Quotes About Observation

It was Nathaniel's boundless capacity for stating the obvious that made him so charmingly human.

Stanley went on, "highly dangerous, fanatical and additictied to violence'- Blimey Fred, is it your mother writing this? They seem to know you so well

George had his faraway look, the one that made him look like a constipated owl.

What could it be? Not a date, surely—the boy's got eyes.

To be fair, since meeting her that morning she'd treated me with careful attention and respect; but since the same could also be said of a gloved scientist holding a blob of plague bacillus on a glass slide, I didn't read too much into it.

Probing psychological analysis is one thing: namely impartial observation, liberally spiced with sarcasm and personal abuse — let's face it, I'm good at all that — constructive suggestions, quite another.

the earth, while someone passed a few feet beyond the fence.

But she has little experience of helpless-looking boys.

Lockwood… Through half-closed eyes I watched him now, trapping him tight between my lashes.

Remember—we shouldn't be able to see them," I said. "Keep looking straight ahead.

Okay...' I hurried on. 'But why me?' 'You're a girl,' Lockwood called. 'Aren't you supposed to be more sensitive?' 'To emotions, yes. To nuances of human behavior. Not necessarily to secret passages in a wall.' 'Oh, it's much the same thing.

So, naturalists observe, a fleaHath smaller fleas that on him prey;And these have smaller still to bite 'em;And so proceed ad infinitum.Thus every poet, in his kind,Is bit by him that comes behind.

I have always a sacred veneration for anyone I observe to be a little out of repair in his person, as supposing him either a poet or a philosopher.

It is pleasant to observe, how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next. Future ages shall talk of this; this shall be famous to all posterity. Whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now.

As boys do sparrows, with flinging salt upon their tails.

She watches him, as a cat would watch a mouse.

Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind reception it meets with in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.

That was excellently observed', say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.

Everything I touch turns to shit, he thinks, not with self-pity, but with an almost scientific fascination at the truth of it.

Here's what I think I'm having trouble with: this is what happiness is. When I was a kid, I thought I'd just get happier and happier as I got older, and have more things to be happy about. I based this theory on observation of select adults. The problem with my results is that I couldn't tell the difference then between happy and fake-happy. Now I know you pretend to be just frigging ecstatic over everything, maybe because you're so glad it's not worse.

Is negative space the space you don't like, or the space that is not there? And if it's not there how can you tell?

Men tend to devote themselves to those things which fascinate them to the point of obsession,' she observed, as they reached the overgrown brambles through which there was only a narrow twisting track. 'They are excessively selfish creatures, in the main.

Big Brother really is everywhere.

We Burmese,' he began, 'are experts at looking for what's not there. It's something you should learn to do too. You must look for what's missing and learn how to find the truth in these absences.