404 Observation Quotes

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

The Mediterranean has the color of mackerel, changeable I mean. You don't always know if it is green or violet, you can't even say it's blue, because the next moment the changing reflection has taken on a tint of rose or gray.

Our imagination is struck only by what is great; but the lover of natural philosophy should reflect equally on little things.

I didn't say that the Jews are inferior. I didn't even maintain they are a race. I merely saw that the mixture of different cultures didn't work.

I can't play bridge. I don't play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn't seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window.

The stories are not autobiographical, but they're personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I've learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.

I'm the type who'd be happy not going anywhere as long as I was sure I knew exactly what was happening at the places I wasn't going to. I'm the type who'd like to sit home and watch every party that I'm invited to on a monitor in my bedroom.

When we look at a rock what we are seeing is not the rock, but the effect of the rock upon us.

It sometimes takes a foreigner to come and see a place and paint it. I remember someone saying they had never really noticed the palm trees here until I painted them.

Sometimes when you look in his eyes you get the feeling that someone else is driving.

I like to find what's not found at once, but lies within something of another nature, in repose, distinct.

The sun comes up just about as often as it goes down, in the long run, but this doesn't make its motion random.

Children have very sharp powers of observation - probably sharper than adults - yet at the same time their emotional reactions are murky and much more primitive.

I can't relax here. These people have no pubic hair anywhere. We have pubic hair on the ceiling.

New York is part of the natural world. I love the city, I love the country, and for the same reasons. The city is part of the country. When I had an apartment on East Forty-Eighth Street, my backyard during the migratory season yielded more birds than I ever saw in Maine.

Make people's portraits in familiar and typical attitudes.

The most dangerous lovers women have are men of Cordis's feminine temperament. Such men, by the delicacy and sensitiveness of their own organizations, read women as easily and accurately as women read each other. They are alert to detect and interpret those smallest trifles in tone, expression, and bearing, which betray the real mood far more unmistakably than more obvious signs.

Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone?

Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

It cannot be that axioms established by argumentation should avail for the discovery of new works, since the subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of argument. But axioms duly and orderly formed from particulars easily discover the way to new particulars, and thus render sciences active.

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.

I've studied men from my topsy-turvy Close, and I reckon, rather true. Some are fine fellows: some, right scurvy; Most, a dash between the two.

Searching nature I taste self but at one tankard, that of my own being.

And the look on her face as she opened the door Was like an old joke told by a friend. It'd taken ten more years but she'd found her smile And I watched the corners start to bend.

The essential thing is to spring forth, to express the bolt of lightning one senses upon contact with a thing. The function of the artist is not to translate an observation but to express the shock of the object on his nature; the shock, with the original reaction.

The analysis of character is the highest human entertainment.

The Sun-Paul must consider only one thing: what is the relation of this or that external reaction of the animal to the phenomena of the external world?

I can't help but notice that everytime I fly somewhere, other people's planes fall out of the sky.

The observer is the observed.

There's nothing in the middle of the road but a yellow stripe and dead armadillos.

Him, who incessantly laughs in the street, you may commonly hear grumbling in his closet.

On Melbourne summer mornings the green trams go rolling in stately progress down tunnels thick with leaves: the bright air carries along the avenue their patient chime, the chattering of their wheels

Nothing is better than the unintended humor of reality

Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I: But when the trees bow down their heads The wind is passing by.

I caught this morning morning's minion, king- dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy!

Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks arise Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour Of silk-sack clouds! has wilder, wilful-wavier Meal-drift moulded ever and melted across skies?

This triviality made him think of collecting many such moments together in a book of epiphanies. By an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself. He believed that it was for the man of letters to record these epiphanies with extreme care, seeing that they themselves are the most delicate and evanescent of moments. He told Cranly that the clock of the Ballast Office was capable of an epiphany. Cranly questioned the inscrutable dial of the Ballast Office with his no less inscrutable countenance: -Yes, said Stephen. I will pass it time after time, allude to it, refer to it, catch a glimpse of it. It is only an item in the catalogue of Dublin's street furniture. Then all at once I see it and I know at once what it is: epiphany.

