The highest form of human intelligence is to observe yourself without judgment.

I'm an observer. I read about life. I research life. I find a corner in a room and melt into it. I can become invisible. It's an art, and I am a wonderful practitioner.

This is the way in which he (poet) did his work. He used to go out with a pencil and a tablet and note what struck him...and make a picture out of it...But Nature does not allow an inventory to be made of her charms! He should have left his pencil behind, and gone forth in a meditative spirit; and, on a later day, he should have embodied in verse not all that he had noted but what he best remembered of the scene; and he would have then presented us with its soul, and not with the mere visual aspect of it.

We must not only observe but listen to the sound of nature.