Quotes About Observation

I do not assert that the ostensible end, or even that the secret aim, of American parties is to promote the rule of aristocracy or democracy in the country; but I affirm that aristocratic or democratic passions may easily be detected at the bottom of all parties, and that, although they escape a superficial observation, they are the main point and the very soul of every faction in the United States.

Nothing is more striking to an European traveller in the United States than the absence of what we term the Government, or the Administration.

The more I advanced in the study of American society, the more I perceived that the equality of conditions is the fundamental fact from which all others seem to be derived, and the central point at which all my observations constantly terminated.

I soon perceived that the influence of this fact

Religious insanity is very common in the United States.

Amongst the novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of conditions.

Looking back century by century to remotest Antiquity, I see nothing that resembles what I see before me.

Lorsque les Républiques américaines commenceront à dégénérer, je crois qu'on pourra aisément le reconnaître: il suffira de voir si le nombre des jugements politiques augmente.

Exceptional physical conditions, private interest, religion, in that it puts a brake on the inordinate taste for material wealth—these are, from the first weeks of the American journey, the three elements that profoundly marked Tocqueville's arguments.

The observer who is desirous of forming an opinion on the state of instruction amongst the Anglo-Americans must consider the same object from two different points of view. If he only singles out the learned, he will be astonished to find how rare they are; but if he counts the ignorant, the American people will appear to be the most enlightened community in the world.

we limit ourselves to normal cases of mutual influence, we find that those people are most capable of being influenced who are most amenable to reason and logic, those whose social feeling has been least distorted. On the contrary, those who thirst for superiority and desire domination are very difficult to influence. Observation teaches us this fact every day.

Always be reading something, he said. Even when we're not physically reading. How else will we read the world? Think of it as a constant.

There is a kind of poetry, bad and good, in everything, everywhere we look.

What did you see?' he asked then. Nothing,' I told him. 'Because nothing is what you wanted me to see, though the man on the table might disagree.

My mother was teaching me that the inside of something was not necessarily its outside. Always look carefully, she told me. Look with more than your eyes.

But I was not a mouse. In the fields where I walked, I was much more interested in the actions of the hawks.

She has an eye for tragedy and sorrow. Show her a rose and she'll see only the wasp in the center of the bloom.

If this was what angels observed when they gazed upon our world, how we might murder each other and cause one another agony, then I pitied them as I pitied no others.

I had never before noticed that rain contained every color within itself, green as the fields, blue as heaven, white as a lamb, yellow as my daughter's hair.

Even when you kept your eyes wide open, the world would surprise you.

It had been better to have viewed him from a distance, so that his flaws were left unseen.

Why don't you prepare the tea for us," Madame Cohen suggested. This was a part of the interview. People did background checks and extensive questionnaires, but you could tell a great deal more about someone from the way they readied a pot of tea.

Claire's dog and the cat Elv had rescued from the river had a strange alliance. When they thought no one was at home, they sat together on the couch by the window, peering out at the courtyard. As soon as the key turned in the door, they jumped off the couch so that no one would see their attachment. Dogs and cats had their secrets too.

It was then that Nathaniel truly began to appreciate the years he had spent alone in his room, the distance from other people that had given him the ability to observe and to feel what another might had also made him a writer.