perspective Quotes

It is not our part here to take thought only for a season, or for a few lives of Men, or for a passing age of the world. We should seek a final end of this menace, even if we do not hope to make one.

The notary who becomes a deputy, the hack playwright who produces a mock-Corneille, the eunuch who acquires a harem, the journeyman-general who by accident wins the decisive battle of an epoch. [...] All this is what men call genius, just as they call a painted face beauty and a richly attired figure majesty. They confound the brilliance of the firmament with the star-shaped footprints of a duck in the mud.

“What I need is perspective. The illusion of depth, created by a frame, the arrangement of shapes on a flat surface. Perspective is necessary. Otherwise there are only two dimensions. Otherwise you live with your face squashed up against a wall, everything a huge foreground, of details, close-ups, hairs, the weave of the bedsheet, the molecules of the face. Your own skin like a map, a diagram of futility, criscrossed with tiny roads that lead nowhere. Otherwise you live in the moment. Which is not where I want to be.”

Everything isn’t everything

“When I was younger, I had wanted to be at the very center of all the action in New York, but I slowly came to realize that there is no one center. The center is everywhere - wherever people are living out their lives. It’s a city with a million centers.”

“God certainly knows of some happiness for us which He is going to bring out of the trouble, only we must have patience and not run away. And then all at once something happens and we see clearly ourselves that God has had some good thought in His mind all along; but because we cannot see things beforehand, and only know how dreadfully miserable we are, we think it is always going to be so.”

“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavour. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”

“I’ll continue to see things as a child. It’s not so far to fall.”

I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things in a different way.

How do we, like Walt, permit our own true natures to speak? How do we strip ourselves of prejudices, habits, influences? The answer, my dear lads, is that we must constantly endeavor to find a new point of view.

It is understandable that the perspectives of men and women on safety are so different--men and women live in different worlds.

“Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves.”

“The thoughtless, the ignorant, and indolent, seeing only the apparent effects of things and not the things themselves, talk of law, of fortune, and chance. Seeing a man grow rich, they say, “How lucky he is!” Observing another become intellectual they exclaim, “How highly favored he is!” And noting the saintly character and wide influence of another, they remark, “How chance aids him at every turn!” They don’t see the trials and failures and the struggles which these men have voluntarily encountered in order to gain their experience; have no knowledge of the sacrifices they have made, of the undaunted efforts they have put forth, of the faith they have exercised, that they might overcome the apparently insurmountable, and realize the vision of their heart. They do not know the darkness and the heart aches; they only see the light and the Joy, and they call it “luck”; do not see the longing arduous journey, but only behold the pleasant goal, and call it “good fortune”; do not understand the process, but only perceive the result, and call it “chance”.”

“JUROR #3: He’s an old man. You saw him. Half the time he was confused. How could he be positive about … anything?”

“JUROR: #10: You’re not gonna’ tell me we’re supposed to believe this kid, knowing what he is.”

″‘Mama, she is poor and dirty...’ said Esperanza.” “But Mama interrupted. ‘When you scorn these people, you scorn Miguel, Hortensia, and Alfonso. And you embarrass me and yourself. As difficult as it is to accept, our lives are different now.‘”

“Carmen smiled. ‘I am poor, but I am rich. I have my children, I have a garden with roses, and I have my faith and the memories of those who have gone before me. What more is there?‘”

“Your challenge as a #GIRLBOSS is to dive headfirst into things without being too attached to the results. When your goal is to gain experience, perspective, and knowledge, failure is no longer a possibility. Failure is your invention. I believe that there is a silver lining in everything, and once you begin to see it, you’ll need sunglasses to combat the glare. It is she who listens to the rest of the world who fails, and it is she who has enough confidence to define success and failure for herself who succeeds.”

“Two men looked out from prison bars, One saw the mud, the other saw stars.”

″‘He doesn’t smell right!’ he exclaimed. ‘He isn’t a rabbit at all! He isn’t real!’ ‘I am Real!’ said the little Rabbit. ‘I am Real! The Boy said so!’ And he nearly began to cry.”

