Quotes About Perspective

smart people don't do stupid things for no reason, so one must locate why they are doing something that looks stupid from our point of view but may make sense from their point of view.

We use the words relationship, trust, and openness glibly and frequently, as if we think that everyone will, of course, understand what we mean. Yet when we ask someone to define any one of these three words, we get either a blank stare, a disdainful look implying that we must be stupid, or definitions that don't really explain anything and that don't even agree with one another.

and Tell" and argue that not only do we value telling more than

Why does this not occur routinely? Don't we all know how to ask questions? Of course we think we know how to ask, but we fail to notice how often even our questions are just another form of telling—rhetorical or just testing whether what we think is right. We are biased toward telling instead of asking because we live in a pragmatic, problem-solving culture in which knowing things and telling others what we know is valued.

we do not think and talk about what we see; we see what we are able to think and talk about.

Most of my important lessons about life have come from recognizing how others from a different culture view things.

Telling is only an investment if you know for sure that what you are telling is of value to the other person. That is why it is safest to tell only if you have been asked, rather than arrogantly deciding on your own to tell somebody something.

Telling puts the other person down. It implies that the other person does not already know what I am telling and that the other person ought to know it.

Gratuitous telling betrays three kinds of arrogance: (1) that you think you know more than the person you're telling, (2) that your knowledge is the correct knowledge, and (3) that you have the right to structure other people's experience for them.

Che cosa vedi adesso? [...] Luce, solo luce, che trasforma tutto il mondo in giocattolo. Molto bene, faremo gli occhiali così.

It never seems to occur to some people, that, like beauty, a sense of humor may sometimes be fatal.

You are here for but an instant, and you mustn't take yourself too seriously

Youth is about the only thing worth having, and that is about the only thing youth has.

You may easily play a joke on a man who likes to argue -- agree with him.

The commonplace may be understood as a reduction of the exceptional, but the exceptional cannot be understood by magnifying the commonplace.

Maybe you ride a different wave. Maybe you catch another ray of the sun That I've just begun to feel.

I'm not sad about any of my life. It's so unconventional. It doesn't look anything like I thought it would.

Frankly, I think the chances of having a happy childhood while you're still a kid going through it are pretty slim.

The Greeks were realists. They saw the beauty of common things and were content with it.

I suppose I ought to describe my father, but it isn't easy. Sometimes over the years he seemed one thing and sometimes another. He was a good-looking man, strong and ruddy. When I was little he seemed tall to me, but by the time I was thirteen he had become medium.

If you have two loves of bread, sell one and buy a lily. The bread becomes a different thing when eaten at a table with the lily in the center.

Hain't life woth livin', Uncle Jabez?" she asked. He laughed a short, harsh laugh and fell silent. "Waal, I dunno, Judy," he said at last, meditatively shifting his quid of tobacco. "I reckon it makes a big diff'rence who you live it with an' a bigger diff'rence yet what work yuh lay yer hand to. Both o' them things, as I see it, is a matter of luck.

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time.

If only we'd stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.