Quotes & Sayings About Looking At Things Closely

Seeing her indecision, Bowman said casually, "The others will be coming in here momentarily. And I should probably mention that I have an excellent view up your skirts." Drawing in a sharp breath, Hannah tried to gather her dress more closely around her, and her balance wobbled. Bowman cursed, his amusement vanishing. "Hannah, stop. I'm not looking. Be still, damn it. I'm coming up there to get you. — Lisa Kleypas

Poetry can unleash a terrible fear. I suppose it is the fear of possibilities, too many possibilities, each with its own endless set of variations. It's like looking too closely and too long into a mirror; soon your features distort, then erupt. You look too closely into your poems, or listen too closely to them as they arrive in whispers, and the features inside you - call it heart, call it mind, call it soul - accelerate out of control. They distort and they erupt, and it is one strange pain. You realize, then, that you can't attempt breaking down too many barriers in too short a time, because there are as many horrors waiting to get in at you as there are parts of yourself pushing to break out, and with the same, or more, fevered determination. — Jim Carroll

It appears, from all this, that our eyes are uncertain. Two persons look at the same clock and there is a difference of two or three minutes in their reading of the time. One has a tendency to put back the hands, the other to advance them. Let us not too confidently try to play the part of the third person who wishes to set the first two aright; it may well happen that we are mistaken in turn. Besides, in our daily life, we have less need of certainty than of a certain approximation to certainty. Let us learn how to see, but without looking too closely at things and men: they look better from a distance. — Remy De Gourmont

We're investing record sums on buses and trains. We have a huge programme to encourage people to walk and cycle, and everyone up to and including the PM has been looking closely at how we can promote electric vehicles, hybrids, and other technologies. — Geoff Hoon

Your muscles tensed up, your blood pressure rose, and your heart rate increased. Someone looking closely at your eyes while you tackled this problem would have seen your pupils dilate. — Daniel Kahneman

Sometimes the reason we do not see the answer is that we are looking too closely at the question. — Paul Murray

The defenders of feeling-based marriage venerate emotions for their authenticity only because they avoid looking closely at what actually floats through most people's emotional kaleidoscopes, all the contradictory, sentimental, and hormonal forces that pull us in a hundred often crazed and inconclusive directions.
We could not be fulfilled if we weren't inauthentic some of the time - inauthentic, that is, in relation to such things as our passing desires to throttle our children, poison our spouse, or end our marriage over a dispute about changing a lightbulb. A degree of repression is necessary for both the mental health of our species and the adequate functioning of a decently ordered society. We are chaotic chemical propositions. We should feel grateful for, and protected by, the knowledge that our external circumstances are often out of line with what we feel; it is a sign that we are probably on the right course. — Alain De Botton

Life has little bits of magic at nearly every turn, if you're looking closely enough. Scrapbooking has refined myselses. it's made me hungry to use it before I lose it. It's made me remember that I don't remember what it was like to be nine years old. And that I will never live in a Pottery Barn house. And that as tiny as I am in the scope of the universe, no one lives a life like mine. Not even the people whose meals I cook, whose laundry I fold, and whose cheeks I kiss at night. — Cathy Zielske

Dread, which is closely related to fear, steals the ability to enjoy ordinary life and makes people anxious about the future. It keeps them from looking forward to the next day, the next month, or the next decade. — Joyce Meyer

I asked Geertrui the other day what she thought love is-real love, true love. She said that for her real love is observing another person and being observed by another person with complete attention. If she's right, you only have to look at the pictures Rembrandt painted of Titus, and there are quite a lot, to see that they loved each other. Because that is what you're seeing. Complete attention, one of the other ... "but in that case," he said, speaking the words as the thought came to him, "all art is love, because all art is about looking closely, isn't it? Looking closely at what's being painted."
"The artist looking closely while he paints, the viewer looking closely at what has been painted. I agree. All true art, yes. Painting, Writing-literature-also. I think it is. And bad art is a failure to observe with complete attention. So, you see why I like the history of art. It's the study of how to observe life with complete attention. It's the history of love. — Aidan Chambers

Because I'm an art historian, I have some experience of writing that comes out of close attention. That's what really art history is. You're looking at something very closely, and you try to write in a meticulous way about it. — Teju Cole

