Quotes About Perspective

Sub specie aeternitatis, she thought: In the context of eternity, this is nothing, as are all our human affairs.

But look at it now: a detective agency, right here in Gaborone, with me, the fat lady detective, sitting outside and thinking these thoughts about how what is one thing today becomes quite another thing tomorrow.

You can lose a piece of plain bread and not think twice about it, but when you lose one spread thickly with strawberry jam it's an altogether more serious matter.

It seemed an odd thing to say, and yet all of us had a view from somewhere, a view of the world from the perspective of who we were, of what had happened to us, of how we thought about things.

now: he had a kind wife who had a very good government job and he had a house with new furniture, purchased on his wife's salary, and a car that went with his wife's job. All of that was far more important than being noticed by women, and yet, and yet…

the world was a vale of tears—it always had been.

Let's not have a sniffle, let's have a jolly good cry And always remember, the longer you live, the sooner you jolly well die.

usually better to seek the advice of a stranger—not just any stranger, of course, as one could hardly go out onto the street and confide in the first person one encountered, but a stranger whom you knew to be wise.

She wouldn't disapprove of people who gave up philosophy or literary theory to do ordinary things. Maybe not, mused Maggie. If we eat pies, then we should never, not for one moment, look down on the making of them.

he had said that he had used a camera obscura device to paint his pictures. It had seemed such an unlikely theory, and yet Hockney's explanation made it seem so feasible. It was all to do with angles and perspective, and when you came to look at a Vermeer, there was a definite photographic feel to the artist's work.

Every story has two sides. So far, we've only heard one. The stupid side."   LIFE

they are dazzled by all the money that they are being offered. That is what money does, Mma Ramotswe—you must have seen that. Sometime we need to look the other way when people put money in front of our noses. We have to look at the other things we can see so the money doesn't hide them.

there was something that Isabel had said that always stuck in his mind. Remember what you have and the other person doesn't. It was simple--almost too simple--advice and yet, like all such home advice, it expressed a profound truth.

There were so many lives, she thought, that could only be led with difficulty, with pain, and because we were so bound up in our own lives, so many of these were invisible to us until suddenly we saw, and knew, and felt that sudden pang of human sympathy that comes with knowing.

Bim allowed herself to smile as the thought occurred to her that perhaps the reason why Signe had two boyfriends was that if you put them together, with their obvious defects, you would end up with one, complete boyfriend.

By comparison with such lives, our days were inconsequential indeed, and yet even though our canvas was small, still we could paint a masterpiece—as long as we were content for it to be a miniature.

something just because everybody

And he readily admitted that he knew nothing about women's clothing, as most men would have to admit; and yet women always claimed to know what clothes were right for a man. There was some injustice here, thought Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, although he was not quite sure how one might pursue the point.

suddenly realised that if he felt that he had achieved nothing it was because he had failed to cherish what he had in fact done. He had filled his days doing ordinary, unexceptional things and thought nothing of them. But they were far from nothing:

We assume so much, don't we? We assume that our children are going to be reasonable. We assume they're going to see things as we see them. And then suddenly we discover that they can look at things quite differently.

Small ones too, Mma Sometimes big problems are really tiny ones when you look at them in the right way.

There are plenty of people who might prefer to go sideways. What about them? How are we to inspire them?

Do not think that in any case where there are two competing arguments one of them has to be right: both can be wrong.

Poor Erik," muttered Anna. "No," said Ulf. "No. Not poor Erik—fortunate Erik." Anna gave Ulf a dubious look. "But all he thinks of..." "...is fishing. Yes, but does that make him unhappy? Quite the contrary: Erik is utterly happy. Erik is completely resolved.