Quotes About Observation

With me the process is much more like bird-watching than like either talking or building. I see pictures. Some of the pictures have a common flavour, almost a common smell, which groups them together. Keep quiet and watch and they will begin joining themselves up.(quoting C.S. Lewis)

The writer isn't made in a vacuum. Writers are witnesses. The reason we need writers is because we need witnesses to this terrifying century.

How can you know what is missing if you've never met it? You must know of something's existence before you can notice its absence.

I waited for her to catch up, and when I did, she slowed down, and I missed seeing the light in her hair. I never told Nadia how much I liked seeing the halo the sunlight made of her hair. Sometimes silence is a habit that hurts.

He who has never envied the vegetable has missed the human drama.

Also, that men fall into two classes--those who forget views and those who remember them, even in small rooms.

No, he is not tactful, yet have you ever noticed that there are people who do things which are most indelicate, and yet, at the same time, beautiful?

He seems to see good in every one. No one would take him for a clergyman.

Of the many things Lucy was noticing today, not the least remarkable was this: this ghoulish fashion in which respectable people will nibble after blood.

Let your ideas be second-hand, and if possible tenth-hand, for then they will be far removed from that disturbing element - direct observation. Do not learn anything about this subject of mine - the French Revolution. Learn instead what I think that Enicharmon thought Urizen thought Gutch thought Ho-Yung thought Chi-Bo-Sing thought Lafcadio Hearn thought Carlyle thought Mirabeau said about the French Revolution.

He filled a pipe with the tobacco that he had smoked for the last six years, and watched Romance wither.

That Mrs. Munt should be the first to discover the misfortune was not remarkable, for she was so interested in the flats, that she watched their every mutation with unwearying care. In theory she despised them — they took away that old-world look — they cut off the sun — flats house a flashy type of person.

Nor am I concerned with duty. I'm concerned with the characters of various people whom we know, and how, things being as they are, things may be made a little better.

El món realment és ple de coses precioses si saps com trobar-les.

Not ill. Eternally tired. He has worked very hard all his life, and noticed nothing. Those are the people who collapse when they do notice a thing.

For it is a serious thing to have been watched. We all radiate something curiously intimate when we believe ourselves to be alone.

The Yale lock he had given up at a glance. It was placed high up in the door, feet above the handle, and the chain of holes

All we're trying to do is word the world. Detail is one way we do that. We enumerate, notate, name the things seen.

Sarah Palin is living proof that you can't make a silk purse out of a horse's ass.

Listen to everything that is said, and see everything that is done. Observe the looks and countenances of those who speak, which is often a surer way of discovering the truth than from what they say. But then keep all those observations to yourself, for your own private use, and rarely communicate them to others. Observe, without being thought an observer, for otherwise people will be upon their guard before you.

The world is a country which nobody ever yet knew by description; one must travel through it one's self to be acquainted with it.

Nothing is as embarrassing as watching your boss do something you assured him couldn't be done.

In the first place, you can't see anything from a car.

The SAM sites had been bulldozed and graded then photographed by our reconnaissance aircraft. They were off-limits while under construction but could be attacked once they were completely built. To confirm that they were actually no longer under construction, the SAM site had to be observed firing a missile at you.