Byron had drawn his pistol, and was looking closely at the leaves and dirt around him, as if he'd dropped something. "It's
do keep calm now
it's right over your head. I suppose you could look, if you can do it slowly."
Crawford felt drops of sweat run down his ribs under his shirt as he slowly forced the muscles of his neck to tilt his head up; he saw the upper slope, bristling with trees that obstructed a view of the road, and then he saw the outer branches of the tree he was braced against, and finally he gathered his tattered courage and looked straight up.
And it took all of his self-control not to recoil or scream, and he was distantly resentful that he couldn't just die in this instant. — Tim Powers

People declare as much, without, apparently, looking into the matter very closely. They seem able to dispense with the conscientious observer's scruples, when inflating their bladder of theory. — Jean-Henri Fabre

Last summer, when he thought I wasn't looking, I observed Cubby telling one of the neighborhood six-year-olds that there were dragons living in the storm drains, under our street.
'We feed them meat ... and then they don't get hungry and blow fire and roast us.'
Little James listened closely, with a very serious expression on his face. Then he ran home to get some hot dogs from his mother. — John Elder Robison

Artschwager's art always involves looking closely at surfaces, questions what an object is, wants to make you forget the name of the thing you're looking at so that it might mushroom in your mind into something that triggers unexpected infinities. — Jerry Saltz

yes, he had been preoccupied, but hadn't that been what I was looking for--someone who wouldn't pay too much attention, someone who wouldn't look at me to closely? — Carol Goodman

We who bore the mark might well be considered by the rest of the world as strange, even as insane and dangerous. We had awoken, or were awakening, and we were striving for an ever perfect state of wakefulness, whereas the ambition and quest for happiness of the others consisted of linking their opinions, ideals, and duties, their life and happiness, ever more closely with those of the herd. They, too, strove; they, too showed signs of strength and greatness. But as we saw it, whereas we marked men represented Nature's determination to create something new, individual, and forward-looking, the others lived in the determination to stay the same. For them mankind
which they loved as much as we did
was a fully formed entity that had to be preserved and protected. For us mankind was a distant future toward which we were all journeying, whose aspect no one knew, whose laws weren't written down anywhere. — Hermann Hesse

Who will take care of us out there?" Klaus said, looking out on the flat horizon.
"Nobody," Violet said. "We'll have to take care of ourselves. We'll have to be self-sustaining."
"Like the hot air mobile home," Klaus said, "that could travel and survive all by itself."
"Like me," Sunny said, and abruptly stood up. Violet and Klaus gasped in surprise as their baby sister took her first wobbly steps, and then walked closely beside her, ready to catch her if she fell.
But she didn't fall. Sunny took a few more self-sustaining steps, and then the three Baudelaires stood together, casting long shadows across the horizon in the dying light of the sunset. — Lemony Snicket

Sebastian opened his mouth to argue, but as he saw Evie drawing closer something changed in his face. It was a response to the anxiety that she couldn't manage to hide. For some reason her concern gently undermined his hostility, and softened him. Looking from one to the other, Cam observed the subtle interplay with astute interest.
"Have you been hurt?" Evie asked, looking over him closely. To her relief, Sebastian appeared disheveled and riled, but free of significant damage.
He shook his head, holding still as she reached up to push back a few damp amber locks that were nearly hanging in his eyes. "I'm fine," he muttered. "Compared to the drubbing I received from Westcliff, this was nothing. — Lisa Kleypas

Well, one of the things I discovered in the course of looking back and writing about what I saw in my memory is that I was a closely observant person long before I became a reporter. — Alma Guillermoprieto

Looking more closely at Earth's atmospheric fingerprints, human biomarkers will also include sulfuric, carbonic, and nitric acids, and other components of smog from the burning of fossil fuels. If the curious aliens happen to be socially, culturally, and technologically more advanced than we are, then they will surely interpret these biomarkers as convincing evidence for the absence of intelligent life on Earth. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Reductionism argues that we can learn what 'makes things tick' by looking more closely at matter, examining the underlying units. There are at least two problems with this approach. First, reductionism assumes that only observable, material items are 'real,' even though the vacuum of space is known to contain vast amount of inaccessible, 'invisible' energy. Subatomic particles go in and out of observable 'existence,' and science does not know 'where' they go when they are not manifesting here. Second, this path of reasoning ignores a major quandary encountered in the realm of quantum physics. When examining matter more closely
diving down from the molecular level to the subatomic
a point is soon reached where there is virtually nothing present, at least not an obvious 'material something. — Mark Ireland

Mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, we will always find that the task itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation. — Karl Marx

Back in the NBA's pre-mask era, ballers with busted noses or orbital bones had two unappealing options: Sit out and heal, or strap on a Michael Myers-looking opaque face shield closely related to that worn by hockey goalies. — Brendan I. Koerner

