.

I discover vision, not as a "thinking about seeing," to use Descartes expression, but as a gaze at grips with a visible world, and that is why for me there can be another's gaze.

Nothing is more difficult than to know precisely what we see.

Activity = passivity.

One cannot even say that one believes in the perception of the real. Belief only intervenes after a preexisting doubt, and thus it is the imaginary that we truly believe in, because our beliefs lack some support. I do not believe in this chair I see: the chair is simply there, that is all. Perception does not await proof in order to grasp an object; it is prior to careful observation. In this sense, perception, like the imagination, precedes all premises.

The relation to the world, such as it tirelessly announces itself within us, is not something that analysis might clarify: philosophy can simply place it before our eyes and invite us to take notice.

True philosophy entails relearning to see the world anew.

All observation is already an intervention. One cannot experiment or observe without changing something in the subject of inquiry.

It is not we who perceive, it is the thing that perceives itself yonder.

Through other eyes we are for ourselves fully visible.

Someone will say: you explain nothing, you observe. But to explain is always: to bring Nature back to God or to bring it back to the spectacle of man—not to see nature. In reality, what one has to learn is that being is that,it is precisely not to explain.

The universe is defined not by what one sees, what one says, but precisely by what one does not see, precisely what one does not say: by the difference between the one and the other.

If objects must never show me more than one of their sides, then this is because I myself am in a certain place from which I can see them, but which I cannot see.