Quotes About Perspective

Nobody wants to hear about your feelings, darling, tell me what you see!

We're stuck in our Selves, And who else to be stuck in? - New York to San Fran

There was no proof that everyone perceived it in the same way; maybe Zulema, Riad Halabí, and others had a different impression of things; maybe they did not see the same colors or hear the same sounds I did. If that were true, each of us was living in absolute isolation.

What has to change in this world are attitudes.

Sometimes it takes an outsider, someone with fresh eyes to see the truth.

Pain is always new to the sufferer, but loses its originality for those around him.

El hombre del Mediodía no miente, se equivoca. No dice siempre la verdad, pero cree que la dice… Para él, su mentira no es mentira. Es una especie de espejismo…

Perspective is a tool used far too infrequently. If people had the courage to alternate their lens every now and then, the world would be a far more beautiful place.

But in order to survive in this foreign world, I had to teach myself that love was very much like a painting. The negative space between people was just as important as the positive space we occupy.

A hundred years ago, people had perfectly understood that you could die of a broken heart, now they thought you were making a fuss about nothing…Certain kinds of suffering are like radiation: they cause furious growth and mutation of the inner self.

It's the remarkable thing about academics: they look at Shakespeare and always see their own faces in him.

What frightened me most was, I could no longer believe in my own life as a story. Everyone needs a story, a part to play in order to avoid the realization that life is without significance. How else do any of us survive? It's what makes life bearable, even interesting. When it becomes neither, people say you've lost the plot. Or just lost it.

I'll tell you the difference between our countries. Americans think life is serious but not hopeless; the English that life is hopeless but not serious.

Pensé que había superado mi admiración por ella. Pensé que la había olvidado. Pero estaba equivocado.

While we cannot live without history, we need not live within it either.

Nor let us be resentful when others differ from us. For all men have hearts, and each heart has its own leanings. Their right is our wrong, and our right is their wrong.

Resenting the obtuseness of others is not good ground for shooting oneself in the foot.

Just consider how terrible the day of your death will be. Others will go on speaking, and you will not be able to argue back.

It is ironic that many Filipinos learn to love the Philippines while abroad, not at home.

Who says history is stagnant? For a historian, facts do not change; it is the way we look at things, our interpretations, that are always changing. This is what makes history exciting - that we can always find something new in what is old.

A historian can never claim to have the last word on anything as he is limited by his sources and further so by his viewpoint.

You are like a garbage man, what will you do with my life story? Para kang nangangalakal ng basura!

CONSOLATION, n. The knowledge that a better man is more unfortunate than yourself.

Unacquainted with grief, I knew not how to appraise my bereavement; I could not rightly estimate the strength of the stroke.