″‘Everything is uglier up close,’ she said.”

“The air at Base Camp seemed thick and rich and voluptuously saturated with oxygen compared to the brutally thin atmosphere of the camps above.”

″Each of us has many, many maps in our head, which can be divided into two main categories: maps of the way things are, or realities, and maps of the way things should be, or values. We interpret everything we experience through these mental maps. We seldom question their accuracy; we’re usually even unaware that we have them. We simply assume that the way we see things is the way they really are or the way they should be.″

“We all fail to appreciate each day just how much we already possess. Light, air, freedom, the companionship of friends.”

″Paradigms are powerful because they create the lens through which we see the world.″

“I’m just thankful for everything, all the blessings in my life, trying to stay that way. I think that’s the best way to start your day and finish your day. It keeps everything in perspective.”

“It’s a great huge game of chess that’s being played—all over the world—if this is the world at all, you know.”

“If peace comes from seeing the whole, then misery stems from a loss of perspective.”

“Life, what is it but a dream?”

“Being old gave [Sophie] an entirely new view of Fanny. She was a lady who was still young and pretty, and she had found the hat shop as boring as Sophie did. But she had stuck with it and done her best, both with the shop and with the three girls—until Mr. Hatter had died. Then she had suddenly been afraid she was just like Sophie: old with no reason, and nothing to show for it.”

“George: I read somewhere that science fiction is really not science fiction at all…that you people are rearranging my genes so that everyone will be like everyone else.”

“It is undeniably the case that in our society we do not easily accept that death is a natural part of life, which results in a perpetual sense of insecurity and fear, and many are confused at the time of the death of a loved one, not knowing what they can do to help the one that has passed away or how to address their own grief. Exploring ways of overcoming our fear of death and adopting a creative approach at the time of bereavement, that is, focusing one’s energy on supporting the one that has passed away, are both extraordinary benefits of the insights and practices that are so beautifully expressed in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. When I think of these things I often remember the Dalai Lama saying: ‘When we look at life and death from a broader perspective, then dying is just like changing our clothes! When this body becomes old and useless, we die and take on a new body, which is fresh, healthy and full of energy! This need not be so bad!’”

″‘Aspen, I know you could do it. But you’re not a superhero. You can’t expect to be able to provide everything for everyone you love.‘”

“I turned and caught the briefest of moments in Maxon’s life. His mother, the beautiful Queen Amberly, pushed some stray hairs back into place.”

“I wept because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet.”

“I turned at the sound of my name. Maxon was jogging down the hall toward me. I felt like I was seeing him for the first time.”

″‘Why do you keep talking to my horse instead of to me?’ said the girl. ‘Excuse me, Tarkheena,’ said Bree (with just the slightest backward tilt of his ears), ‘but that’s Calormene talk. We’re free Narnians, Hwin and I, and I suppose, if you’re running away to Narnia, you want to be one too. In that case Hwin isn’t your horse any longer. One might just as well say you’re her human.’ The girl opened her mouth to speak and then stopped. Obviously she had not quite seen it in that light before.”

″‘All this--’ she exclaimed, the sweep of her arm including the deepening blue of the sky, the shining lake in the distance, the snow-covered mountain far to the north. ‘So much! You must look at it all, Daniel, not just at the unhappy things.‘”

“The red mist of anger cleared suddenly from Daniel’s mind. He looked at the man who had been his leader. He saw the coarsened face with its tangle of dirty beard. He saw the hard mouth, the calculating little eyes. He saw a man he had never really looked at before.”

“Around a minor G-type star toward one edge of a medium-sized galaxy planets swung as they had for billions of years, under a modified inverse square law that shaped space. Four were big enough, as planets go, to be noticeable; the rest were pebbles, concealed in the fiery skirts of the primary or lost in the black reaches of space. All, as is always the case, were infected with that oddity of distorted entropy called life; on the third and fourth planets surface temperatures cycled around the freezing point of hydrogen monoxide; in consequence they had developed life forms similar enough to permit a degree of social contact.”

