Quotes About Observation

Everything is just how I imagined it, yet everything is new

Desde qué ando todo el día entre la gente y veo lo que hacen y como se afanan, estoy mucho más contento de mi mismo

Alexander von] Humboldt showers us with true treasures.

An intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous.

Weil du die Augen offen hast, glaubst du, du siehst.

Das Gebildete wird sogleich wieder ungebildet, und wir haben uns, wenn wir einigermaßen zum lebendigen Anschaun der Natur gelangen wollen, selbst so beweglich und bildsam zu erhalten, nach dem Beispiele mit dem sie uns vorgeht.

What do you mean,who? You just saw me talking to her!" "If anyone was with you when I arrived, I'm afraid I didn't notice. My eyes were only on you.

If you could look far enough into the empty sky, you would be able to see the back of your own head.

the past has no existence except as it is recorded in the present. (...) we would seem forced to say that no phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon. The universe does not 'exist, out there' independent of all acts of observation. Instead, it is in some strange sense a participatory universe

A little bunny or some kind of ferret was probably there too, and bore witness as only rodents can.

Forbid that I should walk through Thy beautiful world with unseeing eyes.

There is a moment that comes in drunkenness, or on the far side of it, when, as is said to happen sometimes to the afflicted in the throes of a heart attack, I seem to separate from my body and float upward, and hang aloft, looking down on the spectacle of myself with disinterested attention.

I looked at the people playing, walking, loafing, hurrying, or sauntering across the little park in front of us. How many terrible stories were there, just there in front of me, never to be spoken?

Supposedly nobody outside the group knew there was a group. Of course we all knew that wasn't true. High school was like the little clear plastic tunnels that Paul's hamsters lived in: you could run a long way but never get out, and always, everyone could see you.

Poetry is but another form of inquiry into the nature of phenomena, using with its own unique procedures and tools.

The essence of a religious approach to the world, it seems to me, is to be found, not in the imposition of theological dogma, but in the recognition of what is actually there.

Lots of nuns around lately. Suppose there's a convention or something?" – Alaric or Leo.

Keep a diary, but don't just list all the things you did during the day. Pick one incident and write it up as a brief vignette. Give it color, include quotes and dialogue, shape it like a story with a beginning, middle and end—as if it were a short story or an episode in a novel. It's great practice. Do this while figuring out what you want to write a book about. The book may even emerge from within this running diary.

All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this - as in other ways - they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it.

The camera relieves us of the burden of memory. It surveys us like God, and it surveys for us. Yet no other god has been so cynical, for the camera records in order to forget.

Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves.

All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this — as in other ways — they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it.

Men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.

Whenever the intensity of looking reaches a certain degree, one becomes aware of an equally intense energy coming towards one through the appearance of whatever it is one is scrutinizing.