It is important to understand from the very beginning that I am not formulating any philosophy or any theological structure of ideas or theological concepts. It seems to me that all ideologies are utterly idiotic. What is important is not a philosophy of life but to observe what is actually taking place in our daily life, inwardly and outwardly. If you observe very closely what is taking place and examine it, you will see that it is based on an intellectual conception, and the intellect is not the whole field of existence; it is a fragment, and a fragment, however cleverly put together, however ancient and traditional, is still a small part of existence whereas we have to deal with the totality of life.

There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's admiration - and regret. The weather is always doing something there; always attending strictly to business; always getting up new designs and trying them on people to see how they will go. But it gets through more business in spring than in any other season. In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of twenty-four hours.

The judge should not be young; he should have learned to know evil, not from his own soul, but from late and long observation of the nature of evil in others: knowledge should be his guide, not personal experience.

Be aware of wonder. And then remember the Dick and Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.

We have to remember that what we observe is not nature herself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.

And now I see with eye serene The very pulse of the machine.

Strongest minds Are often those of whom the noisy world Hears least.

The core of Krishnamurti's teaching is contained in the statement he made in 1929 when he said: 'Truth is a pathless land'. Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, not through any philosophic knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection. Man has built in himself images as a fence of security - religious, political, personal. These manifest as symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these images dominates man's thinking, his relationships and his daily life. These images are the causes of our problems for they divide man from man. His perception of life is shaped by the concepts already established in his mind. The content of his consciousness is his entire existence. This content is common to all humanity. The individuality is the name, the form and superficial culture he acquires from tradition and environment. The uniqueness of man does not lie in the superficial but in complete freedom from the content of his consciousness, which is common to all mankind. So he is not an individual. Freedom is not a reaction; freedom is not a choice. It is man's pretence that because he has choice he is free. Freedom is pure observation without direction, without fear of punishment and reward. Freedom is without motive; freedom is not at the end of the evolution of man but lies in the first step of his existence. In observation one begins to discover the lack of freedom. Freedom is found in the choiceless awareness of our daily existence and activity. Thought is time. Thought is born of experience and knowledge which are inseparable from time and the past. Time is the psychological enemy of man. Our action is based on knowledge and therefore time, so man is always a slave to the past. Thought is ever-limited and so we live in constant conflict and struggle. There is no psychological evolution. When man becomes aware of the movement of his own thoughts he will see the division between the thinker and thought, the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experience. He will discover that this division is an illusion. Then only is there pure observation which is insight without any shadow of the past or of time. This timeless insight brings about a deep radical mutation in the mind. Total negation is the essence of the positive. When there is negation of all those things that thought has brought about psychologically, only then is there love, which is compassion and intelligence.

Perhaps The truth depends on a walk around a lake, A composing as the body tires, a stop To see hepatica, a stop to watch A definition growing certain and A wait within that certainty, a rest In the swags of pine-trees bordering the lake. Perhaps there are times of inherent excellence

There's something wrong with that boy. He frowns for no good reason.

It is a curious truth - and yet a truth forced upon us by daily observation - that it is not the women who have suffered most who are the unhappy women. A state of permanent unhappiness - not the morbid, half-cherished melancholy of youth, which generally wears off with wiser years, but that settled, incurable discontent and dissatisfaction with all things and all people, which we see in some women, is, with very rare exceptions, at once the index and the exponent of a thoroughly selfish character. ~ Ch. 10

When we look at what is taking place in the world we begin to understand that there is no outer and inner process; there is only one unitary process, it is a whole, total movement, the inner movement expressing itself as the outer and the outer reacting again on the inner. To be able to look at this seems to me all that is needed, because if we know how to look, then the whole thing becomes very clear, and to look needs no philosophy, no teacher. Nobody need tell you how to look. You just look. Can you then, seeing this whole picture, seeing it not verbally but actually, can you easily, spontaneously, transform yourself? That is the real issue. Is it possible to bring about a complete revolution in the psyche?

