Quotes About Perspective

An actually existent fly is more important than a possibly existent angel.

I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I've eaten; even so, they have made me.

Man is surprised to find that things near are not less beautiful and wondrous than things remote. The near explains the far. The drop is a small ocean. A man is related to all nature.

Why should I vapor and play the philosopher, instead of ballasting, the best I can, this dancing balloon?

Yes, but does Maine have anything to SAY to Florida?

Treat all people as if they are real, because who knows, perhaps they are.

At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door, and say, — 'Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act.

Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and as we pass through them they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus. From the mountain you see the mountain. We animate what we can, and we see only what we animate. Nature and books belong to the eyes

Poverty consists in feeling poor.

The misery of man appears like childish petulance, when we explore the steady and prodigal provision that has been made for his support and delight on this green ball which floats him through the heavens.

No mountain is of any appreciable height to break the curve of the sphere.

Changing our thoughts, Emerson asserts, can actually change our circumstances.

The field cannot be well seen from within the field.

As the eyes of Lyncæus 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.

If he had the earth for his pasture and the sea for his pond, he would be a pauper still. He only is rich who owns the day. There is no king, rich man, fairy or demon who possesses such power as that. Mentioned in Sixty Days and Counting, by Kim Stanley Robinson

For everything you have missed you have gained something else, and for everything you gain you lose something else.

We as we read must become Greeks, Romans, Turks, priest and king, martyr and executioner, must fasten these images to some reality in our secret experience, or we shall learn nothing rightly.

I am thankful for small mercies. I compared notes with one of my friends who expects everything of the universe, and is disappointed when anything is less than the best, and I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always full of thanks for moderate goods.

The landscape belongs to the person who looks at it.

What is History," said Napoleon, "but a fable agreed upon?

For every thing you have missed, you have gained something else; and for every thing you gain, you lose something.

We grizzle every day. I see no need of it. Whilst we converse with what is above us, we do not grow old, but grow young.

One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty another's ugliness; one man's wisdom another's folly; as one beholds the same objects from a higher point of view. One man thinks justice consists in paying debts, and has no measure in his abhorrence of another who is very remiss in this duty and makes the creditor wait tediously.

I hate quotes: tell me what you know.