Observing Quotes - Page 9

• As a novelist, you deepen your characters as you go, adding layers. As a reporter, you try to peel layers away: observing subjects enough to get beneath the surface, re-questioning a source to find the facts. But these processes aren't so different.

  Amy Waldman

  Character, Trying, Novelists

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• At the moment you are no longer an observing, reflecting being; you have ceased to be aware of yourself; you exist only in that quiet, steady thrill that is so unlike any excitement that you have ever known.

  May Sinclair

  Thrill, Quiet, Excitement

  May Sinclair (1915). “A Journal of Impressions in Belgium”

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• When Da Vinci wanted an effect, he willed, he planned the means to make it happen: that was the purpose of his machines. But the machines of Newton ... are means not for doing but for observing. He saw an effect, and he looked for its cause.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Mean, Science, Purpose

  Jacob Bronowski (2011). “The Common Sense of Science”, p.16, Faber & Faber

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• I just walk around, observing the subject from various angles until the picture elements arrange themselves into a composition that pleases my eye.

  Andre Kertesz

  Eye, Elements, Angle

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• Let us seek to extend the present life to the uttermost by observing every law of health, and by properly balancing labor, study, rest and recreation.

  Brigham Young

  Law, Pyramids, Study

  Brigham Young (1867). “Journal of Discourses”, p.132

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• PLUNDER, v. To take the property of another without observing the decent and customary reticences of theft. To wrest the wealth of A from B and leave C lamenting a vanishing opportunity.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Opportunity, Vanishing, Wealth

  Ambrose Bierce (2009). “The Devil's Dictionary: Easyread Super Large 24pt Edition”, p.125, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• In New York, you are forced into having very public lives and observing all types of people, what they sound like, what they're reading, what they smell like, what they are listening to, how they talk to their friends.

  Nick Kroll

  New York, Reading, Smell

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Seinfeld has his way of telling jokes - and I'm not comparing myself to Seinfeld, his genius is observing the small details of everyday life and finding humor in it.

  Nick Kroll

  Everyday, Details, Genius

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• There is no surer or more illuminating way of reading a man's character, and perhaps a little of his past history, than by observing the contexts in which he prefers to use certain words.

  Owen Barfield

  Reading, Character, Past

  Owen Barfield (1954). “History in English Words by Owen Barfield”

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• Generally, there is a lot of truth value in stepping back, observing, then logically generalizing the extremes of what you see.

  Criss Jami

  Stepping Back, Extremes, Values

  Criss Jami (2015). “Killosophy”, p.74, Criss Jami

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• My outlook on warfare is best illustrated by a cartoon I did some thirty-odd years ago of a soldier in an Italian foxhole reading about the Normandy invasion and observing to his buddy that: "The hell this ain't the most important hole in the world . I'm in it.

  Bill Mauldin

  Reading, Italian, Years

  Bill Mauldin, United States. National Park Service. Division of Publications (1978). “Mud & guts: a look at the common soldier of the American revolution”, Government Printing Office

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• As the Deity has given us Greeks all other blessings in moderation, so our moderation gives us a kind of wisdom which is timid, in all likelihood, and fit for common people, not one which is kingly and splendid. This wisdom, such as it is, observing that human life is ever subject to all sorts of vicissitudes, forbids us to be puffed up by the good things we have, or to admire a man's felicity while there is still time for it to change.

  Solon

  Men, Blessing, Giving

  "Solon". Book by Plutarch, ch. 27; translation by Bernadotte Perrin, 1497.

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• Happy will be those who give ear to the words of the dead: - The reading of good works and the observing of their precepts.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Reading, Giving, Ears

  Leonardo (da Vinci) (1958). “The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci”

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• Those who travel heedlessly from place to place, observing only their distance from each other, and attending only to their accommodation at the inn at night, set out fools, and will certainly return so

  Lord Chesterfield

  Distance, Night, Fool

  Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1855). “The Works of Lord Chesterfield: Including His Letters to His Son, Etc : to which is Prefixed, an Original Life of the Author”, p.162

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• Our rulers will best promote the improvement of the nation by strictly confining themselves to their own legitimate duties, by leaving capital to find its most lucrative course, commodities their fair price, industry and intelligence their natural reward, idleness and folly their natural punishment, by maintaining peace, by defending property, by diminishing the price of law, and by observing strict economy in every department of the state. Let the Government do this: the People will assuredly do the rest.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Peace, Government, Law

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• There is in the child a special kind of sensitivity which leads him to absorb everything about him, and it is this work of observing and absorbing that alone enables him to adapt himself to life

  Maria Montessori

  Children, Special, Kind

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• And keep as few things as possible, so that you don't have to fear for them. Give them up without a struggle-because otherwise the humiliation will poison your heart. They will take them away from you in a fight, and trying to hold onto your property will only leave you with a bloodied mouth ... But by owning things and trembling about their fate aren't you forfeiting the rare opportunity of observing and understanding?

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Struggle, Heart, Fighting

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• An eye critically nice can only be formed by observing well-colored pictures with attention.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Nice, Eye, Attention

  Sir Joshua Reynolds (1860). “The Life and Writings of Sir Joshua Reynolds: First President of the Royal Academy”

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• Imagination is a very precise thing, you know - it is not fantasy; the man who invented the wheel while he was observing another man walking - that is imagination!

  Jacques Lipchitz

  Men, Imagination, Wheels

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• In my practice as a psychiatrist, I have found that helping people to develop personal goals has proven to be the most effective way to help them cope with problems. Observing that lives of people who have mastered adversity, I have noticed that they have established goals and sought with all their effort to achieve them. From the moment they decided to concentrate all their energies on a specific objective, they begun to surmount the most difficult odds.

  Ari Kiev

  Adversity, Practice, Odds

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• The human mind evolved always in the company of the human body, and of the animal body before it was human. The intricate connections of mind and body must exceed our imagination, as from our point of view we are peculiarly prevented from observing them.

  John Desmond Bernal

  Animal, Views, Imagination

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• Sharing words with someone you have never met is like observing a shadow, without seeing the whole person; the place where my shadow touches theirs, is the place where our words meet, and it is in that place where wonderful exchanges can take place.

  Allison Mackie

  Shadow, Our Words, Wonderful

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• It is hard to see how one could begin to develop a quantum-theoretical description of brain action when one might well have to regard the brain as "observing itself" all the time!

  Roger Penrose

  Brain, Might, Action

  Roger Penrose (2016). “The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics”, p.821, Oxford University Press

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• If, while observing the boundless universe, the writer is able to scrutinise his own self as well as others, the resulting incisiveness of his observations will far surpass objective descriptions of reality.

  Gao Xingjian

  Writing, Reality, Self

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• It is what makes conscious of the conditions and laws of observing which applied in this manner become a theme on its own. The activity of consciousness depending on the way the work itself proceeds, becomes the subject of my attention this way and it is precisely because of this voyeuristic attitude toward the own observation and experience of the subject that the conscious analytic dimension in the work shows.

  Antoni Tapies

  Attitude, Law, Attention

  "Tàpies, Werke auf Papier 1943 - 2003" by Antoni Tapies, Kunsthalle Emden, edited by Achim Sommer, Altana, (p. 30), 2004.

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