Quotes About Perspective

Well, maybe it's true, Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subdued tone. Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions to make it seem long. But in that event, who wants one? I do Dunbar told him. why? Clevinger asked. What else is there?

Open your eyes, Clevinger. It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead

Be thankful you're healthy. Be bitter you're not going to stay that way. Be glad you're even alive. Be furious you're going to die. Things could be much worse, she cried. They could be one hell of a lot better, he answered heatedly.

hands I could deny there were crab apples in my cheeks. Every time someone asked me why I was walking around with crab apples in my cheeks, I'd just open my hands and show them it was rubber balls I was walking around with, not crab apples, and that they were in my hands, not my cheeks. It was a good story. But I never knew if it got across or not, since it's pretty tough to make people understand you when you're talking to them with two crab apples in your cheeks.

Well, maybe it is true, Clevinger conceded unwillingly in a subded tone. Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long. But in that event, who wants one? I do, Dunbar told him. Why? Clevinger asked. What else is there?

You're wrong," answered the old man. "Prostitution gives her an opportunity to meet people. It provides fresh air and wholesome exercise, and it keeps her out of trouble.

How much longer do you really think your own country will last? Forever? Keep in mind that the earth itself is destined to be destroyed by the sun in twenty-five million years or so.

Homer begged and Rembrandt went bankrupt. Aristotle, who had money for books, his school, and his museum, could not have bought this painting of himself. Rembrandt could not afford a Rembrandt.

Any possibilities that I might be mistaken about her humor were dispelled by her first words.

Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long. But in that event, who needs one?

You're inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unhooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast. How the hell else are you ever going to slow down?

Would you like to see our country lose?' Major Major asked. 'We won't lose. We've got more men, more money and more material. There are ten million men in uniform who could replace me. Some people are getting killed and a lot more are making money and having fun. Let somebody else get killed.' 'But suppose everybody on our side felt that way.' 'Then I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way. Wouldn't I?

Why can't you be a fatalist about it the way I am? If I'm destined to unload these lighters at a profit and pick up some Egyptian cotton cheap from Milo, then that's what I'm going to do. And if you're destined to be killed over Bologna, then you're going to be killed, so you might just as well go out and die like a man. I hate to say this, Yossarian, but you're turning into a chronic complainer

I try not to think of that," Major Danby admitted frankly. "I try to concentrate on only the big result and to forget that they are succeeding, too. I try to pretend that they are not significant." "That's my trouble, you know," Yossarian mused sympathetically, folding his arms. "Between me and every ideal I always find Scheisskopfs, Peckems, Korns and Cathcarts. And that sort of changes the ideal.

Yossarian laughed with buoyant scorn and shook his head. "I'm not running away from my responsibilities. I'm running to them. There's nothing negative about running away to save my life. You know who the escapists are, don't you, Danby? Not me and Orr." "Chaplain, please talk to him, will you? He's deserting. He wants to run away to Sweden.

If Jefferson seemed predestined to tell people what they wanted to hear, Adams now acknowledged that his own destiny was just the opposite: to tell them what they needed to know.

It is well known, that when one side only of a story is heard, and often repeated, the human mind becomes impressed with it, insensibly.

Though we might wish otherwise, the history of what might have been is usually not really history at all, mixing together as it does the messy tangle of past experience with the clairvoyant certainty of our present preferences.

If you imagine, for example, that another person is mean, dishonest, and jealous, notice the emotion you evoke within yourself. Now reverse the situation. Begin to imagine the same person as honest, sincere, loving, and kind; notice the reaction it calls forth in you. Are you not, therefore, master of your attitudes?

Think good, and good follows. Think evil, and evil follows. You are what you think all day long.

you a living? In short, what is your attitude?

belief is a thought in your mind

A man is what he thinks all day long.

William James, the great American psychologist, said, "Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.