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"It was clearly a prisoner's craftwork; that is, the most painstaking work in the world, for prisoners have nowhere to hurry to."
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Exlpore more Observation quotes

"Good God. Men everywhere."

"She was a most wonderful woman for prowling about the house. How she got from story to story was a mystery beyond solution. A lady so decorous in herself, and so highly connected, was not to be suspected of dropping over the banisters or sliding down them, yet her extraordinary facility of locomotion suggested the wild idea. Another noticeable circumstance in Mrs. Sparsit was, that she was never hurried. She would shoot with consummate velocity from the roof to the hall, yet would be in full possession of her breath and dignity on the moment of her arrival there. Neither was she ever seen by human vision to go at a great pace."

"Right now, it's hard to imagine that it is raining anywhere in the world."

"The surveillance, he thought, essentially should be maintained. And, if possible, by me. I should always be watching, watching and figuring out, even if I never do anything about what I see; even if I just sit there and observe silently, not seen: that is important, that I as a watcher of all that happens should be at my place."

"You can't go by what a girl says, when she's giving you the devil for making a chump of yourself. It's like Shakespeare. Sounds well, but doesn't mean anything."

"One must always proceed with method. I made an error of judgment asking you that question. Toeach man his own knowledge. You could tell me the details of the patient's physical appearance- nothing there would escape you. If I wanted information about the papers on the desk, Mr. Raymond would have noticed anything there was to see. To find out about the fire, I must ask the man whose business is to observe such things. - Detective Hercule Poirot to Doctor Sheppard."

"He is not a man wedded to action, Boleyn, but rather a man who stands by, smirking and stroking his beard; he thinks he looks enigmatic, but instead he looks as if he's pleasuring himself."

"At any rate I'd better be getting out of the wood, for really its coming on very dark. Do you think it's going to rain?'Tweedledum spread a large umbrella over himself and his brother, and looked up into it.'No, I don't think it is,' he said: 'at least - not under here. Nohow.''But it may rain outside?''It may - if it chooses,' said Tweedledee: 'we've got no objection. Contrariwise."

"It was dark, so I couldn't make out much of her face, but she had brilliant red hair, like honey and roses and the sun altogether."
Explore more quotes by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

"Where an open war is impossible, oppression can continue quietly behind the scenes. Terrorism. Guerrilla warfare, violence, prisons, concentration camps. I ask you: Is this peace?The true antipode of peace is violence. And those who want peace in the world should remove not only war from the world but also violence. If there is no open war but there is still violence, that is not peace."

"In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations."

"In order to do evil, must first believe that what they are doing is good, otherwise they can't do it."

"It is unthinkable in the twentieth century to fail to distinguish between what constitutes an abominable atrocity that must be prosecuted and what constitutes that "past" which "ought not to be stirred up."

"Violence does not necessarily take people by the throat and strangle them. Usually it demands no more than an ultimate allegiance from its subjects. They are required merely to become accomplices in its lies."

"Human rights' are a fine thing, but how can we make ourselves sure that our rights do not expand at the expense of the rights of others. A society with unlimited rights is incapable of standing to adversity. If we do not wish to be ruled by a coercive authority, then each of us must rein himself in...A stable society is achieved not by balancing opposing forces but by conscious self-limitation: by the principle that we are always duty-bound to defer to the sense of moral justice."

"Work was like a stick. It had two ends. When you worked for the knowing you gave them quality, when you worked for a fool you simply gave him eyewash."

"You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me."
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