Therefore if a man look sharply and attentively, he shall see Fortune; for though she be blind, yet she is not invisible.

The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp.

All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.

We cannot attribute to fortune or virtue that which is achieved without either.

The eyes like sentinel occupy the highest place in the body.

I have observed that society in general always seems to honor its living conformists and its dead troublemakers.

To me, comedy is just twisting reality. It’s commenting or observing or twisting life.

I’m not an analyzer. I’ve got a son that analyzes everything and everybody. But I don’t analyze people.

The bad fortune of the good turns their faces up to heaven; the good fortune of the bad bows their heads down to the earth.

I can walk through a hotel lobby and watch people at the desk and see what they’re doing. People don’t look at me. They don’t even know I’m there.

People think you have to go through something to write about it, and you absolutely do not. You can write about, like, a shoe. It’s a story.

I became a people-watcher when I lost all my friends when I was 12.

Look at the means which a man employs, consider his motives, observe his pleasures. A man simply cannot conceal himself!

We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics.

Even to observe neutrality you must have a strong government.

Luck is not chance, it’s toil; fortune’s expensive smile is earned.

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.

Bottom line is, I didn’t return to Apple to make a fortune. I’ve been very lucky in my life and already have one. When I was 25, my net worth was $100 million or so. I decided then that I wasn’t going to let it ruin my life. There’s no way you could ever spend it all, and I don’t view wealth as something that validates my intelligence.

My observation is that whenever one person is found adequate to the discharge of a duty… it is worse executed by two persons, and scarcely done at all if three or more are employed therein.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

That was the first time I saw a horse start from a kneeling position!

It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.

The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.

I love to go to the zoo. But not on Sunday. I don’t like to see the people making fun of the animals, when it should be the other way around.

If you keep feeling a point that has been sharpened, the point cannot long preserve its sharpness.

As a rule, men worry more about what they can’t see than about what they can.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

The eyes are more exact witnesses than the ears.

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?

There is something curiously boring about somebody else’s happiness.

I was out of my bed in one second, trembling with excitement, and I dashed to the door and into the adjoining room, where I could watch the streets below from the windows.

There are good and bad times, but our mood changes more often than our fortune.

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.

Sometimes I write about my own life. And sometimes I write about situations I see my friends going through. Sometimes I write about a scene I saw in a movie. I take inspiration from all different places.

He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.

Who is richer? The man who is seen, but cannot see? Or the man who is not being seen, but can see?

The stories are not autobiographical, but they’re personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I’ve learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.

The eye sees what it brings the power to see.

Certainly, if you look at human behavior around the world, you have to admit that we can be very aggressive.

The most successful detectives owe their success to noticing small signs. Scouts are natural detectives and never let the smallest detail escape them. These small things are called by Scouts ‚Sign.‘

It’s funny; recently I’ve started to notice people’s impersonations of me, and it’s basically like a hyperactive child.

They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.

Fortune befriends the bold.

True Scouts are the best friends of animals, for from living in the woods and wilds, and practising observation and tracking, they get to know more than other people about the ways and habits of birds and animals, and therefore they understand them and are more in sympathy with them.

As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.

Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes.

I love to watch times change!

I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.

It’s amazing how confused and distracted and misdirected so many people are.

Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.

A tree’s a tree. How many more do you need to look at?

If my edge is dull, my sword is dull, and I don’t want to fight another guy whose sword is dull. If you’ve got two steel swords going back and forth hitting each other, what’s gonna happen? Both of them are going to get sharper. Everybody that’s in the industry has lost their edge.

It was morning; through the high window I saw the pure, bright blue of the sky as it hovered cheerfully over the long roofs of the neighboring houses. It too seemed full of joy, as if it had special plans, and had put on its finest clothes for the occasion.

I put up my thumb and it blotted out the planet Earth.

I’m entirely interested in people, and also other creatures and beings, but especially in people, and I tend to read them by emotional field more than anything. So I have a special interest in what they’re thinking and who they are and who’s hiding behind those eyes and how did he get there, and what’s the story, really?

If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.

Fortune is like the market, where, many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.

Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child’s eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.

One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.