He [Mark Twain] spoke of humor, and thought it must be one of the chief attributes of God. He cited plants and animals that were distinctly humorous in form and in their characteristics. These he declared were God's jokes.

Anthropology is never an exact science; the observer never experiences the same culture as the participant. But there are natural limitations inherent to the science. It is the artificial limitations that hamper us - and, through us, you

That's influenza,' said Miro. 'Watch for nausea or diarrhea within a few hours.

Let observation with extensive view Survey mankind, from China to Peru.

'Hello Rabbit, is that you?' 'Let's pretend it isn't', said Rabbit, 'and see what happens.'

Whether you can observe a thing or not depends on the theory which you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed.

Aristotelian , Euclidian [line, space, length] and Newtonian [speed of light] systems... have a few unjustified infinities too many: when such an infinity is introduced into the denominator, it makes the whole expression vanish. In other words, faulty, insufficient observations leads to the introduction of ... fanciful 'infinities'.

Now, wet stuff does not like sticking to other wet... stuff. It's one of those universal axioms that keeps the galaxy from ripping itself to shreds and dissolving into the void.

Whoa! It's like a Kiss concert!

Unchecked, the tourist will climb over the fence and come right into your house to take pictures of you in your habitat. Cities mindful of tourists have built elaborate 'tourist traps' which, luckily, work. Tourists are kept confined to these, and few escape. There is, of course, the type known as the 'intrepid tourist.' This one has to be watched carefully or he can become most annoying. Little wonder these are so often the target of terrorists. If there is an aspect of benign terror about the tourist, there is also a great deal of tourist in the terrorist. Terrorists travel with only one thing in mind, just like the tourist, and the specifics of places escape them both. Terrorists travel for the purpose of shooting unsuspecting foreigners, just as tourists travel for the purpose of shooting them with a camera.

Though the most be players, some must be spectators.

People will observe you to see How well you have observed. The man who only observes himself however never gains Knowledge of men. He is too anxious To hide himself from himself. And nobody is Cleverer than he himself is.

Normally, your wife can hear things that no one else on earth can hear. She can hear a dab of jam fall onto a carpet two rooms away. She can hear spilled coffee being furtively mopped up with a good bathtowel. She can hear dirt being tracked across a clean floor. She can hear you just thinking about doing something you shouldn't do. But get yourself stuck in a loft hatch and suddenly it is as if she has been placed in a soundproof chamber.

I have always wanted to know why, wherever archaeologists dig, do they always find red and white poles?

One afternoon in early January, the weather showed a lack of character. There was no frost nor wind: the trees in the garden did not stir.

For me its Buster Keaton's face, with maybe his little hat on... It's being able to look into his eyes and see that sad face.

L'observateur est un prince qui jouit partout de son incognito. L'amateur de la vie fait du monde sa famille, comme l'amateur du beau sexe compose sa famille de toutes les beautes trouvees, trouvables et introuvables; comme l'amateur de tableaux vit dans une societe enchantee de reves peints sur toile.

'I am ruminating,' said Mr. Pickwick, 'on the strange mutability of human affairs.' 'Ah! I see - in at the palace door one day, out at the window the next. Philosopher, Sir?' 'An observer of human nature, Sir,' said Mr. Pickwick. 'Ah, so am I. Most people are when they've little to do and less to get.'

'Did you ever taste beer?' 'I had a sip of it once,' said the small servant. 'Here's a state of things!' cried Mr Swiveller, raising his eyes to the ceiling. 'She never tasted it - it can't be tasted in a sip!'

What you have before you is the first known metamorphosis of a butterfly into a slug.

