Quotes About Observation

anyhow, then I went on to city college where the only molesting I could see going on was what they did to your mind.

Lo más agradable de él era que nunca hablaba, a menos que se le preguntara algo. Nunca le pregunté nada.

I entered the world once more, drove down the hill past the houses full and empty of people, I saw the mailman, honked, he waved back at me.

God, I thought, what about the writer? The writer was the blood and bones and brains (or lack of same) in these creatures. The writer made their hearts beat, gave them words to speak, made them live or die, anything he wanted. And where was the writer? Who ever photographed the writer? Who applauded? But just as well and damn sure just as well: the writer was where he belonged: in some dark corner, watching.

there are so many days when living stops and pulls up and sits and waits like a train on the rails. I pass the hotel

I am watching a girl dressed in a light green sweater, blue shorts, long black stockings; there is a necklace of some sort but her breasts are small, poor thing, and she watches her nails as her dirty white dog sniffs the grass in erratic circles; a pigeon is there too, circling, half dead with a tick of a brain and I am upstairs in my underwear, 3 day beard, pouring a beer and waiting for something literary or symphonic to happen;

I saw her walk in out of the corner of my eye. Why do they say "corner of the eye"? Eyes have no corners.

People are the best show in the world, and you don't have to even pay for the ticket.

sometimes I think I see them – say a certain old man sitting on a certain bench in a certain way or a quick face going the other way in a passing automobile

Even though I write about the human race, the further away from them, the better I feel. Two miles is great; two thousand miles is beautiful.

I made practice runs down to skid row to get ready for my future. I didn't like what I saw down there.

I had come to the racetrack after the other two funerals and had won. There was something about funerals. It made you see things better. A funeral a day and I'd be rich.

European visitors marveled at the number of nut and fruit trees and the big clearings with only a dim apprehension that the two might be due to the same human source.

the essayist Montaigne had noted... [Indigenous North Americans] (clarification by me) who visited France... noticed among us some men gorged to the full with things of every sort while their other halves were beggars at their doors, emaciated with hunger and poverty. They found it strange that these poverty-stricken halves should suffer [that is, tolerate] such injustice, and that they did not take the others by the throat or set fire to their houses.

the essayist Montaigne had noted... Indians who visited France... noticed among us some men gorged to the full with things of every sort while their other halves were beggars at their doors, emaciated with hunger and poverty. They found it strange that these poverty-stricken halves should suffer [that is, tolerate] such injustice, and that they did not take the others by the throat or set fire to their houses.

the points somewhat resemble those goldfish-shaped cocktail crackers.

I stood there, slightly behind Mrs. Gurney. I was getting tired, but sitting down in the sand might indicate to her that where we were was O.K.

A scientific man ought to have no wishes, no affections, - a mere heart of stone.

In conclusion, it appears that nothing can be more improving to a young naturalist, than a journey in distant countries.

I had also, during many years, followed a golden rule, namely that whenever published fact, a new observation of thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory than favourable ones.

A naked man on a naked horse is a fine spectacle. I had no idea how well the two animals suited each other.

My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive.

How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!

In regard to the amount of difference between the races, we must make some allowance for our nice powers of discrimination gained by a long habit of observing ourselves.