observed quotes

Dear Sir, your astonishment's odd: I am always about in the Quad. And that's why the tree Will continue to be Since observed by Yours faithfully,God. See Knox 476:22.

-Anonymous
c.1924  Reply to Ronald Knox's limerick. The limericks summarize Bishop George Berkeley's philosophy that everything is dependent at all times on the will of God.

Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it.

-William S(eward) Burroughs
  Painting and Guns,'The Creative Observer'.

They who do not understand that a man may be brought to hope that which of all things is the most grievous to him, have not observed with sufficient closeness the perversity of the human mind.

- Anthony Trollope
  OfTrevelyan's paranoia about his wife's fidelity. HeKnew He Was Right, ch.38.