Quotes About Observation

Fox 8, jeez, how cud you not smell Poop of Wolf when it is rite on your own dang paw?

In your life, there have been High Kindness periods and Low Kindness periods, and you know what inclined you toward the former and away from the latter. It's an exciting idea: Since we have observed that kindness is variable, we might also sensibly conclude that it is improvable; that is, there must be approaches and practices that can actually increase our ambient level of kindness.

The Church says that the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the Church. Ferdinand Magellan, Portuguese and Spanish explorer

Observing her, I saw that she was made up, that she was in an evening gown, that mourning indecently emphasized her beauty.

you will recognize happines when you see it die

why count the buses? probably because they're recognizable and regular:they cut up time, they punctuate the background noise; ultimately, they're foreseeable

You are alone. You learn how to walk like a man alone. To stroll, to dawdle. To see without looking, to look without seeing. You learn the art of transparency, immobility, inexistence.You learn how to be a shadow and how to look at men as if they were stones.

Describe your street. Describe another street. Compare. Make an inventory of your pockets, of your bag. Ask yourself about the provenance, the use, what will become of each of the objects you take out. Question your tea spoons. What is there under your wallpaper? How many movements does it take to dial a phone number? Why? Why don't you find cigarettes in grocery stores? Why not?

Maigret never took notes. If he had a propelling pencil in his hand and a paper in front of him, it was only to make doodles that had no connection with the case.

He rarely spoke about his job, and even more rarely expressed an opinion about men and their institutions. He distrusted ideas, as they were always too rigid to reflect reality, which, as he knew from experience, was very fluid. It was only with his friend Pardon, the doctor from Rue Popincourt, that he sometimes, after dinner, came out with what might, at a pinch, pass for revelations.

Maigret worked like any other policeman. Like everyone else, he used the amazing tools that men like Bertillon, Reiss and Locard have given the police – anthropometry, the principle of the trace, and so forth – and that have turned detection into forensic science. But what he sought, what he waited and watched out for, was the crack in the wall. In other words, the instant when the human being comes out from behind the opponent.

It was impressive to observe Maigret. In fact, a curious phenomenon was taking place. As he came and went in this house that wasn't his, as he evoked lives he hadn't lived, he was no longer entirely the heavy, placid, rough-hewn Maigret. Without his realizing it, there was a little of Forlacroix in the way he moved, the way he spoke. The two men could not have been more dissimilar and yet, at certain moments, it was so striking that the lawyer was quite bothered by it.

Could you tell me, Maigret, why plainclothes policemen always go around in twos, just like plumbers?

It was only now, at this precise moment, that Maigret became fully aware of the situation. He literally saw himself, sitting comfortably in his armchair, his legs stretched towards the fire, warming his glass of armagnac in the hollow of his hand. He realized that it wasn't he who was talking, asking questions, but this short, thin, calm man, the same man who, only a few minutes earlier, had been dragging a dead body to the sea.

Oh, by the way, while I was having a glass of your delicious gueuze beer, I spotted a crook…

Everyone was watching Maigret. Children followed him, one of them imitating his heavy gait.

Georges Simenon

My house seems remarkably full of people, he observed. Is it possible we were expected.

I shan't ask you how you do, ma'am: to enquire after a lady's health implies that she is not in her best looks. Besides, I can see that you are in high bloom.

Mrs Hendred was a very pretty woman of great good-nature and much less than commonsense.

Dear Edward has given Fanny a chocolate-coloured coach with pale blue cushions. The wheat is picked out in blue. He held the sheet at arm's length. It seems strange, but no doubt Fanny is right. I have not been in England for such a time...Ah, I beg her pardon. You will be relieved to hear, my dear Hugh, that the wheat still grows as it ever did. The wheels are picked out in blue.

One of a guardian's privileges is to be seen talking to his ward without occasioning remark,' he said. 'I can assure you he has not many.' She set her hand on the stair-rail, preparing to follow Lady Jersey. She looked a little arch. 'Is your position as my guardian so painful, sir?' 'It is a damnable position,' he said deliberately, and turned away, leaving her staring.

She wasn't as foolish as her sister, but she had more hair than wit

Really, I don't know what the world is coming to if I am to be suspected of staring in at windows!