To become the spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life.

Time, I thought, strips us rudely of the privileges of the bystander, and in the end that couple chatting loudly in bad French in the lobby of the Grande Bretagne (Athens) turns out to be us.

When we try to observe things that are very small, the act of observation itself will significantly disturb the state we are seeking to measure.

Cultivated men and women who do not skim the cream of life, and are attached to the duties, yet escape the harsher blows, make acute and balanced observers.

A stander-by may sometimes, perhaps, see more of the game than he that plays it.

Observation is an old man s memory.