Observing Quotes - Page 9

• All men who have sense and feeling are being continually helped; they are taught by every person they meet, and enriched by everything that falls in their way. The greatest, is he who has been oftenest aided. Originality is the observing eye.

  John Ruskin

  Fall, Eye, Men

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• Such as are still observing upon others are like those who are always abroad at other men's houses, reforming everything there while their own runs to ruin.

  Alexander Pope

  Running, Men, Gossip

  Alexander Pope (1806). “The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq. In Verse and Prose: Containing the Principal Notes of Drs. Warburton and Warton: Illustrations, and Critical and Explanatory Remarks, by Johnson, Wakefield, A. Chalmers, F.S.A. and Others. To which are Added, Now First Published, Some Original Letters, with Additional Observations, and Memoirs of the Life of the Author”, p.409

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• Height isn't something you can have and just let be, like nice teeth or naturally curly hair. People have this idea you have to put it to use, playing basketball, for example, or observing the weather up there. If you are a girl, they feel a particular need to point your height out to you, as if you might not have noticed.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Basketball, Girl, Nice

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• The Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti once remarked that observing without evaluating is the highest form of human intelligence. When I first read this statement, the thought, 'What nonsense!' shot through my mind before I realized that I had just made an evaluation.

  Marshall B. Rosenberg

  Mind, Evaluation, Firsts

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• Certainly we do not believe in the present ecclesiastical arrangement called Christmas: first, because we do not believe in the mass at all, but abhor it, whether it be said or sung in Latin or in English; and, secondly, because we find no Scriptural warrant whatever for observing any day as the birthday of the Savior; and, consequently, its observance is a superstition, because not of divine authority.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Latin, Believe, Superstitions

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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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• One is called a criminal for being different, and malicious for observing other people with too much clarity and penetration. But what if one began with oneself?

  Andre Suares

  People, Humanity, Being Different

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• At present, I am mainly observing the physical motion of mountains, water, trees and flowers. One is everywhere reminded of similar movements in the human body, of similar impulses of joy and suffering in plants.

  Egon Schiele

  Philosophy, Flower, Medicine

  Erwin Mitsch, Egon Schiele (1988). “The art of Egon Schiele”

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• Between the action sequences, the pleasure lies in observing impeccably dressed Brits exchanging barbed witticisms - making it, basically, Downton Abbey with cyber crime and shower sex.

  Karina Longworth

  Sex, Lying, Action

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• There was a time when I thought a great deal about the axolotls. I went to see them at the aquarium at the Jardin des Plantes and stayed for hours watching them, observing their immobility; their faint movements. Now I am an axolotl.

  Julio Cortazar

  Aquariums, Movement, Hours

  Julio Cortazar (2016). “Hopscotch, Blow-Up, We Love Glenda So Much”, p.620, Everyman's Library

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• The alchemists spent years in their laboratories, observing the fire that purified the metals. They spent so much time close to the fire that gradually they gave up the vanities of the world. They discovered that the purification of the metals had led to a purification of themselves.

  Paulo Coelho

  Fire, Vanity, Years

  Paulo Coelho (1998). “The Alchemist - 10th Anniversary Edition”, HarperSanFrancisco

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• The most ordinary conditions for observing sailing birds are then the wind and sea are both aft.

  Lawrence Hargrave

  Wind, Sea, Bird

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• But, lady, as women, what wisdom may be ours if not the philosophies of the kitchen? Lupercio Leonardo spoke well when he said: 'how well one may philosophize when preparing dinner.' And I often say, when observing these trivial details: had Aristotle prepared vituals [sic], he would have written more.

  Juana Inés de la Cruz

  Philosophy, Cooking, Kitchen

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• The thing about being a songwriter, once you realize you are one, is that to provide ammo, you start to become an observer. ... You're constantly on the alert. That faculty gets trained in you over the years: observing people, how they react to one another, which in a way makes you weirdly distant. ... It's a little of Peeping Tom, being a song-writer.

  Keith Richards

  Music, Song, Years

  Keith Richards (2010). “Life”, p.127, Hachette UK

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• Whether we like it or not, quantification in history is here to stay for reasons which the quantifiers themselves might not actively approve. We are becoming a numerate society: almost instinctively there seems now to be a greater degree of truth in evidence expressed numerically than in any literary evidence, no matter how shaky the statistical evidence, or acute the observing eye.

  J. H. Plumb

  Truth, Eye, Science

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• Come, live with the doors of the senses guarded, diligent and mindful, vigilant and mindful, with the ways of the mind well watched, possessed of a mind that is awake and observing.

  Gautama Buddha

  Buddhist, Doors, Mind

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• Photographs have the kind of authority over imagination to-day, which the printed word had yesterday, and the spoken word before that. They seem utterly real. They come, we imagine, directly to us without human meddling, and they are the most effortless food for the mind conceivable.

  Walter Lippmann

  Real, Printed Word, Yesterday

  "Public Opinion". Book by Walter Lippmann, 1922.

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• First-order cybernetics is the science of observed systems; Second-order cybernetics is the science of observing systems.

  Heinz von Foerster

  Order, Cybernetics, Firsts

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• If you expect the worst from a person, you can't ever be disappointed... The pessimist takes a sort of gloomy pleasure in observing the depths to which human behaviour can sink. The more sin he sees, the more his belief in Original Sin is confirmed. Everyone likes to have his deepest convictions confirmed; that is one of the most abiding of human satisfaction.

  Anthony Burgess

  Depth, Abiding, Behaviour

  "The Wanting Seed".

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• The only way that you can keep moving forward, finding other ways of expressing things about this increasingly complicated world that we live in, is by listening and observing not only to life around you but to the other people who are in the room. It's not about a sort of, you know, a sense that you have to be democratic about these things, it's a question of creativity that the process of making theatre is a collaborative process, and it is not in, it is not a question of, you know, I have no interest in paying lip service to it, for me it's absolutely fundamental.

  Simon McBurney

  Moving, Creativity, Complicated World

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• By strictly observing Botvinnik's rule regarding the thorough analysis of one's own games, with the years I have come to realize that this provides the foundation for the continuous development of chess mastery.

  Garry Kasparov

  Years, Games, Foundation

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• Seeing, observing, listening, these are the greatest acts

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Wise, Listening, Seeing

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• When an investor focuses on short-term investments, he or she is observing the variability of the portfolio, not the returns - in short, being fooled by randomness.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Investing, Return, Portfolios

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• The historian is, by definition, absolutely incapable of observing the facts which he examines.

  Marc Bloch

  Definitions, Facts, Historian

  Marc Bloch (1992). “The Historian's Craft”, p.40, Manchester University Press

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• I was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my other senses I might blind my soul altogether.

  Socrates

  Eye, Heroic Deeds, Soul

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