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Quotes About Observation

Now the writer, as I think, has the chance to live more than other people in the presence of this reality. It is his business to find it and collect it and communicate it to the rest of us.
~ Virginia Woolf
Indeed he seemed to her sometimes made differently from other people, born blind, deaf and dumb to the ordinary things, but to the extraordinary things, with an eye like an eagle's. His understanding often astonished her. But did he notice the flowers? No. Did he notice the view? No.
~ Virginia Woolf
And looking up, she saw above the thin trees the first pulse of the full-throbbing star, and wanted to make her husband look at it; for the sight gave her such keen pleasure. But she stopped herself. He never looked at things. If he did, all he would say would be, Poor little world, with one of his sighs.
~ Virginia Woolf
Why does Samuel Butler say, "Wise men never say what they think of women"? Wise men never say anything else apparently.
~ Virginia Woolf
To begin with, I ran my eye up and down the page. I am going to get the hang of her sentences first, I said, before I load my memory with blue eyes and brown and the relationship that there may be between Chloe and Roger. There will be time for that when I have decided whether she has a pen in her hand or a pickaxe.
~ Virginia Woolf
The man looks the world full in the face, as if it were made for his uses and fashioned to his liking. The woman takes a sidelong glance at it, full of subtlety, even of suspicion.
~ Virginia Woolf
Ainda assim não conseguiu dizer nada; o horizonte inteiro parecia despido de qualquer possível objeto de comentário.
~ Virginia Woolf
It was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen's day, not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of a woman's life is that; and how little can a man know even of that when he observes it through the black or rosy spectacles which sex puts upon his nose.
~ Virginia Woolf
What is meant by 'reality'? It would seem something very erratic, very undependable-now to be found in a dusty road, now in a scrap of newspaper in the street, now in a daffodil in the sun. It lights up a group in a room and stamps some casual saying. It overwhelms one walking home beneath the stars and makes the silent world more real than the world of speech-and then there it is again in an omnibus in the uproar of Picadilly.
~ Virginia Woolf
to catch those unrecorded gestures, those unsaid or half-said words, which form themselves, no more palpably than the shows of moths on the ceiling, when women are alone, unlit by the capricious and coloured light of the other sex.
~ Virginia Woolf
Now I will watch and see how I resurrect.
~ Virginia Woolf
No one showed an instant's suspicion that Orlando was not the Orlando they had known. If any doubt there was in the human mind the action of the deer and the dogs would have been enough to dispel it, for the dumb creatures, as is well known, are far better judges both of identity and character than we are.
~ Virginia Woolf
Not that they added perceptibly to the noise of the party. They were not talking (perceptibly) as they stood side by side by the yellow curtains. They would soon be off elsewhere, together; that was all. That was enough.
~ Virginia Woolf
Nothing could be seen whole or read from start to finish. What was seen begun - like two friends starting to meet each other across the street - was never seen ended. After twenty minutes the body and mind were like scraps of torn paper tumbling from a sack and, indeed, the process of motoring fast out of London so much resembles the chopping small of identity which precedes unconsciousness and perhaps death itself...
~ Virginia Woolf
İnan?n bana, ki ben son on y?l?m?n büyükçe bir bölümünü üç yüz yirmi ilk öÄŸretim okulunu gözlemleyerek geçirdim, demokrasimiz var diye boÅŸ boÅŸ konuÅŸabiliriz ama İngiltere'de yoksul bir çocuÄŸun, büyük yap?tlar?n doÄŸduÄŸu o entelektüel özgürlüÄŸe kavuÅŸma umudu, Atinal? bir kölenin oÄŸlununkinden biraz fazlad?r.
~ Virginia Woolf
Indeed he seemed to her sometimes made differently from other people, born blind, deaf, and dumb, to the ordinary things, but to the extraordinary things, with an eye like an eagle's. His understanding often astonished her. But did he notice the flowers? No. Did he notice the view? No. Did he even notice his own daughter's beauty, or whether there was pudding on his plate or roast beef? He would sit at table with them like a person in a dream.
~ Virginia Woolf
Southampton Row, however, is chiefly remarkable nowadays for the fact that you will always find a man there trying to sell a tortoise to a tailor.
~ Virginia Woolf
stopping to exclaim at the beauty of the cabbage leaves in the moonlight
~ Virginia Woolf
The entire gamut of the view's changes should have been known to her; its winter aspect, spring, summer and autumn; how storms came up from the sea; how the moors shuddered and brightened as the clouds went over.
~ Virginia Woolf
Jacob observed Florinda. In her face there seemed to him something horribly brainless- as she sat staring.
~ Virginia Woolf
How, then, she had asked herself, did one know one thing or another thing about people, sealed as they were? Only like a bee, drawn by some sweetness or sharpness in the air intangible to touch or taste, one haunted the dome-shaped hive, ranged the wastes of the air over the countries of the world alone, and then haunted the hives with their murmurs and their stirrings; the hives which were people.
~ Virginia Woolf
Feia vent, i de tant en tant les fulles deixaven a la vista una estrella, i semblava que les estrelles mateixes s'estremissin i projectessin la seva llum per mirar d'esquitllar-se per entre les vores de les fulles.
~ Virginia Woolf
Mr. Carmichael, who was basking with his yellow cat's eyes ajar, so that like a cat's they seemed to reflect the branches moving or the clouds passing, but to give no inkling of any inner thoughts or emotion whatsoever, if he wanted anything.
~ Virginia Woolf
Não acredito em separações. Não somos seres individuais. Para mais, tenho vontade de alargar a minha colecção de observações valiosas a respeito da verdadeira natureza humana. Por certo que a minha obra constará de muitos volumes e abrangerá de todos os tipos conhecidos de homens e mulheres.
~ Virginia Woolf