Quotes About Perspective

Whenever I see anything lovely nowadays—a building or a piece of scenery—I think to myself, 'that's by Charles.' I see everything through his eyes. He is England to me." I heard her say that; it was the sort of thing she had the habit of saying. Throughout our married life, again and again, I had felt my bowels shrivel within me at the things she said.

he was not a man of religious habit, but he knew more than most Catholics about their Church;

If everyone at twenty realized that half his life was to be lived after forty…

Ah well, to the journalist every country is rich.

There's nothing wrong in being a physical wreck, you know. There's no moral obligation to be Postmaster-General or Master of Foxhounds or to live to walk ten miles at eighty.

We don't get much time to read the papers." "No, I suppose you don't. I envy you. There's nothing in them but lies," he added sadly. "You can't believe a word they say. But it's all good. Very good indeed. It helps to keep one's spirits up," he said from the depths of his gloom.

How ungenerously in later life we disclaim the virtuous moods of our youth, living in retrospect long summer days of unreflecting dissipation.

Did you have a little talk with mummy?' 'Yes.' 'Have you gone over to her side?' The day before I would have said: 'There aren't two sides'; that day I said, 'No, I'm with you, Sebastian contra mundum.

Henceforth I live in a world of three dimensions—with the aid of my five senses." I have since learned that there is no such world

There are two distinct kinds of meanness - those which come of loving money and of disliking it. Mine was the latter sort.

Did you have a little talk with mummy?' 'Yes.' 'Have you gone over to her side?' The day before I would have said: 'There aren't two sides,'; that day I said, 'No, I'm with you, Sebastian contra mundum.

You'll understand why storms are named after people.

Whenever you feel like criticising any one, just remember that all of the people in the world haven't had the advantages that you've had.

Cuando sientas deseos de criticar a alguien" -fueron sus palabras- "recuerda que no todo el mundo ha tenido las mismas oportunidades que tú tuviste.

You probably think you know...The failure and the success both believe in their hearts that they have accurately balanced points of view, the success because he's succeeded, and the failure because he's failed. The successful man tells his son to profit by his father's good fortune, and the failure tells his son to profit by his father's mistakes.

Amory said to himself that there were essentially two sorts of people who through natural clarity or disillusion left the enclosure and sought the labyrinth.

Whenever you feel like criticising any one, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.

Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,' he told me, 'just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.

Truth can shrink and fancy can grow much in five centuries." "You really think it takes that long?" Woermann said, taking in a final survey of the pass before he turned away. It can happen in a matter of a few years.

I wouldn't ask too much of her, I ventured. You can't repeat the past. Can't repeat the past? he cried incredulously. Why of course you can!

On Shaw's principle that "if you don't get what you like, you better like what you get

Now the standard cure for one who is sunk is to consider those in actual destitution or physical suffering—this is an all-weather beatitude for gloom in general and fairly salutary day-time advice for everyone. But at three o'clock in the morning, a forgotten package has the same tragic importance as a death sentence, and the cure doesn't work—and in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.

Don't let yourself feel worthless: often through life you will really be at your worst when you seem to think best of yourself; and don't worry about losing your personality, as you persist in calling it: at fifteen you had the radiance of early morning, at twenty you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of the moon, and when you are my age you will give out, as I do, the genial golden warmth of 4 p.m.

People over forty can seldom be permanently convinced of anything. At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.