Observation Quotes

“Divers philosophers hold that the lips is parcel of the mouth.”

“How lush and lusty the grass looks! how green!”

“Men judge by the complexion of the sky The state and inclination of the day.”

“The clamorous owl that nightly hoots and wonders At our quaint spirits.”

“To have seen much and to have nothing is to have rich eyes and poor hands.”

“Hast any philosophy in thee shepherd? .• • • • . . . He that wants money, means and content, is without three good friends; that the property of rain is to wet and fire to burn; that good pasture makes fat sheep, and a great cause of the night is lack of the sun; that he that hath learned no wit by nature nor art may complain of good breeding or comes of a very dull kindred.”

“Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown, Of thee, from the hill-top looking down; And the heifer, that lows in the upland farm, Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm; The sexton tolling the bell at noon, Dreams not that great Napoleon Sto”

“For man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion.”

“Though we travel the world over to find beauty, we must carry it with us or we find it not . . . The difference between landscape and landscape is small, but there is a great difference in beholders.”

“Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel? Polonius: By the mass, and ‘tis like a camel, indeed. Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel. Polonius: It is backed like a weasel. Hamlet: Or like a whale? Polonius: Very like a whale.”

“Shall I never see a bachelor of three score again?”

“A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the notion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary but every thing hath affinities infinite.”

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

“For we, which now behold these present days, Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.”

“A lean cheek; which you have not: a blue eye, and sunken; which you have not: an unquestionable spirit; which you have not: a beard neglected; which you have not: — but I pardon you for that; for, simply, your having1 in beard is a younger brother's revenue: — Then your hose should be ungarter'd, your bonnet unhanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, and every thing about you demonstrating a careless desolation.”

“The bashful virgin's sidelong looks of love,The matron's glance that would those looks reprove.”

“Four snakes gliding up and down a hollow for no purpose that I could see - not to eat, not for love, but only gliding.”

“The fringed curtains of thine eye advance, And say what thou seest yond.”

“Even fools are right sometimes.”

“The eye is the best of artists.”

“One is quite astonished to find how many things there are in the landscape, and in every object in it, one never noticed before. And this is a tremendous new pleasure and interest which invests every walk or drive with an added object. So many colours on the hillside, each different in shadow and in sunlight; such brilliant reflections in the pool, each a key lower than what they repeat; such lovely lights gilding or silvering surface or outline, all tinted exquisitely with pale colour, rose, orange, green or violet.”

“The rhinoceros stood ... about five hundred yards away ... not a twentieth-century animal at all, but an odd, grim straggler from the Stone Age.”

“The man in the street does not know a star in the sky.”

“The field cannot be well seen from within the field. The astronomer must have his diameter of the earth's orbit as a base to fix the parallax of any other star”

“Full oft we see Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly.”