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Observation Quotes
"The cells smell is a great feature of French prisons. Ours in No.44 was one of those fine broad-shouldered up and coming young smells, which stand on both feet and look the world in the eye. We became very fond and proud of it."
48
"Nobody knows much about women, not even Freud, not even women themselves. But it's like electricity: you don't need to know how it works to get a shock on the fingers."
47
"Women derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle."
45
"She thought of Aziza's stutter, and of what Aziza had said earlier about fractures and powerful collisions deep down and how sometimes all we see on the surface is a slight tremor."
43
"When the poet Paul Valery once asked Albert Einstein if he kept a notebook to record his ideas, Einstein looked at him with mild but genuine surprise. "Oh, that's not necessary," he replied . "It's so seldom I have one."
42
"Her beauty was a weapon. A loaded gun, with the barrel pointed at her own head."
42
"The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself."
41
"In an instant, everything in the room came alive. Like the sunshine had a melody and the sounds of footsteps had a texture I could feel in my fingertips each time anyone moved."
40
"The voice of a donkey braying in the neighbouring meadow seemed like the mocking laughter of demons."
39
"He lived with his mother, father and sister; had a room of his own, with the fourth-floor windows staring on seas of rooftops and the glitter of winter nights when home lights brownly wave beneath the heater whiter blaze of stars--those stars that in the North, in the clear nights, all hang frozen tears by the billions, with January Milky Ways like silver taffy, veils of frost in the stillness, huge blinked, throbbing to the slow beat of time and universal blood."
39
"When Jack Burns needed to hold his mother's hand, his fingers could see in the dark."
39
"The vast and terrible depth.'Of course, he said.'The inexhaustibility.'I understand.'The whole huge nameless thing.'Yes, absolutely.'The massive darkness.'Certainly, certainly.'The whole terrible endless hugeness.'I know exactly what you mean."
39
"As dull as moon face, never seem to change."
38
"Accuracy of observation is the equivalent of accuracy of thinking."
37
"I encountered among my comrades the most varied human traits, from frankness to reserve, from goodness, uprightness and kindness, to brutality and baseness."
37
"She ignored my observation. This generally happens with me. Show me a woman, I sometimes say, and I will show you someone who is going to ignore my observations."
37
"The younger and healthier a woman is and the more her new and glossy body seems destined for eternal freshness, the less useful is artifice; but the carnal weakness of this prey that man takes and its ominous deterioration always have to be hidden from him...In any case, the more traits and proportions of a woman seem contrived, the more she delighted the heart of man because she seemed to escape the metamorphosis of natural things. The result is this strange paradox that by desiring to grasp nature, but transfigured, in woman, man destines her to artifice."
37
"If you want to know a man, dig in his firepit...Basically, it meant that you could judge a lot about a man's life by what he thew away - or by what he was willing to burn in order to stay warm."
37
"I use the word "man loosely. A better description would be "the most beautiful specimen of Homo sapiens sapiens with a set of XY chromosomes to grace the planet Earth at this moment, or any other era, epoch, or age in history."
36
"The arrogance of the human mind is too fragile, as well as the patience of the human character. It is because of that, they fail to see the power of mere observation and systematic analysis."
36
"Human looks sure on face, while the earth lost in space."
36
"He seemed unaware of the messiness of the arrangement."
35
"Optics, developing in us through study, teach us to see."
34
"Snow's table manners are atrocious - it's like watching a wild dog eat. A wild dog you'd like to slip the tongue."
34
"Whoa. Fangs. She had fangs.She leaned in, prodded them a little. Eating with those puppies was going to take some getting used to, she thought.On impulse, she brought up her hands, turned her fingers into claws. Hissed.Cool."
34
"Do you know, Watson," said he, "that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there."
34
"Outside the hospital, I squinted in the harsh morning sunlight. I could hear birds chirping in the tree, but even though I searched for them, they remained hidden from me."
34
"Without inquiring too deeply into the causes which make it possible to find subjects of gaiety always close at hand, the proof of that possibility can be found in the fact that persons of sensitive intelligence are capable of finding comic potentialities in everything and everybody, thereby demonstrating that if some people hold the belief that there is very little that is laughable in the world, the reason is that they lack the ability to find it."
34
"There isn't a simple person anywhere in this world."
34
"I just know Maycomb. I'm not in the least sensitive about it, but good Lord, I'm certainly aware of it."
33
"Hey, you don't look like a rabbit."
33
"Everyone look around and see if you can spot the NARCS. They're the ones who look like hippies."
32
"In my experience, the ex-military guys came in two types. The first grew long hair, sprouted beards, and indulged in all the things they hadn't been able do while they'd been in the armed forces. The second did their best to pretend they never got out."
32
"The question is not what you look at, but what you see. It is only necessary to behold the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair's breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance."
32
"The young girl inspected her flounces and smoothed her ribbons again; and Winterbourne presently risked an observation upon the beauty of the view. He was ceasing to be embarrassed, for he had begun to perceive that she was not in the least embarrassed herself."
32
"I have been sitting watching that ever since I came back, the continuous variations of light and shadow."
31
"I think that my job is to observe people and the world, and not to judge them. I always hope to position myself away from so-called conclusions. I would like to leave everything wide open to all the possibilities in the world."
31
"It was a curious day, slashed abruptly with fleeting, familiar impressions."
31
"Those modern analysts they charge so much! In my day for five marks Freud himself would treat you. For ten marks he would treat you and press your pants. For fifteen marks Freud would let you treat him - that included a choice of any two vegetables."
31
"There is nothing left of him but curiosity and a pair of eyes."
31
"Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone?"
30
"It was a voice that you felt you had to listen to-or you ignored at your peril."
30
"When people stargazing, they stare at stars,and many other things which they've already presumed commonly and universally as stars."
30
"You write a story about loneliness, and you grab them all because everybody's an expert on that one."
29
"From my close observation of writers... they fall into two groups: 1) those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and 2) those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review."
29
"A surging, seething, murmuring crowd of beings that are human only in name, for to the eye and ear they seem naught but savage creatures, animated by vile passions and by the lust of vengeance and of hate."
29
"It does, Tennyson, because there's a fine line between confidence and arrogance. There's a fine line between being assertive and being a bully. And you're on the wrong side of both lines."
28
"Here was the world-famous novelist with her penchant for detail; yet, in her observations of a prostitute with a customer, she had failed to come away with the most important detail of all. She could never identify the murderer; she could barely describe him. She'd made a point of not looking at him!"
28
"Is it worth while to observe that there are no Venetian blinds in Venice?"
27
"All cases are unique and very similar to others."
27
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