Observers Quotes - Page 14

• Savvy observers occasionally note television's resemblance to the weather: Everybody loves to complain about it, but nobody can do anything to fix it.

  Michael Medved

  Weather, Complaining, Television

  7 Copy quote

• The average man cannot believe that an artist may be as serious and highminded an observer of life as the professed man of science.

  Aleister Crowley

  Believe, Artist, Men

  10 Copy quote

• Select such subjects that your pupils cannot walk out without seeing them. Train your pupils to be observers, and have them provided with the specimens about which you speak. If you can find nothing better, take a house-fly or a cricket, and let each one hold a specimen and examine it as you talk.

  Louis Agassiz

  Teaching, Science, House

  4 Copy quote

• Observers in the full enjoyment of their bodily senses pity me, but it is because they do not see the golden chamber in my life where I dwell delighted; for, dark as my path may seem to them, I carry a magic light in my heart. Faith, the spiritual strong searchlight, illumines the way, and although sinister doubts lurk in the shadow, I walk unafraid towards the Enchanted Wood where the foliage is always green, where joy abides, where nightingales nest and sing, and where life and death are one in the Presence of the Lord.

  Helen Keller

  Meaningful, Spiritual, Strong

  19 Copy quote

• The observer is the observed.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Love, Life, Truth

  Jiddu Krishnamurti (1993). “The Meditative Mind”, p.41, Krishnamurti Foundation of America

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The peculiar striations that define someone's personality are too numerous to know, no matter how close the observer. A person we think we know can suddenly become someone else when previously hidden strands of his character are called to the fore by circumstance.

  Elliot Perlman

  Character, Thinking, Personality

  46 Copy quote

• I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.

  Isaac Asimov

  Believe, Independent, Science

  Isaac Asimov (1982). “Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine”

  81 Copy quote

  Show source

• The late great Horace Lloyd Swithin (1844-1917), British essayist, lecturer, satirist, and social observer, wrote in his autobiographical Appointments, 1890-1901 (1902), "When one travels abroad, one doesn't so much discover the hidden Wonders of the World, but the hidden wonders of the individuals with whom one is traveling. They may turn out to afford a stirring view, a rather dull landscape, or a terrain so treacherous one finds it's best to forget the entire affair and return home.

  Marisha Pessl

  Home, Views, World

  Marisha Pessl (2006). “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”, p.280, Penguin

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• At times, he even admitted that he'd been more an observer of the world than a participant in it.

  Nicholas Sparks

  World, Participants

  Nicholas Sparks (2009). “The Last Song”, p.15, Hachette UK

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When K. looked at the castle, often it seemed to him as if he were observing someone who sat quietly there in front of him gazing, not lost in thought and so oblivious of everything, but free and untroubled, as if he were alone with nobody to observe him, and yet must notice that he was observed, and all the same remained with his calm not even slightly disturbed; and really - one did not know whether it was cause or effect - the gaze of the observer could not remain concentrated there, but slid away.

  Franz Kafka

  Castles, Gazing, Causes

  Franz Kafka, Willa Muir (1974). “The castle”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• You are not an observer, you are a participant.

  Nhat Hanh

  Participants

  Thich Nhat Hanh (2008). “Being Peace”, p.45, ReadHowYouWant.com

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Yet I think the demon's target is not the possessed; it is us . . . the observers . . . every person in this house. And I think---I think the point is to make us despair; to reject our own humanity, Damien: to see ourselves as ultimately bestial; as ultimately vile and putrescent; without dignity; ugly; unworthy.

  William Peter Blatty

  Thinking, House, Humanity

  William Peter Blatty (2015). “If There Were Demons Then Perhaps There Were Angels: William Peter Blatty’s Own Story of the Exorcist”, p.10, Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The accouterments of life were so rich and varied, so elaborated, that almost no place at all was left for life itself. Each and every accessory was so costly and beautiful that it had an existence above and beyond the purpose it was meant to serve – confusing the observer and absorbing attention.

