Quotes About Observation

Marvelous wonders don't have to happen of a sudden, the way they do in the Arabian Nights. They can also take a long time, like crystals growing, or minds changing, or leaves turning. The trick is to keep an eye peeled, so they don't slip by unappreciated.

My friend, that, as anyone can see, is not a hotel; it's a depot.

Sometimes I looked at them and sometimes they looked at me, but rarely did we look at one another. It was too naked and painful. More was revealed in a human face than a human being can bear, face-to-face.

It means this is the only way we ever see ourselves; looking out, at others, reflected through cobwebs from an attic window . . .

This gives the feeling, vis-à-vis time, that you are not moving through time, but rather time is moving through you (that is, through your awareness), with your being not moving at all. It's like sitting in a movie theater and, without moving from your seat, having the entire scenery move past you (and if the you is "headless," then in you).

On a day like this, I can't imagine anything better that might happen in a person's life than for them to start paying attention to birds—to become aware of this magical world that exists all around us, unnoticed by many but totally captivating for those who know its secrets. This kind of spring day, with its bountiful myriads of colorful sprites just arrived from tropical shores, has to be one of the greatest gifts of life on Earth.

The list total isn't important, but the birds themselves are important. Every bird you see. So the list is just a frivolous incentive for birding, but the birding itself is worthwhile.

Birds are beautiful. After a lifetime of study I still love to look at them and listen to them, even the common species.

Photography is the power of observation, not the application of technology.

There seems to be one quality of mind which seems to be of special and extreme advantage in leading him to make discoveries. It was the power of never letting exceptions go unnoticed.

The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking.

Laughter is a sense of proportion and a power of seeing yourself from the outside.

We do not believe in the educative power of words and commands alone, but seek cautiously, and almost without the child's knowing it, to guide his natural activity.

Photography has the power to undo your assumptions about the world.

He has the vocal modulation of a railway-station announcer, the expressive power of a fence-post and the charisma of a week-old head of lettuce.

He can run, steal bases, throw, hit for average, and hit with power like I've never seen. Just don't put him at shortstop.

I would say invisibility would be sort of a fun power to have just to see what it was like to move through the world and not be looked at.

Inanimate objects sometimes appear endowed with a strange power of sight. A statue notices, a tower watches, the face of an edifice contemplates.

The look of a king is itself a deed.

One can hear all that's going on in the street. Which means that from the street one can hear what's going on in this house.

If you don't know how to look, you'll end up putting down the wrong things, which only dilutes or cancels the power of your artwork.

Most people who travel look only at what they are directed to look at. Great is the power of the guidebook maker, however ignorant.

The first day at the power plant I found myself photographing some steam vents on the roof of the structure. And I remember consciously thinking that they were just like trees but they were metal.

... Their power to see environments as they really are.