Quotes About Observation

The art of reading, in short, includes all of the same skills that are involved in the art of unaided discovery: keenness of observation, readily available memory, range of imagination, and, of course, an intellect trained in analysis and reflection.

Scientific objectivity is not the absence of initial bias. It is attained by frank confession of it.

become at home in this imaginary world; know it as if you were an observer on the scene; become a member of its population, willing to befriend its characters, and able to participate in its happenings by sympathetic insight, as you would do in the actions and sufferings of a friend.

Me, I've seen 45 years, and I've only figured out one thing. That's this: if a person would just make the effort, there's something to be learned from everything. From even the most ordinary, commonplace things, there's always something you can learn. I read somewhere that they said there's even different philosophies in razors. Fact is, if it weren't for that, nobody'd survive.

I also went to London to see life, for it was my ambition to write about life, which first I had to see.

People generally fall into one of three groups: the few who make things happen, the many who watch things happen, and the overwhelming majority who have no notion of what happens. Every person is either a creator of fact or a creature of circumstance. He either puts color into his environment, or, like a chameleon, takes color from his environment.

it doesn't matter to a person when he is in a hall of mirrors — he himself knows he is the one who is real. The confusion is for the onlookers.

The facts are always less than what really happened.

A celestial camera recorded my every movement, impartially, without judgement or pity. I was marked; I was of interest; I would survive.

The mouse is safest when she doesn't leave footprints in the butter.

Thus it is ever in Courts," she observed bitterly. "Adversity is solitary, while prosperity dwells in a crowd.

She had a glint in her eye that didn't quite match her cordial remark, and she smiled as if she'd beaten me at Ping-Pong. I thought for a second what a smart Texan might say to such a clear goad. It didn't take long to hit on just the right thing. I said, Bless your heart, ma'am. Thank you.

They spoke as though these Princes are so remote from life as we know it that the smallest sign of humanity, the mere fact even that they communicated by means of speech, was worth noting and proclaiming.

She replied, "When you find a bike1 in a birk,2 busk3 there the bauk4.

They looked at me and saw someone out of a story, who might ride by and be stared at, but didn't belong in their lives at all.

keep your eyes on him, you wretched vainglorious creature

Poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.

You are the witness, on-the-scene, microphone in hand. You stand on the road to everywhere, askng, What is this? What next?

Female thinness and youth are not in themselves next to godliness in this culture. Society really doesn't care about women's appearance per se. What genuinely matters is that women remain willing to let others tell them what they can and cannot have. Women are watched, in other words, not to make sure that they will "be good," but to make sure that they will know they are being watched.

Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only the relations of men to women, but the relation of women to themselves.' Critic John Berger's well-known quote has been true throughout the history of Western culture, and it is more true now than ever.

the politeness people extend as a matter of course to the bodies of men does not apply to those of women: Women have little physical privacy. Each change or weight fluctuation is publicly observed, judged, and discussed.

What little girls learn is not the desire for the other, but the desire to be desired. Girls learn to watch their sex along with the boys [...]

Before we can master an enemy, we must know its name, its habits, and its place of abode.

Genuine wisdom is usually conspicuous through modesty and silence.