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Quotes About Observation

would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot.' I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting.
~ Joseph Conrad
There is something after all in the world allowing one man to steal a horse while another must not look at a halter. Steal a horse straight out. Very well. He has done it. Perhaps he can ride. But there is a way of looking at a halter that would provoke the most charitable of saints into a kick.
~ Joseph Conrad
leading questions as to my acquaintances in the sepulchral city, and so on. His little eyes glittered
~ Joseph Conrad
Two women, one fat and the other slim, sat on straw-bottomed chairs, knitting black wool. The slim one got up and walked straight at me—still knitting with downcast eyes—and only just as I began to think of getting out of her way, as you would for a somnambulist, stood still, and looked up. Her dress was as plain as an umbrella-cover, and she turned round without a word and preceded me into a waiting-room.
~ Joseph Conrad
I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines.
~ Joseph Conrad
I observed with assumed innocence that no man was safe from trouble in this world.
~ Joseph Conrad
I suppose I have done a certain amount of harm, since I allowed myself to be tempted into action. It seemed innocent enough, but all action is bound to be harmful. It is devilish. That is why this world is evil upon the whole. But I have done with it! I shall never lift a little finger again. At one time I thought that intelligent observation of facts was the best way of cheating the time which is allotted to us whether we want it or not; but now I, have done with observation, too.
~ Joseph Conrad
smoke came out of the cliff, and that was all. No change appeared on the face of the rock. They were building a railway. The cliff was not
~ Joseph Conrad
agent was lying flushed and insensible; the other, bent over his books, was making correct entries of perfectly correct transactions;
~ Joseph Conrad
I had to keep a lookout for the signs of dead wood we could cut up in the night for next day's steaming. When you have to attend to things of that sort, to the mere incidents of the surface, the reality—the reality, I tell you—fades.
~ Joseph Conrad
I remembered the old doctor —'It would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot.' I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting.
~ Joseph Conrad
And Mrs Verloc, in her varied experience, had come to the conclusion that some foreigners could speak better English than the natives.
~ Joseph Conrad
La conquista de la tierra, que por lo general consiste en arrebatársela a quienes tienen una tez de color distinto o narices ligeramente más chatas que las nuestras, no es nada agradable cuando se observa con atención. Lo
~ Joseph Conrad
brillaban como discos de mica, con curiosidad, aunque manteniendo su general
~ Joseph Conrad
This was simple prudence, white men being so much alike at a distance that he could not tell who I might be.
~ Joseph Conrad
From afar at the end of Tsar Peter Straat, issued in the frosty air the tinkle of bells of the horse tramcars, appearing and disappearing in the opening between the buildings, like little toy carriages harnessed with toy horses and played with by people that appeared no bigger than children.
~ Joseph Conrad
Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not been able to see the people, which was worse.
~ Joseph Conrad
Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, a great Dzogchen master of the last century, taught, "There is one thing we always need, and that is the watchman named mindfulness, the guard who is on the lookout for when we get carried away in mindlessness.
~ Joseph Goldstein
The emphasis in meditation is very much on undistracted awareness: not thinking about things, not analyzing, not getting lost in the story, but just seeing the nature of what is happening in the mind. Careful, accurate observation of the moment's reality is the key to the whole process.
~ Joseph Goldstein
The perception of solidity also comes from observing things from a distance. When we look at an ordinary object like a chair or a table, it appears quite solid. Yet if we put that same object under a powerful microscope, whole new worlds emerge. When we look at trees from a distance, we just see an undifferentiated mass of color. But as we get closer, we can distinguish individual leaves, and even the small distinct parts of the leaves.
~ Joseph Goldstein
Mindfulness practice begins to open up everything. We open our mind to memories, to emotions, to different sensations in the body. In meditation this happens in a very organic way, because we are not searching, we are not pulling or probing, we are just sitting and watching.
~ Joseph Goldstein
This is not a breathing exercise; it is an exercise in awareness.
~ Joseph Goldstein
Clevinger had a mind, and Lieutenant Scheisskoph had noticed that people with minds tended to get pretty smart at times.
~ Joseph Heller
Five is very good, Milo," he observed with enthusiasm, spying a ray of hope. "That averages out to almost one combat mission every two months. And I'll bet your total doesn't even include the time you bombed us." "Yes, sir. It does.
~ Joseph Heller