“People are fulfilled to the extent that they create their world (which is a human world), and create it with their transforming labor”

“...the thing about portraits is, you need to show people the way they want to be seen. And I prefer to show people as I see them.”

″‘I never thought of it that way,’ said Thacia, her eyes clouding. ‘Is that why, do you think, that so many of them aren’t cured?‘”

“Go then, there are other worlds than these.”

“The more you get set into your own world, the smaller your world becomes.”

“We see the world as it really is, and hope that one day all mankind might see the same.”

“I was thinking about framing, and how so much of what we think about our lives and our personal histories revolves around how we frame it. The lens we see it through, or the way we tell our own stories. We mythologize ourselves.”

“But thinking about and being aware of our mortality creates real perspective and urgency. It doesn’t need to be depressing. Because it’s invigorating.”

“Each time, you’ll learn something. Each time, you’ll develop strength, wisdom, and perspective. Each time, a little more of the competition falls away. Until all that is left is you: the best version of you.”

“Think progress, not perfection.”

“Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.”

“How we interpret the events in our lives, our perspective, is the framework for our forthcoming response—whether there will even be one or whether we’ll just lie there and take it.”

“Where the head goes, the body follows. Perception precedes action. Right action follows the right perspective.”

“Life in a box is better than no life at all, I expect. You’d have a chance at least. You could lie there thinking: Well, at least I’m not dead.”

“We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.”

“Obviously, Doctor ... you’ve never been a thirteen-year-old girl. ”

“When we see these things (suffering), we realize that not only do we suffer, but so do many of our human brothers and sisters. So when we look at the same event from a wider perspective, we will reduce the worrying and our own suffering.”

“Mindfulness puts an end to such a limited perspective. The Buddha faced his own suffering directly and discovered the path of liberation. Don’t run away from things that are unpleasant in order to embrace things that are pleasant. Put your hands in the earth. Face the difficulties and grow new happiness.”

“The more you act on your faith in God, the more you will see his way for you.”

“We missed the reality and the beauty of the forest because we were diverted by the ugliness of some of its trees.”

“So what do people see when they read that well-behaved women rarely make history? Do they imagine good-time girls in stiletto heels or do-good girls carrying clipboards and passing petitions? Do they envision an out-of-control hobbyist or a single mother taking down a drunk in a bar? I suspect that it depends on where they stand themselves.”

“God sees us from the perspective of who He created us to be, but we too often see ourselves from our limitations instead of our possibilities.”

“It is quite a revelation to discover that the place you wanted to escape to is the exact same place you escaped from. That the prison wasn’t the place, but the perspective.”

“We can’t change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”

“...we often mistake love for fireworks - for drama and dysfunction. But real love is very quiet, very still. It’s boring, if seen from the perspective of high drama. Love is deep and calm - and constant.”

“Encouragement requires empathy and seeing the world from your spouse’s perspective. We must first learn what is important to our spouse. Only then can we give encouragement.”

“She explains to her sister how to send a letter: ‘There are big blue boxes on the street with eagles on them, put your letter to me there and a man dressed in blue with and eagle sigil on his breast will take it from the box and bring it to me.”

“The life he knew was a clean orderly sane responsible affair. Now a falling beam had shown him that life was fundamentally none of these things.”

“Whatever you’re facing, it is under your feet. It is not permanent. It’s temporary. The power that is for you is greater than any power that comes against you. Keep the right perspective. You and God are a majority. You are armed and dangerous. The problem may have formed, but it is not going to prosper.”

“good publicity is preferable to bad, but from a bottom-line perspective, bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all. Controversy, in short, sells.”

“Sometimes, all you have to do is shift your perspective to see someone else’s truth.”

“But it is helpful to remember that our perspective is our world. And our external circumstances don’t need to change in order for our perspective to change.”

We don’t get to him or his perspective about what’s going on. The sisters are typical: the good sister who takes care of things and the bad sister who hangs with the wrong crowd.

“If you were a cloud, and sailed up there, You’d sail on the water as blue as air. And you’d see me here in the fields and say: “Doesn’t the sky look green today?”