Katie had some big ass TITTIES. (signature laugh)

'Man, we're in Hollywood, there at least 200 cigarette shops around the corner'.

And at the time we started skateboarding, punk rock and hardcore and skating went hand in hand - THERE'S A HORSE! There's a horse, and a little dog, and a woman in a hat! ... Hi Robby!

[Smith Puget is wearing odd sunglasses] Davey: I think I saw the Olsen Twins wearing those. *both pause* ...I'm not kidding.

What do we have now? I don't know, Oh yay! We have a commercial.

I catch a paperboy, but things dont really change!

I like the juicy stem of grass that grows within the coarser leaf folded round, and the butteryellow glow in the narrow flute from which the morning-glory opens blue and cool on a hot morning.

For a novelist to create character, I think, takes a sharp objective eye but also an intuitive intelligence, a receptiveness, a wilingness to make oneself blank in order to percieve things as they actually are.

The two women were alone in the London flat. 'The point is,' said Anna, as her friend came back from the telephone on the landing, 'the point is, that as far as I can see, everything's cracking up.'

Hitherto the nude has always been represented in poses which presuppose an audience; but these women of mine are honest, simple folk, unconcerned by any other interests than those involved in their physical condition. Here is another; she is washing her feet. It is as if you looked through a key-hole.

C'est tres bien de copier ce qu'on voit, c'est beaucoup mieux de dessiner ce que l'on ne voit plus que dans son memoire. C'est une transformation pendant laquelle l'ingeniosite collabore avec la memoire. Vous ne reproduisez que ce qui vous a frappe, c'est-a-dire le necessaire.

Even working from nature you have to compose.

Originality is not something continuous but something intermittent - a flash of the briefest duration. One must have the time and be watchful (be attuned) to catch the flash and fix it. One must know how to catch and preserve these scant flakes of gold sluiced out of the sand and rocks of everyday life. Originality does not come nugget-size.

As far as I remember, he was there two, three, or four times. At any rate, during the last months of the war I saw him two, three, or four times. Kaltenbrunner never said a word there. As far as I remember, he just listened and stood about.

The real Scott is to be found in his notebooks and working papers, where he elaborated so patiently at turning the mess of his life to gold. 'To observe one must be unwary,' he wrote, so he took experience straight without a notebook. But he later hoarded it like a miser and pored over it like a monk illuminating a manuscript and produced enduring work. When a writer explores emotions to danger point like Scott, it is worse than philistine to talk about weakness of character. The whole moral test is in the books. The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night are all the character reference a writer could want.

There are no countries in the world less known by the British than these selfsame British Islands, or where more strange things are every day occurring.

If my car should be in such a position where I can't quite see what's going on, can't get a good enough look, I'm not the least bit shy about asking the police to bring the bodies over a little closer to the car. 'Pardon me, officer, would you mind dragging that twisted-looking chap over here a little closer to the car, please? My wife has never seen anyone shaped quite like that. Look at that, Sugar Lips! That's his ribcage sticking out the glove compartment. That will be all, officer. You can throw him back on the pile.'

Imagine how thick Japanese people's photo albums must be.

He was happy now, without a care in the world. A meal alone with her, a stroll along the highway in the evening, the way she touched her hand to her hair, the sight of her straw hat hanging from a window hasp, and many other things in which it had never occurred to him to look for pleasure -- such now formed the steady current of his happiness.

Seen from close, her eyes appeared larger than life, especially when she opened and shut her eyelids several times on awakening: black when looked at in the shadow, dark blue in bright light, they seemed to contain layer upon layer of color, thicker and cloudier beneath, lighter and more transparent toward the lustrous surface.

Her handwriting in these pencilled jottings, made forty-five years ago, is exactly as it is today: this makes me suspect, when I am not with her, that she is a closet intellectual.

Everybody firmly believes in it because the mathematicians imagine it is a fact of observation, and observers that it is a theory of mathematics.