Quotes About Observation

Oh I'm sure you're right, Auntie said. Probably she's just as you say. But she looks to me like a very clever girl, and adaptable; you can see that from the shape of her ears.

Here again, I saw life in all its noisy excitement passing me by.

A memoir provides a record not so much of the memoirist as of the memoirist's world.

I knew he noticed the tress, and the mud, and the children in the street, but I had no reason to believe he'd ever notice me.

He lived in a world that was visible, even if it didn't always please him to be there.

To me, he seemed to see the sap bleeding from the trunks of the pine trees, and the circle of brightness in the sky where the sun was smothered by clouds.

My goodness, Sayuri, you do look like a peasant!" he said.

Autobiography, if there really is such a thing, is like asking a rabbit to tell us what he looks like hopping through the grasses of the field. How would he know? If we want to hear about the field, on the other hand, no one is in a better circumstance to tell us—so long as we keep in mind that we are missing all those things the rabbit was in no position to observe.

When I looked up, Nobu was watching me. Guests all around him were laughing and enjoying themselves, and there he sat with his eyes fixed on me, as lost in his thoughts as I had been in mine. We were like two wet spots in the midst of burning charcoal.

I don't think I really invented anybody. I have drawn on real life.

Eerst zie je er niks geks in rond te tollen tot je erbij neervalt, maar op een dag valt het je op dat mensen naar jou kijken, je vertraagt en houdt nog even vol, maar ten slotte, om niet op te vallen, stop je er maar mee.

Scientists are peeping toms at the keyhole of eternity.

I merely wish to point out that some of the major break-throughs in the history of science represent such dramatic tours de force, that 'ripeness' seems a very lame explanation, and 'chance' no explanation at all. Einstein discovered the principle of relativity 'unaided by any observation that had not been available for at least fifty years before'; the plum was overripe, yet for half a century nobody came to pluck it.

Trace the contours of your face with a soapy finger on the bathroom mirror (it is easily done by closing one eye). There is a shock waiting: the image which looked life-size has shrunk to half-size, like a headhunter's trophy. A person walking away does not seem to become a dwarf -- as he should; a black glove looks just as black in the sunlight as in shadow -- though it should not;

The French attitude to the Finnish War reminded one of the voyeur who gets his thrills out of other people's virile exploits, which he is unable to imitate

I'm losing weight, you notice, Pop?

the piteous demand that the artist should be shut up in a flower-garden, and forbidden to peep through the hedge into the world.

Ask yourself if you're taking the time to see beyond the surface.

The business of the novelist is not to relate great events, but to make small ones interesting.

For where did Dante get the material for his Hell, if not from this actual world of ours?

For it is a matter of daily observation that people take the greatest pleasure in that which satisfies their vanity; and vanity cannot be satisfied without comparison with others.

People's envy shows how unhappy they feel; their constant attention to the doings of others how bored they are.

Bei gleicher Umgebung lebt doch jeder in einer anderen Welt.

The world is my representation.