Quotes About Observation

Do not engage to find things as you think they are.

After a night's sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast. Pray tell me anything new that has happened to a man anywhere on this globe—and he reads it over his coffee and rolls, that a man has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito River; never dreaming the while that he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself.

A howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling. -

It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it.

There is a low mist in the woods— It is a good day to study lichens.

Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray, i.e., we are not looking for it. So, in the largest sense, we find only the world we look for.

Instead of singing, like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune. As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so I had my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest.

When the far mountains are invisible, the near ones look the higher.

What is a course of history or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity.

We see only the flowers that are under our feet in the meadows.

I only know myself as a human entity, the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections, and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you.

By the mood of my mind, I suddenly felt dissuaded from continuing my walk, but I observed at the same instant that the shadow of a cloud was passing over the spot on which I stood, though it was of small extent, which, if it had no connection with my mood, at any rate suggested how transient and little to be regarded that mood was.

We are all the subjects of an experiment which is not a little interesting to me.

It's not what you look at that matters, its what you see

No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, [...] compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen?

I observed two large ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with one another.

You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns.

Some would find fault with the morning-red, if they ever got up early enough.

priznam, da sem osupel ob mo?i vzdržljivosti - da sploh ne omenjam moralne neob?utljivosti - svojih sosedov, ki se tedne, mesece, da celo leta, za ves dan zapirajo v svoje trgovine in pisarne. Ne vem, iz kakšne snovi so, da lahko ob treh popoldan sedijo tamkaj, kakor da bi bila ura tri zjutraj.

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.

Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale

Let them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians. I have more of God, they more of the road.

It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.

The question is not what you look at…but what you see