Drawing makes you look at the world more closely. It helps you see what you're looking at more clearly. Did you know that? — David Almond

Anne looked up. Tall and handsome and distinguished-looking - dark, melancholy, inscrutable eyes - melting, musical, sympathetic voice - yes, the very hero of her dreams stood before her in the flesh. He could not have more closely resembled her ideal if he — L.M. Montgomery

I desire to go through life knowing as little of evil in it as possible. To this end, I sometimes avoid looking too closely into the nature of things, studying them only so far as they seem to be good, and abandoning interest in them as soon as their darker feature begin to appear. The good only deserves a hearty interest. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Birth order effects are like those things that you think you see out of the corner of your eye but that disappear when you look at them closely. They do keep turning up but only because people keep looking for them and keep analyzing and reanalyzing their data until they find them. — Judith Rich Harris

Those are the little seed-producing flowers, and the long catkins, they only produce pollen, to fertilise them.' 'Do they, do they!' repeated Hermione, looking closely. 'From those little red bits, the nuts come; if they receive pollen from the long danglers. — D.H. Lawrence

The word creativity is closely linked to the word genius, since both words have the root meaning 'to give birth.' Essentially, creativity designates the capacity to give birth to new ways of looking at things, the ability to make novel connections between disparate things, and the knack for seeing things that might be missed by the typical way of viewing life. — Thomas Armstrong

Who Moved My Cheese?: The Story ONCE, long ago in a land far away, there lived four little characters who ran through a Maze looking for cheese to nourish them and make them happy. Two were mice, named "Sniff" and "Scurry" and two were Littlepeople - beings who were as small as mice but who looked and acted a lot like people today. Their names were "Hem" and "Haw." Due to their small size, it would be easy not to notice what the four of them were doing. But if you looked closely enough, you could discover the most amazing things! Every day the mice and the Littlepeople spent time in the Maze looking for their own special cheese. The mice, Sniff and Scurry, possessing simple brains and good instincts, searched for the hard — Spencer Johnson

Here's an encouraging word for someone tonight - don't think you're not doing what God called you to do just because things don't seem as glamorous as you thought they would be. If you are a woman who honors God right where you are, you are in ministry. Keep being obedient, keep looking for the next open door of opportunity, and above all else hold closely to our Lord. — Lysa TerKeurst

But Quinn held the fuzzy handcuffs in his hands, looking them over closely, and he smiled. Oh, hey, did you want to keep these for when your invisible boyfriend returns from his fake vacation? — Laura Anderson Kurk

Perhaps it has been too uncomfortable for those with vested interests to acknowledge, but we have spent the best part of the past century enthusiastically testing the world to utter destruction; not looking closely enough at the long-term impact our actions will have. — Prince Charles

I think what people are looking for right now is not the kind of pizzazz and pop that perhaps we thought we got in 2008. Certainly, President Obama offered that. What they want now is someone who can work closely with Congress and get things done. — Rob Portman

If you spend your energies looking for and analysing situations not closely followed by other informed investors, your chance of finding bargains greatly increases. — Joel Greenblatt

Looking closely at de Vries, he added, 'You are a very ugly man, Piter. Even with my disease, I'm still prettier than you. — Brian Herbert

He said that if you were able to look at the crows really closely, you would see that their eyes were stolen baubles, like buttons or marbles.
To get real eyes, they had to steal them from children. Older people's eyes were too set in their ways of looking and would be no good for a crow. That's why people don't let their children out after dark. The crow who stole the eyes of a real child was king. With a piece of plastic they could just see what was in front of them, but with a child's eyes, they could see the whole world. — Heather O'Neill

The crops, however, I examine closely, to see what each bird has been feeding upon. Clover. Kinnickkinnick. Snowberries. Wheat. Barley. Crickets. Grasshoppers. Fir needles. Huckleberries. Rose hips. The crops filled with snowberries are breathtaking, looking like a clump of pearls, and nearly as rare; it's always a thrill to open a crop and see nothing but beautiful white berries. Usually in these woods, though, in the autumn, the crops are bulging with bright red kinnickkinnick berries, and the bright green leaves from the same bush. Tom and Nancy save the crop from each bird they kill and set it on the windowsill to dry translucent in the sunlight - a globe, a ball, filled with Christmas colors, perfect red and green; and then in December they hang these as ornaments on their tree. For — Rick Bass

I don't know that we do. I had thought ours worked well, but I had never examined it too closely. A lot of media people will be looking for a case that might make Texas Governor George Bush think twice about what he's doing. — George Ryan