Quotes About Perspective

That's the best thing about little sisters: they spend so much time wishing they were elder sisters that in the end they're far wiser than the elder ones could ever be. —Gemma Burgess

When I asked about this, my mother replied that there were Jesus's rules and there were Methodist rules. The first set, apparently, were inviolate; and the second, not so much. She said that Methodist rules were "old-fashioned.

If you dig a grave for your neighbour, first measure it for yourself.

It's not so bad, when it finally happens. You think the world is going to collapse around you but it doesn't. You can see yourself clearly again. You realise that the fear was the worst thing.

the future has already happened, just like the past. And one day you will see that there are no answers, only the places we make.

All the people we loved, who have died, are still alive in the past. The only thing that really separates us is time. It's a matter of perspective. That's what separates optimism and pessimism.

Remember the Russians!

I'd hoped being tapped meant they were willing to listen to someone like me. Apparently, what it really meant is that they hoped they could make someone like me listen to them.

Some days, Lucy thought, deserved to be drowned at birth and everyone sent back to bed with a hot brandy, a box of chocolates, and a warm, energetic companion.

The greatest gift that my kids give me is the reminder that I'm not so great. I'm just ordinary.

I once heard someone say, "I shall die very young. How young? I don't know. Maybe seventy, maybe eighty, maybe ninety. But I shall be very young.

A new dress doesn't get you anywhere. It's the life you're living in the dress.

A lie to get out of something, or take an advantage for oneself, that's one thing; but a lie to make life more interesting—well, that's entirely different.

Look at your feet. You are standing in the sky. When we think of the sky, we tend to look up, but the sky actually begins at the earth.

Look at your feet. You are standing in the sky. When we think of the sky, we tend to look up, but the sky actually begins at the earth. We walk through it, yell into it, rake leaves, wash the dog, and drive cars in it. We breathe it deep within us. With every breath, we inhale millions of molecules of sky, heat them briefly, and then exhale them back into the world.

For me, life offers so many complexly appealing moments that two beautiful objects may be equally beautiful for different reasons and at different times. How can one choose?

Nothing is ever the same as they said it was. It's what I've never seen before that I recognize. — Diane Arbus, Revelations (Random House, 2003)

Studying the stars makes you come to grips with your insignificance pretty quickly.

When you see a picture of the ocean, it's cut off at the edges. You know it goes on and on to the right and on and on to the left, but you never really know how it feels to see that until you actually do see it.

You're trying to paint things as either black or white," he said. "As either good or evil. It's never that neat.

More often than not, family stories turn out to be etched in sand rather than granite. Even the parts we think are true—even the parts about ourselves—crumble

Mrs Forrester said you could ruin a thing by wishing for something else. "If you're having fun at the beach, like we are, but you spend all your time here wishing you could be here all the time, you're wasting the time you're here.

You do have the idea of being 'just good friends?'" He gave her a sideways look. "For so high and honorable an estate," Roshaun said, " 'just' seems a poor modifier to choose.

It'd be a poor kind of world where there was just one explanation for things. ---Rhiow