Quotes About Observation

The cafeteria made him feel like an observer rather than a participant in the high school experience.

Oh, mankind, race of crocodiles! How well I recognize you down there, and how worthy you are of yourselves!

It's often been said that "seeing is believing", but in many cases, the reverse is also true. Believing results in seeing.

If you Love all Life you observe, you will observe all Life will Love.

Nature will teach us many lessons if we take the time to visit her classroom.

An ironic, snarky, or perky tone can be used to avoid true intimacy with readers. Literary writing isn't necessarily intimate, either. A life "closely observed" doesn't mean we'll care about it.

I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes. After that I liked jazz music. Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way. I used to not like God because God didn't resolve. But that was before any of this happened.

sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself...

She had an understanding about people, and compassion—she didn't talk about it, but you heard how she spoke and saw how she behaved.

Purposes are deduced from behavior, not from rhetoric or stated goals.

If information-based relationships are hard to see, functions or purposes are even harder. A system's function or purpose is not necessarily spoken, written, or expressed explicitly, except through the operation of the system. The best way to deduce the system's purpose is to watch for a while to see how the system behaves.

we don't talk about what we see; we see only what we can talk about

The best way to deduce the system's purpose is to watch for a while to see how the system behaves.

Before you disturb the system in any way, watch how it behaves.

When our small research group moved from MIT to Dartmouth College years ago, one of the Dartmouth engineering professors watched us in seminars for a while, and then dropped by our offices. "You people are different," he said. "You ask different kinds of questions. You see things I don't see. Somehow you come at the world in a different way. How? Why?

You can see some things through the lens of the human eye, other things through the lens of a microscope, others through the lens of a telescope, and still others through the lens of systems theory. Everything seen through each kind of lens is actually there. Each way of seeing allows our knowledge of the wondrous world in which we live to become a little more complete.

Vision involves more than just seeing or being shown.

Perhaps it's rude to notice when a wizard does something strange.

Gone was the cream and rose complexion he'd remembered. She was tan, which changed everything. What with the loose, wild hair, it lent an almost... heathenish edge, giving her normally pretty blue gaze a somewhat piercing, laser-like quality. Conversely, though she'd always been a sturdy thing, lithe, but strong and solid, at the moment, she looked... enveloped by the chef coat she wore, as if it were a size too big, or she'd suddenly grown smaller.

His clothing marked him as Italian. The cadence of his speech announced that he was Venetian. His eyes were all policeman.

You proved your skill and exposed their deceit without uttering a single word of accusation. Brilliant!

If trees could speak they wouldn't

Sometimes I think what I write is funny in its quiet way.

Everybody's a teacher if you listen.