Quotes About Observation

Ford Madox Ford

But why was he born to be a sort of lonely buffalo: outside the herd? Not artist: not soldier: not bureaucrat: not certainly indispensable anywhere: apparently not even sound in the eyes of these dim-minded specialists… An exact observer…

Ford Madox Ford

The subtlety of your visual attention. You could alert me or change the subject with a contraction of your iris.

He would flay the fox, say the ape's paternoster, return to his sheep, and turn the hogs to the hay. He would beat the dogs before the lion, put the plough before the oxen, and claw where it did not itch.

I know flies in milk. I know the man by his clothes. I know fair weather from foul. I know the apple by the tree. I know the tree when I see the sap. I know when all is one. I know who labors and who loafs. I know everything but myself.

Two lads an' a little lass just lookin' on at th' springtime. I warrant it'd be better than doctor's stuff.

She had never seen a child who sat so still without doing anything;

If Mary Lennox had been a child who was ready to be amused she would perhaps have laughed at Martha's readiness to talk, but Mary only listened to her coldly and wondered at her freedom of manner.

I am growing quite fond of him," she said to Ermengarde; "I should not like him to be disturbed. I have adopted him for a friend. You can do that with people you never speak to at all. You can just watch them, and think about them and be sorry for them, until they seem almost like relations. I'm quite anxious sometimes when I see the doctor call twice a day.

nothing, and Mr. Havisham kept her from suspecting

Lo considero un amigo, a veces sucede que se puede estimar a una persona aunque nunca se haya hablado con ella. Se las observa y se piensa en ellas, y se comparten sus preocupaciones.

Scientific people are always curious and I am going to be scientific.

declared you could see buds unsheath themselves. Also you could make the acquaintance of strange busy insect things running about on various unknown but evidently serious errands, sometimes carrying tiny scraps of straw or feather or food or climbing blades of grass as if they were trees from whose tops one could look out to explore the country.

And, somehow, Sara felt as if she understood her, though she said so little, and only stood still and looked and looked after her as she went out of the shop with the Indian gentleman, and they got into the carriage and drove away.

girl rattled on in her good-tempered, homely way, Mary began to notice what she was saying.

bein' on th' stepladder lookin, over th' wall. But I'll tell

I have adopted him for a friend. You can do that with people you never speak to at all. You can just watch them, and think about them and be sorry for them, until they seem almost like relations.

was looked at askance, and that in the bearing of each member of the group there was a defiance of the general opinion. Roxholm sat on his horse somewhat apart from this group watching it, his kinsman and

But the essence of a place, the part of it that picks you up and puts you down somewhere else, cannot be given to the reader through factual description. And maybe not at all. You have to find your own secret images. The slow fall of a coin into the gorge with the sun catching the copper only for a moment, and the fall into nothing says more about a sense of place than three pages of restaurant and hotel descriptions...

Tobin, my man, you are going to learn about chickens. And when you to learn about chickens, you will learn about life.

I think when you are born an angel should say to you, hopefully kindly and not in that fake voice of an airline attendant: Here you go on this long, long dream. Don't even try to wake up. Just let it go until it is over. You will learn many things. Just relax and observe because there just is pain and that's it mostly and you aren't going to be able to escape no matter what. Eventually it will all be over anyway. Good Luck.

They were laughing and their hair was shining like leaves in moonlight, their limbs long as saplings. I thought, Girls are magical at this phase, girls are invincible, nothing can touch them. I didn't think 'us' because I didn't feel that; I felt other, on the outside, watching them.

You cannot see me from where I look at myself.