“I never had the thought of Mr. Rabbit being an imaginary friend. That is so cool. I love the story much more from that perspective as the notion adds a layer of depth, and also because it removes a bit of a ‘squick.”

“Good morning, Pooh Bear,” said Eeyore gloomily. “If it is a good morning,” he said. “Which I doubt,” said he.

“Nothing, Pooh Bear, nothing. We can’t all, and some of us don’t. That’s all there is to it.”

And then there’s Eeyore. And Eeyore is so miserable anyhow that he wouldn’t mind about this.

Owl lived at The Chestnuts, an old-world residence of great charm, which was grander than anybody else’s, or seemed so to Bear, because it had both a knocker and a bell-pull.

Well, he was humming this hum to himself, and walking along gaily, wondering what everybody else was doing, and what it felt like, being somebody else, when suddenly he came to a sandy bank, and in the bank was a large hole.

I had hardly any patience with the serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child’s play, ugly monotonous child’s play.

She used to have such a bad opinion of Protestants but now she thought they were very nice people, a little quiet and serious, but still very nice people to live with.

“There!” said Eeyore. “Not a stick of it left! Of course, I’ve still got all this snow to do what I like with. One mustn’t complain.”

Pooh explained to Eeyore that Tigger was a great friend of Christopher Robin’s, who had come to stay in the Forest, and Piglet explained to Tigger that he mustn’t mind what Eeyore said because he was always gloomy; and Eeyore explained to Piglet that, on the contrary, he was feeling particularly cheerful this morning; and Tigger explained to anybody who was listening that he hadn’t had any breakfast yet.

“You may go anywhere you wish in the castle, except where the doors are locked, where of course you will not wish to go. There is reason that all things are as they are, and did you see with my eyes and know with my knowledge, you would perhaps better understand.”

Kanga was down below tying the things on, and calling out to Owl, “You won’t want this dirty old dish-cloth any more, will you, and what about this carpet, it’s all in holes,” and Owl was calling back indignantly, “Of course I do! It’s just a question of arranging the furniture properly, and it isn’t a dish-cloth, it’s my shawl.”

For most of the men here took a fearfully different view of the thing. They hated their work. They hated the bosses and they hated the owners; they hated the whole place, the whole neighborhood -even the whole city, with an all-inclusive hatred.

“Perhaps what might seem wicked to a clergyman might seem only wild to a man of the world.”

The girl who stood by the little white gate of Jallands was something more than “not bad-looking,” but in this matter Bill was keeping his superlatives for another. In Bill’s eyes she must be judged, and condemned, by all that distinguished her from Betty Calladine. To Antony, unhampered by these standards of comparison, she seemed, quite simply, beautiful.

“Let’s look at it from Cayley’s point of view,” said Antony. “He may not know that we’re on his track, but he can’t help being suspicious of us.

“The world doesn’t seem such a howling wilderness as it did last night. I’m so glad it’s a sunshiny morning.”

“Avonlea is a lovely name. It just sounds like music.”

“Do you never imagine things different from what they really are?” asked Anne wide-eyed. “No.” “Oh!” Anne drew a long breath. “Oh, Miss—Marilla, how much you miss!”

What happened to a man after any of these things, all depended upon the circumstances.

“It must be a great deal better to be sensible; but still, I don’t believe I’d really want to be a sensible person, because they are so unromantic. Mrs. Lynde says there is no danger of my ever being one, but you can never tell.”

“Nevertheless,” said the mother, calmly, though growing more pale, “this badge hath taught me— it daily teaches me— it is teaching me at this moment— lessons whereof my child may be the wiser and better, albeit they can profit nothing to myself.”

“And I conceive, moreover, that the hearts holding such miserable secrets as you speak of will yield them up, at that last day, not with reluctance, but with a joy unutterable.”

“Be it so! But, again! He to whom only the outward and physical evil is laid open, knoweth, oftentimes, but half the evil which he is called upon to cure.”

“It is our fate. Let the black flower blossom as it may!”

