Quotes About Observation

Dick was always vividly conscious of his surroundings, while Collis Clay lived vaguely, the sharpest impressions dissolving upon a recording apparatus that had early atrophied, so the former talked and the latter listened, like a man sitting in a breeze.

judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person

I just think of people, she continued, whether they seem right where they are and fit into the picture. I don't mind if they don't do anything. I don't see why they should; in fact it always astonishes me when anybody does anything. You don't want to do anything? I want to sleep.

Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it.

and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at everyone, and yet to avoid all eyes. I

Es inevitablemente triste mirar con nuevos ojos cosas a las que ya hemos aplicado nuestra propia capacidad de enfoque.

It's a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people. You can hold your tongue and, moreover, you can time any little irregularity of your own so that everybody else is so blind that they don't see or care. Perhaps Daisy never went in for amour at all—and yet there's something in that voice of hers….

epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.

I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter. "I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything.

so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbour's lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires

road under Doctor Eckleburg's persistent stare.

The wind had blown off, leaving a loud, bright night, with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight, and, turning my head to watch it, I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbour's mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars.

He waited for the mask to drop off, but at the same time he did not question her right to wear it. She, on her part, was not impressed by his studied air of blase sophistication.

You're awfully good at sizing people up.' Amory denied this painfully. However, he sized up several people for her. Then they talked about hands. 'You've got awfully nice hands,' she said.

stared at it, like Kant at his church steeple, for half an hour.

there are only a few obvious things that I notice as primarily beautiful: women, spring evenings, music at night, the sea;

I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything.

It's always a delusion when I see what you don't want me to see.

Albert and I would spend hours and hours looking at them. Cleo had this big magnifying glass on his desk, and we'd find centipedes and grasshoppers and beetles and potato bugs, ants . . . and put them in a jar and look at them. They have the sweetest little faces and the cutest expressions. After we'd looked at them all we wanted to, we'd put them in the yard and let them go on about their business.

His idea of how the country was doing had been determined by the size of the butts he picked up off the sidewalk.

I was sitting on the roof, and she didn't see me. I sit on the roof a lot. People never think to look up.

Su idea de cómo iban las cosas al país se medía por el tamaño de las colillas que recogía en la calle

See what I mean? She thinks she sees all kinds of things out in the yard. Last week it was flying turtles." She walked over and picked up his dishes. "I'm not sure if it was that fall she took a while ago or just her age; she's older than God.

178 Secondo me la gente non è più felice come una volta. Non si vedono più facce contente, o almeno io non ne vedo. Quando Frances ci ha portato a fare spese, ho detto alla signora Otis: Guarda, hanno tutti quanti la faccia scura, anche i giovani.