Quotes About Observation

Listening to these people is like listening to trees—sooner or later the tree is sliced open and the watermarks reveal their age.

Hey," Faraday said after a few seconds. "Did you know your clock's still ten minutes fast?

The really magical things are the ones that happen right in front of you. A lot of the time you keep looking for beauty, but it is already there. And if you look with a bit more intention, you see it.

That is why existential frustration often eventuates in sexual compensation. We can observe in such cases that the sexual libido becomes rampant in the existential vacuum.

All that oppressed me at that moment became objective, seen and described from the remote viewpoint of science. By this method I succeeded somehow in rising above the situation, above the sufferings of the moment, and I observed them as if they were already of the past.

A painter tries to convey to us a picture of the world as he sees it; an ophthalmologist tries to enable us to see the world as it really is.

To attempt a methodical presentation of the subject is very difficult, as psychology requires a certain scientific detachment. But does a man who makes his observations while he himself is a prisoner possess the necessary detachment? Such detachment is granted to the outsider, but he is too far removed to make any statements of real value.

Stansfield turned his eyes back to Rapp and Greta. It was not lost on him that Greta had reached out and was holding Rapp's arm. They were a couple. More than that, they were in love.

flanks. The pocket scope penetrated the dark shadows that his eyes could not. He paid particular attention to the base of the trees that bordered the path. He was looking for the telltale shoe of someone who was seeking to conceal himself. After five minutes

The story ends with a crack the actor Hans Conreid made on seeing my two hundred black and white pots. Said Hans, You're one actor no one will ever be able to say he hasn't got a pot to... End quote.

Superficially it may appear that I am more interested in books than in people; but I think it nearer the mark to say that I am more interested in people as they are revealed to me in books than as they reveal themselves to me in daily contact.

The light struck upon the trees in the garden, making one leaf transparent and then another. One bird chirped high up; there was a pause; another chirped lower down. The sun sharpended the walls of the house, and rested like the tip of a fan upon a white blind and made a fingerprint of a shadow under the leaf by the bedroom window. The blind stirred slightly, but all within was dim and unsubstantial. The birds sang their blank melody outside.

Nevertheless, the fact remained, it was impossible to dislike any one if one looked at them.

On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.

Every face, every shop, bedroom window, public-house, and dark square is a picture feverishly turned--in search of what? It is the same with books. What do we seek through millions of pages?

But nevertheless, the fact remained, it was almost impossible to dislike anyone if one looked at them.

It's not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it's the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.

But why do I notice everything? She thought. Why must I think? She did not want to think. She wanted to force her mind to become a blank and lie back, and accept quietly, tolerantly, whatever came.

Up here my eyes are green leaves, unseeing.

Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small.

Why does Samuel Butler say, 'Wise men never say what they think of women'? Wise men never say anything else apparently.

Nothing has really happened unless it's been described [in words].

Would there be trees if we didn't see them?

The strange thing about life is that though the nature of it must have been apparent to every one for hundreds of years, no one has left any adequate account of it.