Quotes About Observation

An aphorism is a generalization of sorts, and our present-day writers seem more at home with the particular.

Paranoids are the only ones who notice things anymore.

Only men who are not interested in women are interested in women's clothes. Men who like women never notice what they wear.

I see only one solution," said St. Augustine. "The penguins will go to hell." "But they have no soul," observed St. Irenaeus. "It is a pity"" sighed Tertullian.

God created for you two eyes and two ears but one tongue so that you say half what you see and hear.

Be honest about what you see, get out of the way and let the story reveal itself

I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams.

I am concerned, I say, with facts which may belong to the order of pure observation, but which on each occasion present all the appearances of a signal, without our being able to say precisely which signal, and of what; facts which when I am alone permit me to enjoy unlikely complicities, which convince me of my error in occasionally presuming I stand at the helm alone.

I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occurring in dreams.... Man... is above all the plaything of his memory.

The true painter strives to paint what can only be seen through his world.

Yet had Fleming not possessed immense knowledge and an unremitting gift of observation he might not have observed the effect of the hyssop mould. 'Fortune,' remarked Pasteur, 'favors the prepared mind.

Eyes exist in the savage state.

You know everything you need to know about people when you see their faces at the moments of your greatest triumph.

They rarely discovered a star red as a distant crime or a star-fish.

If there is no snake at your feet, do not lift rocks at the side of the road.

Montalbano and Valente seemed not to have heard him, looking as if their minds were elsewhere. But in fact they were paying very close attention, like cats that, keeping their eyes closed as if asleep, are actually counting the stars.

Quando abbiamo finito sono andato a fare una passeggiata da solo, fino alla collina che anni prima in un giorno di neve io e Guido avevamo risalito per contemplare il passaggio. Ho cercato il punto preciso in cui ci eravamo fermati e ho guardato in basso come avevamo fatto allora, ed era strano vedere una casa sola dove ce n'erano state due.

Dic nobis Maria: quid vidisti in via? Ho visto trionfare le cose puttane, emarginarsi le vere.

There is no greater fool than the fool that cannot recognize another. Andreas Simic

Literature is, as Salman Rushdie has observed, 'the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everything in every possible way' (Rushdie 1990, 16).

As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.

As I grow older, I pay less attention to what people say. I just watch what they do.

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny.… " —Author and former biochemistry professor Isaac Asimov

So another thing I learn is that Sherlock Holmes always finds the right clue, and I don't.