Quotes About Observation

I put my chin on my chest. I was afraid to look at any of the people who were watching us. My lips kept moving without making sounds: Please stop, please stop, everyone's watching. . . . But at the same time I was thinking, Good for you, Mama, good for you. What courage—to scream in front of the whole restaurant. Poor Daddy. Good for you, Mama.

Spring surprised me, as she always does those of us who remain most of our lives indoors

A child, not knowing what is extraordinary and what commonplace, usually lights midway between the two, finds interest in incidents adults consider beneath notice, and calmly accepts the most improbable occurrences.

The painting was of that irritating kind which dissolves into mere blobs of color unless it can be seen as a whole. I took a step backward to get a better perspective of it, then another … With the third step, I realized I should have made contact with the wall behind me, and that I had not. I was standing instead inside the picture that had occupied the opposite wall: a dark room of ancient leather chairs and ebony tables.

I thought I saw something and borrowed his big brass telescope. And there it was. The tall, proud trees and the waves lapping a beach of blood-colored sand. I looked and looked, and pretty soon I started to cry. If I could tell you why, I would, but I cannot. Tears ran down my face, and I could not breathe right. I took the telescope down and wiped my eyes and blew my nose. And when I looked again, it was gone.

I have traveled far, and I have observed that poor people usually have more wit and more virtue than rich ones. He smiled at that. You are kind. But our people have so much wit and virtue now that they may die.

What we are looking for is who is looking

Dorothea Lange said that 'the camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

Walk some night on a suburban street and pass house after house on both sides of the same street each with the lamplight of the living room, shining golden, and inside the little blue square of the television, each living family riveting its attention on probably one show; nobody talking; silence in the yards; dogs barking at you because you pass on human feet instead of wheels.

Well did he know the taverns in every town, and every hosteller and bar-maid, far better than he knew any leper or beggar.

The fields have eyes, and the woods have ears.

For thus men seyth, That on thenketh the beere, But al another thenketh his ledere.

And as Alexander Pope observed at the time, Blenheim has always felt more monument than home: Thanks, Sir, cry'd I, 'tis very fine. But where d'ye sleep, or where d'ye dine? I find by all you have been telling, That 'tis a house, but not a dwelling.

It is manifest that behind the so-called curtain which is supposed to conceal the inner world, there is nothing to be seen unless we go behind it ourselves, as much in order that we may see, as that there may be something behind there which can be seen.

The longer I observe the way people really act, the happier I am that I never pay attention to them.

The longer I observe the way people really act, the happier I am that I never pay attention to them. The

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

The only things we perceive are our perceptions.

When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

Pasteboard pies and paper flowers are being banished from the stage by the growth of that power of accurate observation which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it....

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who don't have it.

You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub.