Quotes About Perspective

They were not beggars; well, not in the usual sense. They were Christians, who wanted not just my nephews' money but their souls.

I am not a visionary. I'm an engineer. I'm happy with the people who are wandering around looking at the stars but I am looking at the ground and I want to fix the pothole before I fall in.

An experience opens many windows," an Anglo-Saxon writer once said.

In the course of my fifty-six years I have had dealings with thousands of men of all sorts and conditions. I no longer have any curiosity about people.

Yes, after all, in spite of one's exhaustion, in spite of one's agony, one felt one's spirits rise. Comfort and misery are relative things.

It is no less astonishing how many subjects—historical, philological, biological, sociological, economic—people regard as politics

Nu avea niciun sens s? se simt? furios. Trebuie s? iei viaÈ›a aÈ™a cum e: stupid?, minunat?, inteligent?, rea, nebuneasc? È™i foarte, foarte pl?cut?. Trebuie s? accepÈ›i sl?biciunile oamenilor ca pe un dat, s? le iei în calcul È™i s? le foloseÈ™ti pentru cauza nobil?.

Yes, I am unalterably convinced that the translation of an experience into words depends more upon the temperament of the man who has lived through it than upon its actual content.

A man of imagination has an advantage over other people, in that an actual experience is almost always less intense than his expectations of it.

Welcome Good! Welcome Evil!" a German poet once wrote, and ever since I was a boy I had revolved an apophthegm from the Talmud in my mind. Of evil it said: "Gam su letovo" ("That too is all for the best").

John Jay Chapman said of Emerson that, great as he was, a visitor from Mars would learn less about life on earth from him than from Italian opera, for the opera at least suggested that there were two sexes.

I happen to feel that the degree of a person's intelligence is directly reflected by the number of conflicting attitudes she can bring to bear on the same topic.

If this was adulthood, the only improvement she could detect in her situation was that now she could eat dessert without eating her vegetables.

Comparison is the thief of joy. Theodore Roosevelt

But then I grew up, experienced some life, and I understood that when you merely switch from being a prisoner to being a guard, no one is freed, not even yourself.

The world is a complex place and only idiots and assholes think they know it all.

why worry about the monster beneath the bed when a very real bogeyman sleeps on top of it?

His job already had him lying and manipulating me. My past had me lying and manipulating him. Both of us thought we were right.

When we'd magically assumed we could do better than our own parents, because we hadn't walked in their shoes yet. We didn't realize just how complicated and lonely even a good marriage can get.

My mother would watch him and sigh. He's a young soul, she would say, with a tender heart. She worried for him. But never for me. I was the happy one. At least, that's how the story goes.

I've made my mistakes and taken my licks and I still think a quiet life is overrated.

He's familiar, but he's not the same. He's an American whose family came from Haiti. My aunt, my sister, myself, we are Haitians who now live in America. He has never felt the ground shake beneath his feet. He doesn't understand that it can happen again.

I'm from Georgia, honey. We consider all women dangerous; it's part of their charm.

Every society needs to examine itself in relation to other societies.