Noticing Quotes - Page 12

• All your clear and pleasing sentences will fall apart if you don't keep remembering that writing is linear and sequential, that logic is the glue that holds it together, that tension must be maintained from one sentence to the next and from one paragraph to the next and from one section to the next, and that narrative - good old-fashioned storytelling - is what should pull your readers along without their noticing the tug.

  William Zinsser

  Fall, Writing, Together

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• I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at your desk and pick up your pen and finish writing when you put down your pen again; a writer is always writing, seeing everything through a thin mist of words, fitting swift little descriptions to everything he sees, always noticing. Just as I believe that a painter cannot sit down to his morning coffee without noticing what color it is, so a writer cannot see an odd little gesture without putting a verbal description to it, and ought never to let a moment go by undescribed.

  Shirley Jackson

  Morning, Coffee, Believe

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• This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it.

  Joseph Goebbels

  Ideas, Secret, Propaganda

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• I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - [...] when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

  Carl Sagan

  Children, Hands, America

  "A Disturbing 1995 Prediction by Carl Sagan Accurately Describes America of Today" by PAUL RATNER, bigthink.com.

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• [Ognev] recalled endless, heated, purely Russian arguments, when the wranglers, spraying spittle and banging their fists on the table, fail to understand yet interrupt one another, themselves not even noticing it, contradict themselves with every phrase, change the subject, then, having argued for two or three hours, begin to laugh.

  Anton Chekhov

  Two, Laughing, Wranglers

  "Verotchka". Book by Anton Chekhov, February 21, 1887.

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• Not very long ago some one invented the assertion that there were only "Four Hundred" people in New York City who were really worth noticing. But a wiser man has arisen - the census taker - and his larger estimate of human interest has been preferred in marking out the field of these little stories of the "Four Million.

  O. Henry

  New York, Men, Long Ago

  O. Henry (2015). “The Complete Poetry of O. Henry (Including a Biography of the Author): From the American writer, a master of short stories, known for The Gift of the Magi, Cabbages and Kings, The Cop and the Anthem, Options, Roads of Destiny, The Four Million…”, p.146, e-artnow

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• I think inspiration is always around; it's just a question of whether or not you're noticing it.

  John Green

  Inspiration, Thinking

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• The child's true constructive energy, a dynamic power, has remained unnoticed for thousands of years. Just as men have trodden the earth, and later tilled its surface, without thought for the immense wealth hidden in its depths, so the men of our day make progress after progress in civilized life, without noticing the treasures that lie hidden in the psychic world of infancy.

  Maria Montessori

  Children, Lying, Men

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• Most people experience love, without noticing that there is anything remarkable about it.

  Boris Pasternak

  Love, People, Remarkable

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• We pass by common objects or persons without noticing them; but the keen eye detects and notes types everywhere and among all classes.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Eye, Class, Common

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• I think the point of cinematography, of what we do, is intimacy. Is intent, is the balance between the familiar and the dream, it is being subjective and objective, it is being engaged and yet standing back and noticing something that perhaps other people didn’t notice before, or celebrating something that you feel is beautiful or valid, or true or engaging in some way.

  Christopher Doyle

  Beautiful, Dream, Thinking

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• Some think guts is sprinting at the end of a race. But guts is what got you there to begin with. Guts start back in the hills with 6 miles to go and you're thinking of how you can get out of this race without anyone noticing. Guts begin when you still have forty minutes of torture left and you're already hurting more than you ever remember.

  George A. Sheehan

  Running, Hurt, Thinking

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• In my childhood I was obsessed with cameras but could not afford one. After much persuasion my father Harivansh Rai Bachchan bought me a box camera which I treasured for years. Initially I clicked trees and nature and as I grew up started noticing prettier things-motorbike, sleek cars and cool girls. But the hamartia of life is when you desire something you cannot afford it and when you are able to afford it you are too old to use it. Now I don't need all gadgets but it's satisfying to know that at least I can afford them.

  Amitabh Bachchan

  Girl, Father, Years

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• To me, the idea of a weatherman is really powerful. There's a guy on television or on the radio telling us the future, and nobody cares. It's this daily mundane miracle, and I think the songs I chose are about noticing the beauty in normal, everyday life.

  Gregory Alan Isakov

  Song, Powerful, Thinking

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• I do not yet want to form a hypothesis to test, because as soon as you make a hypothesis, you become prejudiced. Your mind slides into a groove, and once it is in that groove, has difficulty noticing anything outside of it. During this time, my sense must be sharp; that is the main thing - to be sharp, yet open.

  Bernd Heinrich

  Mind, Slides, Want

  "A Year in the Maine Woods". Book by Bernd Heinrich, 1995.

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• Some people have no original ideas because they do not think well enough of themselves to consider their ideas worth noticing and developing.

  Eric Hoffer

  Thinking, Ideas, People

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• When traveling, I usually keep a notebook: when home at my desk, the notebook serves mainly to remind me how little I saw at the time, or rather how I was noticing the wrong things. But the notes do spur memories, and it's the memories I trust. The wine stain on the page may tell me more than the words there, which usually strike me as hopelessly inadequate.

  Jonathan Raban

  Notebook, Memories, Home

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