Quotes About Perspective

The learned and the studious of thought have no monopoly of wisdom. Their violence of direction in some degree disqualifies them to think truly. We owe many valuable observations to people who are not very acute or profound, and who say the thing without effort which we want and have long been hunting in vain.

Every man has a history worth knowing, if he could tell it, or if we could draw it from him.

Reality is a sliding door.

If you would lift me you must be on higher ground. If you would liberate me you must be free. If you would correct my false view of facts, — hold up to me the same facts in the true order of thought, and I cannot go back from the new conviction.

We do not believe our own thought; we must serve somebody; we must quote somebody; we dote on the old and the distant; we are tickled by great names; we import the religion of other nations; we quote their opinions; we cite their laws.

We fetch fire and water, run about all day among the shops and markets, and get our clothes and shoes made and mended, and are the victims of these details, and once in a fortnight we arrive perhaps at a rational moment.

The religions of the world are the ejaculations of a few imaginative man.

The measure of mental health is the disposition to find good everywhere.

No book has worth by itself, but by the relation to what you have from many other books, it weighs.

What's a book? Everything or nothing. The eye that sees it all.

Why should the way I feel depend on the thoughts in someone else's head?

The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough

We are what we think about all day long.

Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in our own sunshine.

Turn the eye upside down, by looking at the landscape through your legs, and how agreeable is the picture, though you have seen it any time these twenty years!

We are like travelers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs.

The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders a crusader, and of the merchants a merchant.

The point of imperfection which we occupy -- is it on the way up or down?

Life is comic or pitiful as soon as the high ends of being fade out of sight, and man becomes near-sighted, and can only attend to what addresses the senses.

There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all parts, that is, the poet.

As the eyes of Lyncaeus were said to see through the earth, so the poet turns the world to glass, and shows us all things in their right series and procession.

Abundance is not a result you create. It is an existing state you recognize. We ask for long life, but 'tis deep life, or noble moments that signify. Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical.

We are all wise. The difference between persons is not in wisdom but in art. I knew, in an academical club, a person who always deferred to me; who, seeing my whim for writing, fancied that my experiences had somewhat superior; whilst I saw that his experiences were as good as mine. Give them to me and I would make the same use of them.

You think me the child of my circumstances: I make my circumstance.