‘What I would give,’ I thought, ‘to have been present as Elizabeth Keckley measured Mary Lincoln for a new gown, to overhear their conversations on topics significant and ordinary, to observe the Lincoln White House from such an intimate perspective.’
You need to keep something for yourself. As a writer, I feel that even more strongly. I feel like I need to be able to freely observe the world. That’s the way I like to move through the world; I don’t need to be the focus of attention. If I am, it impairs my ability to write and to do what I do.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
I focus, I invent, I transform, I challenge, I attempt, I observe, I perform.
Women are interested in relationships and how other societies manage those relationships. They may have been constrained in what roles were open to them, but they could question and observe, and they could write it down.
I think lawyers have a fidelity to the system itself that’s always got to be with them, and indeed, most of the defense lawyers I know observe that.
Observe your enemies, for they first find out your faults.
The most important practical lesson that can be given to nurses is to teach them what to observe – how to observe – what symptoms indicate improvement – what the reverse – which are of importance – which are of none – which are the evidence of neglect – and of what kind of neglect.
People talk about this ‘bucket list’: ‘I need to go to this country, I need to skydive.’ Whereas I need to think as much as I can, to feel as much as I can, to be conscious and observe and understand me and the people around me as much as I can.
It was deeply interesting to observe my mother closely and to draw her. During those last months, she wasn’t speaking much, if at all, and it was a way for me to be with her. It felt very natural.
Even private persons in due season, with discretion and temper, may reprove others, whom they observe to commit sin, or follow bad courses, out of charitable design, and with hope to reclaim them.
I’ve always found that I personally love to observe things, and I’m good at observing things.
There could be more to the universe than the three dimensions we are familiar with. They are hidden from us in some way, perhaps because they’re tiny or warped. But even if they’re invisible, they could affect what we actually observe in the universe.
Mediocrity can talk, but it is for genius to observe.
I’d always been acutely sensitive to my surroundings – and aware that I could make them rather than just observe them. So I began by designing interiors for myself, for friends, for clients – I just felt that I’d discovered my element, and those who really looked at what I was doing liked it – and the rest followed.
Look at the means which a man employs, consider his motives, observe his pleasures. A man simply cannot conceal himself!
Nature is impersonal, awe-inspiring, elegant, eternal. It’s geometrically perfect. It’s tiny and gigantic. You can travel far to be in a beautiful natural setting, or you can observe it in your backyard – or, in my case, in the trees lining New York City sidewalks, or in the clouds above skyscrapers.
It may be proper to observe, that I had now passed the utmost frontier of the white settlements on that border.
Being born in Cuba, a country where freedom of speech is non-existent, it’s startling to observe how Venezuela, where I was happily raised, is fast becoming Cuba’s mirror image: Dismantling of fundamental democratic rights deserved by its people and citizens of the world.
There’s something about beautiful moments in sports that alters our experience of time. And I’d say the same thing about poetry and gardening. Gardening slows me down. I want to stop and observe everything.
I visited an asylum to observe expressions of the mentally disturbed and to get my body language right for the blind girl’s role. I visited the blind school, read the autobiography of Helen Keller, and watched a number of films from ‘Scent of a Woman’ to ‘Anurag,’ ‘Fanaa’ and ‘Black.’
A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.
I mean, I find things that happened in real life to be the funniest – things that you observe instead of crazy abstract things, you know.
OkCupid has users from 18 to 80 on the site. And we get to observe all of their actions. We get to watch how they use the site, how they interact with other people.
When liberty is mentioned, we must always be careful to observe whether it is not really the assertion of private interests which is thereby designated.
In terms of watching other directors, it’s more like I go on set now, and I’m prepared, as an actor, and ready to give them everything, but at the same time, you observe how everybody else does it because there’s always something to learn.
I don’t believe in objectivity. I observe the observer’s paradox every moment I’m filming. Your presence is changing everything; there’s no mistaking it. And you have a responsibility.
It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits.
When rooted, you observe how systems actually affect people.
A journalist enjoys a privileged position. In exchange for not being able to participate in the rough-and-tumble issues of a community, we are given license to observe it all, based on the understanding that we’ll tell everyone what happens fairly and squarely. That’s harder than it sounds.
I was not surprised by the results of the Horizon experiments, but I remain willing to observe and consider any and all other tests that are done under similarly precise conditions.
To sail successfully, you need to observe with great care. You need to identify what the wind and the water are telling you and then find a way to execute, to reach whatever goal you’ve set, be that simply making it home or winning a race.
On the one hand, the guns were there to help capture the imagination of the people. But more important, since we knew that you couldn’t observe the police without guns, we took our guns with us to let the police know that we have an equalizer.
I have come across both inspiring teachers of history and deplorable ones over the years, so one cannot generalise, except perhaps to observe that the profession seems to encourage anti-militarist sentiments.
My friendships all tend to be quite steady, so it’s really hard to novelise that stuff because it’s just boring. I mean, there’s interesting conversations, but there’s no power struggle. And you can’t work with equilibrium; you have to work with something that’s just off and then observe how it tries to correct itself.
Women are always most observed when they seem themselves least to observe, or to lay out for observation.
Now I’m writing about contemporary Los Angeles from memory. My process was to hang out, observe, research what I was writing about, and almost immediately go back to my office and write those sections. So it was a very close transfer between observation and writing.
My dad’s method in his madness was to try every sport and then observe what I liked. I played football, tennis, golf, cricket but I loved my snooker.