  Thomas Mann

  Beautiful, Confusing, Accessories

  8 Copy quote

• After all, is it not the way we humans shape the universe, shape time itself? Do we not take the raw stuff of chaos and impose a beginning, middle, and end on it, like the simplest and most profound of folktales, to reflect the shapes of our own tiny lives? And if the physicists are right, that the physical world changes as it is observed, and we are its only known observers, then might we not be bending the entire chaotic universe, the eternal, ever-active Now, to fit that familiar form?

  Tad Williams

  Profound, Bending, World

  Tad Williams (2002). “Otherland 4: Sea of Silver Light”, p.584, Penguin

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Quantum theory thus reveals a basic oneness of the universe. It shows that we cannot decompose the world into independently existing smallest units. As we penetrate into matter, nature does not show us any isolated "building blocks," but rather appears as a complicated web of relations between the various parts of the whole. These relations always include the observer in an essential way. The human observer constitute the final link in the chain of observational processes, and the properties of any atomic object can be understood only in terms of the object's interaction with the observer.

  Fritjof Capra

  Nature, Block, Science

  46 Copy quote

• Viscosity and velocity are opposites, yet they can look the same. Viscosity causes the stillness of disinclination, velocity causes the stillness of fascination. An observer can't tell if a person is silent and still because inner life has stalled or because inner life is transfixingly busy.

  Susanna Kaysen

  Opposites, Causes, Fascination

  Susanna Kaysen (2013). “Girl, Interrupted”, p.77, Vintage

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Good composition is like a suspension bridge; each line adds strength and takes none away... Making lines run into each other is not composition. There must be motive for the connection. Get the art of controlling the observer – that is composition.

  Robert Henri

  Running, Art, Bridges

  21 Copy quote

• Pretend you are dancing or singing a picture. A worker or painter should enjoy his work, else the observer will not enjoy it.

  Robert Henri

  Dancing, Singing, Should

  Robert Henri (1960). “The art spirit”, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• Monday morning and there's one less donut than there should be. Keen observers note the reduced mass straightaway but stay silent, because saying, 'Hey, is that only six donuts?' would betray their donut experience. It's not great for your career to be known as the person who can spot the difference between six and seven donuts at a glance.

  Max Barry

  Monday, Morning, Careers

  6 Copy quote

• A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage . . . . Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Loss, Intellectual, World

  A World Split Apart — Commencement Address Delivered At Harvard University, www.orthodoxytoday.org. June 8, 1978.

  65 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ever since viewing screens entered the home, many observers have worried that they put our brains into a stupor. An early strain of research claimed that when we watch television, our brains mostly exhibit slow alpha waves - indicating a low level of arousal, similar to when we are daydreaming.

  Hanna Rosin

  Home, Brain, Arousal

  4 Copy quote

• The true nature of bureaucracy may be nowhere more obvious to the observer than in a developing country, for only there will it still be made manifest by the full complement of documents, files, veneered desks and cabinets - which convey the strict and inverse relationship between productivity and paperwork.

  Alain de Botton

  Country, May, Developing Countries

  Alain de Botton (2009). “The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work”, p.40, Penguin UK

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token. It is therefore risky to send it out into the world. How often it must be impaired by the eyes of the unfeeling and the cruelty of the impotent.

  Mark Rothko

  Eye, World, Companionship

  Susan J. Barnes, John de Menil, Dominique de Menil, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman (1989). “The Rothko Chapel: An Act of Faith”, Menil Foundation

  50 Copy quote

  Show source

• but writers, Garp knew, were just observers - good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.

  John Irving

  Behavior, Ruthless, Humans

  John Irving (1978). “The world according to Garp”, Pocket

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Do not allow yourself to suppress your thoughts. Instead, let the thoughts come before you and become a sort of observer. Start observing your own mind. Do not try to escape; do not be afraid of your thinking.

  Rama Swami

  Inspirational, Spiritual, Yoga

  73 Copy quote