Observers Quotes - Page 15

• An experience teaches only the good observer; but far from seeking a lesson in it, everyone looks for an argument in experience, and everyone interprets the conclusion in his own way.

  Andre Gide

  Understanding, Experience, Looks

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• Creditors are a superstitious sect, great observers of set days and times.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Debtors, Creditors, Poor Richard

  Benjamin Franklin, William-Temple Franklin (1818). “Memoirs of the Life and Writings of (the Same), Continued to the Time of His Death by William Temple Franklin. - London, H. Colburn 1818”, p.253

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• What is this self-inside us, this silent observer, severe and speechless critic, who can terrorize us, and urge us onto futile activity, and in the end, judge us still more severely for the errors into which his own reproaches drove us?

  T. S. Eliot

  Errors, Self, Judging

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• There is a kind of character in thy life, That to the observer doth thy history, fully unfold.

  William Shakespeare

  Character, Personality, Kind

  William Shakespeare, Joseph Dennie, Isaac Reed, Samuel Johnson, George Steevens (1805). “The Plays of William Shakespeare: With the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators”, p.315

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• The events of human life, whether public or private, are so intimately linked to architecture that most observers can reconstruct nations or individuals in all the truth of their habits from the remains of their monuments or from their domestic relics.

  Honore de Balzac

  Badass, Bad Ass, Events

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• To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say, is a keen observer of life. The word Intellectual suggests straight away. A man who's untrue to his wife.

  W. H. Auden

  Sorry, Men, Intelligent

  New Year Letter (1961) note to line 1277

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• Any measurement must take into account the position of the observer. There is no such thing as measurement absolute, there is only measurement relative.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Justice, Diversity, Measurement

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• I long ago came to the conclusion that even if I could put down accurately the thing I saw and enjoyed, it would not give the observer the kind of feeling it gave me. I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at-not copy it.

  Georgia O'Keeffe

  Art, Long Ago, Giving

  Georgia O'Keeffe, Robert Pincus-Witten, Hirschl & Adler Galleries (1986). “Georgia O'Keeffe: selected paintings and works on paper : April 26 through June 6, 1986”, Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Incorporated

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• There can be no global security without respect for children. We have to be more than just observers of children's suffering, we have to be partners with them in their struggles.

  Landon Pearson

  Respect, Children, Struggle

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• For the perfect idler, for the passionate observer it becomes an immense source of enjoyment to establish his dwelling in the throng, in the ebb and flow, the bustle, the fleeting and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel at home anywhere; to see the world, to be at the very centre of the world, and yet to be unseen of the world, such are some of the minor pleasures of those independent, intense and impartial spirits, who do not lend themselves easily to linguistic definitions. The observer is a prince enjoying his incognito wherever he goes.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Travel, Home, Independent

  "The Painter of Modern Life".

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• Every artist, every scientist, must decide now where he stands. He has no alternative. There is no standing above the conflict on Olympian heights. There are no impartial observers. Through the destruction, in certain countries, of the greatest of man's literary heritage, through the propagation of false ideas of racial and national superiority, the artist, the scientist, the writer is challenged. The struggle invades the formerly cloistered halls of our universities and other seats of learning. The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear.

  Paul Robeson

  Country, Struggle, Artist

  Paul Robeson, Philip Sheldon Foner (1978). “Paul Robeson speaks: writings, speeches, interviews, 1918-1974”, Brunner-Routledge

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• When the heart craved something so forcefully, then reason became nothing but helpless observer.

  Cornelia Funke

  Heart, Reason, Helpless

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• She seemed like a creature made to attract everyone and express nothing real, though it would take a master observer, like Magnus, to know it.

  Cassandra Clare

  Real, Made, Masters

  Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan (2013). “The Midnight Heir”, p.33, Simon and Schuster

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• I had always felt that I was an observer, never a participant; that I was watching from behind a thick glass wall as people went about the business of living--and did it with such ease, with a skill that they took for granted and that I had never known.

  Tana French

  Wall, Glasses, Skills

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• I go inside my head and become that other me, the one I don't tell anybody about. The observer... I live in terror that one day I won't get to be Dani again.

  Karen Marie Moning

  One Day, Terror

  Karen Marie Moning (2012). “Iced: Fever Series”, p.351, Delacorte Press

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• Mother Nature is always speaking. She speaks in a language understood within the peaceful mind of the sincere observer. Leopards, cobras, monkeys, rivers and trees; they all served as my teachers when I lived as a wanderer in the Himalayan foothills.

  Radhanath Swami

  Mother, Teacher, Rivers

  "Bhakti Yoga: In Search of a Lost Love". www.huffingtonpost.com. March 10, 2011.

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• For most of human history, we could only watch, like bystanders, the beautiful dance of Nature. But today, we are on the cusp of an epoch-making transition, from being passive observers of Nature to being active choreographers of Nature. The Age of Discovery in science is coming to a close, opening up an Age of Mastery.

  Michio Kaku

  Beautiful, Science, Bystanders

  Michio Kaku (1999). “Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century”, p.5, Oxford Paperbacks

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• Tragedy is in the eye of the observer, and not in the heart of the sufferer.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Heart, Eye, Tragedy

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.3240, Delphi Classics

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• Well, I'm not sure, but of one thing I am certain: History judges one differently than contemporary observers, and so I think that as time passes, I hope that not me personally so much, but our administration will be seen for some of the things that we accomplished.

  David Dinkins

  Thinking, Judging, Administration

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• Mitt Romney's rally in Mansfield, Ohio, on Monday began the way every political event begins. 'Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and our country's national anthem.' This is always an uncomfortable moment for me. While I sat at my laptop, most of the reporters around me stood and put their hands over their hearts. This time instead of just sitting and working, I tweeted what I was feeling: 'Ari_Shapiro: As a reporter I'm torn about joining in the pledge of allegiance/national anthem at rallies. I'm a rally observer, not a participant.'

  Ari Shapiro

  Country, Monday, Heart

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• Experience has proved that there is no difference between a so-called realist painting - of a landscape, for example - and an abstract painting. They both have more or less the same effect on the observer.

  Gerhard Richter

  Differences, Abstract Painting, Example

  FaceBook post by Gerhard Richter from Oct 28, 2015

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• A week after his State of the Union address, political observers are still trying to figure out what President Obama's game is. That's because rhetorically and substantively, he seems to be in another world.

  Jonah Goldberg

  Games, Political, Trying

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• There are celestial sights more dazzling, spectacles that inspire more awe, but to the thoughtful observer who is privileged to see them well, there is nothing in the sky so profoundly impressive as the canals of Mars. Fine lines and little gossamer filaments only, cobwebbing the face of the Martian disk, but threads to draw one's mind after them across the millions of miles of intervening void.

  Percival Lowell

  Thoughtful, Sight, Sky

  Percival Lowell (1908). “Mars as the abode of life”

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• Children tend to be rather better observers of adults' characters than adults are of children's, because children are so dependent on adults that it is very much in their interest to discover the weaknesses of their elders.

  Allan Bloom

  Children, Character, Weakness

  Allan Bloom (2008). “Closing of the American Mind”, p.315, Simon and Schuster

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• I am actually not at all a man of science, not an observer, not an experimenter, not a thinker. I am by temperament nothing but a conquistador

  Sigmund Freud

  Adventure, Men, Conquistadors

  Letter toWilhelm Fliess, 1 Feb. 1900

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