Quotes About Observation

But how describe the world seen without a self?

the only sign that Katharine gave of abstraction was to forget to help the pudding. She looked so like her mother, as she sat there oblivious of the tapioca

She knew nothing; no language, no history; she scarcely read a book now, except memoirs in bed; and yet to her it was absolutely absorbing; all this; the cabs passing; and she would not say of Peter, she would not say of herself, I am this, I am that.

She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day. Not that she thought herself clever, or much out of the ordinary.

Ma Peter - non importa quanto fosse bella la giornata, e gli alberi e l'erba, e la fanciulla vestita di rosa - Peter non vedeva mai nulla. Se lei glielo chiedeva, si metteva gli occhiali; guardava. Ma era lo stato del mondo che gli interessava: Wagner, la poesia di Pope, il carattere della gente, e i difetti dell'anima di lei.

Affondava come una lama nelle cose; e al tempo stesso ne rimaneva fuori, osservava. Aveva l'impressione costante, anche ora guardando i taxi, di essere lontana, lontanissima, in mare aperto, e sola. Sempre aveva l'impressione che vivere, anche un solo giorno, fosse molto, molto pericoloso

one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one's audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker.

The amusing thing about coming back to England [...] was the way it made [...] things stand out as if one had never seen them before [...]. Never had he seen London look so enchanting [...].

she could not shake herself free from the sense that everything this morning was happening for the first time, perhaps for the last time, as a traveller, even though he is half asleep, knows, looking out of the train window, that he must look now, for he will never see that town, or that mule-cart, or that woman at work in the fields, again.

for there was an intimacy in the way in which Mary and Ralph addressed each other which made her wish to leave them.

Én, kezemben a jegyzetfüzetemmel, kifejezéseket gyártva, csupán a változásokat jegyeztem; árnyék-magam csak az árnyakat figyelte szorgalmasan. Hogyan folytassam utamat, mondtam, én nélkül, súlytalanul, látomások nélkül egy súlytalan és illúziók nélkül való világban?

For the reading of these books seems to perform a curious couching operation on the senses; one sees more intensely afterwards; the world seems bared of its covering and given an intenser life.

Without being able to decipher a word of the placard at the Gate, he had learnt his lesson—in Regent's Park dogs must be led on chains.

Sie fühlte sich sehr jung; gleichzeitig unaussprechlich betagt. Sie schnitt wie ein Messer durch alles; war gleichzeitig außerhalb und sah zu. Sie hatte eine nicht endende Empfindung, während sie die Droschken beobachtete, draußen zu sein, draußen, weit draußen auf See, und allein; sie hatte immer das Gefühl, es sei sehr, sehr gefährlich, auch nur einen Tag zu leben.

Look around you! No matter where you turn your eyes, no matter on what continent you set your foot, you are surrounded, hemmed in, enclosed by wonderful things. Learn to look, learn to appreciate.

with somebody's lost pair of sun-glasses for only witness.

while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time.

Although I am capable, through long dabbling in blue magic, of imitating any prose in the world (but singularly enough not verse—I am a miserable rhymester), I do not consider myself a true artist, save in one matter: I can do what only a true artist can do—pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation, wean myself abruptly from the habit of things, see the web of the world, and the warp and the weft of that web.

An oblong puddle inset in the coarse asphalt; like a fancy footprint filled to the brim with quicksilver; like a spatulate hole through which you can see the nether sky. Surrounded, I note, by a diffuse tentacled black dampness where some dull dun dead leaves have stuck. Drowned, I should say, before the puddle had shrunk to its present size.

We live not only in a world of thoughts, but also in a world of things.

I often felt we lived in a lighted house of glass, and that any moment some thin-lipped parchment face would peer through a carelessly unshaded window to obtain a free glimpse of things that the most jaded voyeur would have paid a small fortune to watch.

The days of my youth, as I look back on them; seem to fly away from me in a flurry of pale repetitive scraps like those morning snow storms of used tissue paper that a train passenger sees whirling in the wake of the observation can.

Where the devil did you get her? I beg your pardon? I said: the weather is getting better. Seems so. Who's the lassie? My daughter. You lie - she's not. I beg your pardon? I said: July was hot.

I swear I am happy. I have realized that the only happiness in this world is to observe, to spy, to watch, to scrutinize oneself and others, to be nothing but a big, slightly vitreous, somewhat bloodshot, unblinking eye. I swear that this is happiness.