To others it might seem a ludicrous or trivial affair, but to her it was a hard experience, for during the twelve years of her life she had been governed by love alone, and a blow of that sort had never touched her before.

It seemed a small loss to others, but to Jo it was a dreadful calamity, and she felt that it never could be made up to her.

Sallie offered to dress her hair, and Annie to tie her sash, and Belle, the engaged sister, praised her white arms. But in their kindness Meg saw only pity for her poverty, and her heart felt very heavy as she stood by herself, while the others laughed, chattered, and flew about like gauzy butterflies.

Mr. Brooke was a grave, silent young man, with handsome brown eyes and a pleasant voice. Meg liked his quiet manners and considered him a walking encyclopedia of useful knowledge.

“I am saved!” murmured he. And this conviction restored his strength.

It wouldn’t do for me to tell other men what I tell you, but you’ve been on the inside, and you ought to have sense enough to see for yourself.

“Albert, from whatever source the blow may have proceeded—may be from an enemy, but that enemy is only the agent of Providence.”

“I scarcely know him; I think I have seen him three times in my life; all I know relating to him is through Busoni and himself.”

I used to stand about the churchyard on Sunday evenings when night was falling, comparing my own perspective with the windy marsh view, and making out some likeness between them by thinking how flat and low both were, and how on both there came an unknown way and a dark mist and then the sea.

I felt impatient of him and out of temper with him; in which condition he heaped coals of fire on my head.

“My view is a little classic and thoughtful for them here; but they will improve, they will improve.”

The June weather was delicious. The sky was blue, the larks were soaring high over the green corn, I thought all that countryside more beautiful and peaceful by far than I had ever known it to be yet. Many pleasant pictures of the life that I would lead there, and of the change for the better that would come over my character when I had a guiding spirit at my side whose simple faith and clear home wisdom I had proved, beguiled my way. They awakened a tender emotion in me; for my heart was softened by my return, and such a change had come to pass, that I felt like one who was toiling home barefoot from distant travel, and whose wanderings had lasted many years.

Gregor tried to imagine whether something of the sort that had happened to him today could ever happen to the chief clerk too; you had to concede that it was possible. But as if in gruff reply to this question, the chief clerk’s firm footsteps in his highly polished boots could now be heard in the adjoining room.

In the morning Konstantin Levin left Moscow, and towards evening he reached home. On the journey in the train he talked to his neighbors about politics and the new railways, and, just as in Moscow, he was overcome by a sense of confusion of ideas, dissatisfaction with himself, shame of something or other. But when he got out at his own station, when he saw his one-eyed coachman, Ignat, with the collar of his coat turned up; when, in the dim light reflected by the station fires, he saw his own sledge, his own horses with their tails tied up, in their harness trimmed with rings and tassels; when the coachman Ignat, as he put in his luggage, told him the village news, that the contractor had arrived, and that Pava had calved,—he felt that little by little the confusion was clearing up, and the shame and self-dissatisfaction were passing away.

“What would the jungle think if I, the Black Panther, curled myself up like Ikki the Porcupine, and howled?”

“A blow more or less is nothing to thee, Bagheera or Baloo, but I—I have to wait and wait for days in a wood-path and climb half a night on the mere chance of a young ape.

Men are only men, Little Brother, and their talk is like the talk of frogs in a pond.

If he had been asked whether he liked or didn’t like the peasants, Konstantin Levin would have been absolutely at a loss what to reply. He liked and did not like the peasants, just as he liked and did not like men in general. Of course, being a good-hearted man, he liked men rather than he disliked them, and so too with the peasants. But like or dislike “the people” as something apart he could not, not only because he lived with “the people,” and all his interests were bound up with theirs, but also because he regarded himself as a part of “the people,” did not see any special qualities or failings distinguishing himself and “the people,” and could not contrast himself with them.

“I do value my idea and my work awfully; but in reality only consider this: all this world of ours is nothing but a speck of mildew, which has grown up on a tiny planet. And for us to suppose we can have something great—ideas, work—it’s all dust and ashes.”