Quotes About Observation

Reginald Hill

Buses and trains both set you thinking, but not in the same way. Trains give you a rhythm, sent you into dreams, cut you off from reality. Buses were always stopping and starting; traffic, road-junctions, lights; and of course, bus-stops. The world you passed through was observable. And real. So was the world inside your head. Buses were good places to worry on.

Choose only one master — Nature.

De regen op de ruit als de wind schuin staat de lampen die zwaaien boven de tramrails simpele dingen wil ik zien en horen zonder de poespas van de betekenislaag.

All that I have, up to this moment, accepted as possessed of the highest truth and certainty, I received either from or through the senses. I observed, however, that these sometimes misled us; and it is the part of prudence not to place absolute confidence in that by which we have even once been deceived.

To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.

Nature teaches me that so many other bodies exist around mine of which some are to be avoided, some sought after.

thought I had said enough respecting them to show that there is nothing observable in the heavens or stars of our system that must not, or at least may not appear precisely alike in those of the system which I described.

Et pour nous, en voyant des choses dans lesquelles, selon certains sens, nous ne remarquons point de limites, nous n'assurerons pas pour cela qu'elles soient infinies, mais nous les estimerons seulement indéfinies

During the nine subsequent years, I did nothing but roam from one place to another, desirous of being a spectator rather than an actor in the plays exhibited on the theater of the world.

les psychologues, par exemple, limitent ordinairement leurs observations à un seul type d'humanité, l'Occidental moderne, et ils étendent abusivement les résultats ainsi obtenus jusqu'à prétendre en faire, sans exception, des caractères de l'homme en général.

Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.

Ma eccola lì, la gente sempre pronta a disapprovare, seduta al ristorante a sgranocchiare ossicini.

The slowest-talking man I know tends to loom in elevator doors, in hallways, booths, and other narrow places.

De werkelijkheid bestaat pas, als je je er iets van aantrekt. Je moet de werkelijkheid de kans niet geven, te bestaan.

She stopped by an empty field, the soil abandoned, gone to mustard weed and grass. Lush bundles of crimson clover lined the fence. At the far end was a cluster of trees. As always, her eyes sought movement at the edge of the woods.

When Jesus walked among humankind there was a certain simplicity to being his disciple. Primarily it meant to go with him, in an attitude of observation, study, obedience, and imitation. There were no correspondence courses. One knew what to do and what it would cost.

but I had long since learned from Wolfe that the corner the light doesn't reach is the one the dime rolled to.

I had been wrong about him Tuesday when I figured that he had always been fifty years old and always would be. He had already put on at least five years, and he had shrunk. Instead of tagging him a neat little squirt I would now call him a magnified beetle.

Nevertheless, it was not necessary to assume, as Wolfe had in the case of Viola Duday, that if he had killed Priscilla Eads he had probably done so by contrivance and not by perpetration. In spite of his pure white hair and wrinkled old skin, I would have bet, from the way he looked and moved and held his shoulders and head, that he could still have chinned himself up to five or six times.

What that bird would have done with a couple of Martinis under his fur would have been something to watch from an airplane.

Saul Panzer stood facing the cast, not the audience. There is nothing impressive about Saul. He is undersized, his nose and ears are too big, and his shoulders slant. With Saul a thousand wrongdoers had made the mistake of believing what they saw. He spoke. "I believe this is the way it was Thursday evening when Mr. Wolfe entered. Does anyone disagree?

He looked at her. That was the first time I had seen him give her a direct and explicit look, and, since she was just off the line from him to me, I had a good view of it. It demolished one detail of his exposition—the claim that a man of his training and temperament couldn't possibly commit a murder. His look at her was perfect for a guy about to put a cord around a neck and pull tight. It was just one swift, ugly flash, and then he returned to Wolfe.

To anyone seeing him but not knowing him, Saul Panzer was nothing but a little guy with a big nose who never quite caught up with his shaving.