Quotes About Observation

I go about looking at horses and cattle. They eat grass, make love, work when they have to, bear their young. I am sick with envy of them.

If you are to become a writer you'll have to stop fooling with words," she explained. "It would be better to give up the notion of writing until you are better prepared. Now it's time to be living. I don't want to frighten you, but I would like to make you understand the import of what you think of attempting. You must not become a mere peddler of words. The thing to learn is to know what people are thinking about, not what they say.

The thing to learn is to know what people are thinking about, not what they say.

People in your own family are likely at any moment to do strange, sometimes hurtful things to you. You have to watch them.

the important thing to learn is to know what people think, not what they say

Be careful. Don't get too close to the truth when talking with the rich,' I was whispering to myself.

And so these people gathered and smoked cigarettes and talked and Enoch Robinson, the boy from the farm near Winesburg, was there. He stayed in a corner and for the most part said nothing.

I don't know what I shall do. I just want to go away and look at people and think.

It would have been funny if I had been an observer and not a participant, an idea that gave me a disconcerting insight into gossip. As I walked beside the silent Tamara, I realized that despite how entertaining certain stories were, at the bottom of every item of gossip there was someone getting hurt.

I play with children so that I can learn from them.

I played with children so that I could learn from them.

You simply notice which part of your void-triggered bum-out is emotional body sensation, which part is mental images, and which part is mental talk. Keep those clearly delineated.

What eyes can tell you in a minute, a mouth will never say in a day.

The true purpose of Zen is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes.

The important thing in our understanding is to have a smooth, free-thinking way of observation. We have to think and to observe things without stagnation. We should accept things as they are without difficulty. Ou mind should be soft and open enough to understand things as they are. When our thinking is soft, it is called imperturbable thinking. This kind of thinking is always stable. It is called mindfulness.

The true purpose is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes.

When we see a part of the moon covered by a cloud, or a tree, or a weed, we feel how round the moon is. But when we see the clear moon without anything covering it, we do not feel that roundness the same way we do when we see it through something else.

When we first hear that everything is a tentative existence, most of us are disappointed; but this disappointment comes from a wrong view of man and nature. It is because our way of observing things is deeply rooted in our self-centered ideas that we are disappointed when we find everything has only a tentative existence. But when we actually realize this truth, we will have no suffering.

Wisdom is something which will come out of your mindfulness. So the point is to be ready for observing things, and to be ready for thinking. This is called emptiness of your mind.

Bodhidharma said, "In order to see a fish you must watch the water.

It is the people who are outside of the monastery who feel its atmosphere," writes the Zen master. "Those who are practicing actually do not feel anything.

The best way to contorl people is to encourage them to be mischievous...To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him. So it is with people: first let them do what they want, and watch them... To ignore them is not good; that is the worst policy. The second worst is trying to control them. The best one is to watch them, just to watch them, without trying to control them.

There's humor in the little things that people did. If you showed them how they looked when they did what they did, people would laugh.

Glancing back over his shoulder seemed to be habit, for Touch had noticed him do it before, as if the man thought someone might be following him. "Stranger, what did you say your name was?" asked the blacksmith. "I didn't," answered the thief. In fact, he had, but he changed his name more often than his stockings, and now he couldn't remember what name he'd bestowed upon himself.