#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.”

“This fellow is wise enough to play the fool; And to do that well craves a kind of wit: He must observe their mood on whom he jests, The quality of persons, and the time, And, like the haggard, check at every feather That comes before his eye. This is a practise As full of labour as a wise man's art For folly that he wisely shows is fit; But wise men, folly-fall'n, quite taint their wit.”

“Society is the stage on which manners are shown; novels are the literature. Novels are the journal or record of manners; and the new importance of these books derives from the fact, that the novelist begins to penetrate the surface, and treat this part of life more worthily.”

“I no longer listen to what people say, I just watch what they do. Behavior never lies.”

“A heightened sense of the observation of nature is one of the chief delights that have come to me through trying to paint.”

“I remember when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum's Circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit on the program which I most desired to see was the one described as ‘The Boneless Wonder’. My parents judged that the spectacle would be too demoralizing and revolting for my youthful eye and I have waited fifty years, to see The Boneless Wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench.”

“He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”

“Every garden presents innumerable fascinating problems.”

“Nature has her own best mode of doing each thing, and she has somewhere told it plainly, if we will keep our eyes and ears open. If not, she will not be slow in undeceiving us, when we prefer our own way to hers.”

“The path of things is silent. Will they suffer a speaker to go with them?”

“Treat your friend as a spectacle.”

“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”

“The painter wanders and loiters contentedly from place to place, always on the lookout for some brilliant butterfly of a picture which can be caught and carried safely home.”

“To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty, and in the same fields, it beholds, every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again.”

“A painter told me that nobody could draw a tree without in some sort becoming a tree; or draw a child by studying the outlines of its form merely but by watching for a time his motions and plays, the painter enters into his nature and can then draw him at every attitude.”

“Every man who takes office in Washington either grows or swells, and when I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is growing or swelling.”

“When I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is swelling or growing.”

“I don't know (if they were men or women running naked across the field). They had bags over their heads.”

“I've been with the Yankees 17 years, watching games and learning. You can see a lot by observing.”

“It is wonderful how well men can keep secrets they have not been told.”

“Winter's not gone yet, if the wild geese fly that way.”

“Politics is the best show in America. I love animals and I love politicians, and I like to watch both of 'em at play, either back home in their native state, or after they've been captured and sent to a zoo, or to Washington.”

“If I were the first of May, I should be ashamed of myself.”

“You can observe a lot by just watching.”

“...These healers...my intellect has been unable to assimilate their theories....But their facts are patent and startling; and anything that interferes with the multiplication of such facts, and with our freest opportunity of observing and studying them, will, I believe, be a public calamity.”

“You can tell a lot just by looking at it.”