Quotes About Perception

Labels are for the things men make, not for men.

finally left the worst of the happy throng behind and made it to the Methodist grub-tent, having passed by the Baptists with the snooty feeling of a man-about-town who is in the know.

Manifestly, sir, either your mental processes are badly constipated or you think mine are.

I made a note to quit trying to understand women and start trying to understand men.

When I am expected at a certain hour it's nearly always Lily who comes, I think on account of some kind of a notion she has about a maid admitting a man who has a key. I have never tried to dope it. Other people's notions are none of my business unless they get in the way.

He announced aggressively, 'I want to see Archie Goodwin.' 'You are.' 'I are what?' 'Seeing Archie Goodwin. Who am I seeing?' 'Oh, a wise guy.' We were off to a bad start, but we got it straightened out that he meant that I was a wise guy, not that I was seeing one...

The subconscious is not a grave; it's a cistern.

I had heard of this Frisbie, an Assistant District Attorney, but had never seen him. I observed, when he entered, that I hadn't missed much. He was the window-dummy type—high collar, clothes pressed very nice, and embalmed stiff and cold. The only thing you could tell from his eyes was that his self-esteem almost hurt him.

Measure your mind's height by the shade it casts, Robert Browning.

Must I again remind you, Archie, of the reaction you would have got if you had asked Velasquez to explain why Aesop's hand was resting inside his robe instead of hanging by his side? Must I again demonstrate that while it is permissible to request the scientist to lead you back over his footprints, a similar request of the artist is nonsense, since he, like the lark or the eagle, has made none? Do you need to be told again that I am an artist?

She gave me a little smile, the dimples coming, and said, 'We don't really know ourselves, do we?' 'It depends,' I said. 'Some of us know too much, and some not enough.

You are so engrossed in the fact that you are oblivious to its environment

A tiger's eyes can't make light, Saul, they can only reflect it.

Or had it been just a nightmare? I clambered to my feet and went to a mirror to look, and there was a livid ring around my neck.

When you once get a reputation, or it gets you, you're stuck with it for good.

Would you mind removing your hat, Miss Dunn? I deduce the thing is a hat, because it's on your head. Thank you. I don't like restaurant conventions in my dining room.

I looked at her. In that getup, to me she was a treat; to Wolfe, in his own house, she would have been an impudence. "Because there's no chair on this floor big enough for him. I'll wait outside.

Must I again demonstrate that while it is permissible to request the scientist to lead you back over his footprints, a similar request of the artist is nonsense, since he, like the lark or the eagle, has made none?

She leveled the eyes at me, and, finding it difficult to meet them casually, I met them consciously.

I know a chairman of the board of a billion-dollar corporation, one of the 2 per cent, who never gets his shoes shined and shaves three times a week.

Orrie's strong point was getting people to tell him things. It wasn't so much the questions he asked. As a matter of fact, he wasn't very good at questions; it was just the way he looked at them. Something about him made people feel that he ought to be told things.

My favorite spot on earth is only a seven-minute walk from where I live, Nero Wolfe's house on West 35th Street: Herald Square, where you can see more different kinds of people in ten minutes than anywhere else I know of. One day I saw the top cock of the Mafia step back to let a Sunday-school teacher from Iowa go first through the revolving door of the world's largest department store. If you ask how I knew who they were, I didn't, but that's what they looked like.

I don't try to abolish reality by shutting my eyes, nor do I gobble garbage.

As I closed the door behind me he started to scorch me with an indignant look for being gone so long, but when he saw my face, which he knows better than I do, he abandoned it. 'Well?' he asked mildly.