Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen. ↗
I love the line of Flaubert about observing things very intensely. I think our duty as writers begins not with our own feelings, but with the powers of observing. ↗
Of all presidential perks, the pardon power has a special significance. It is just the kind of authority that would attract the special attention of someone obsessed with himself and his own ability to influence events. ↗
There is no more difficult art to acquire than the art of observation, and for some men it is quite as difficult to record an observation in brief and plain language. ↗
For, with pure water the inversion of cane sugar scarcely proceeds and subsequently it required very thorough, difficult studies before this effect and its order of magnitude were established. ↗
Cuvier had preceded Lamarck in specifying the kinds and degrees of variation, which his own observations and critical judgment of the reports of others led him to admit. ↗
Manifold subsequent experience has led to a truer appreciation and a more moderate estimate of the importance of the dependence of one living being upon another. ↗