Quotes About Perspective

Sommige mensen lijden omdat ze niet hoeven te leven. Ze hebben alles. Hun natje, hun droogje, een dak boven het hoofd. Maar ze hoeven niet te leven, want ze hebben alles. Als ze een boek waren geweest, zou een recensent vast schrijven: 'Aardig, maar de noodzak ontbreekt'.

Zij was ziek, en ik was de ziekte. Dat is het verhaal. Andere mensen kunnen zeggen: "Ik ben ziek. Ik moet genezen." Of: "Ik kan niet genezen, hoe graag ik dat ook zou willen." Maar de ziekte kan dat niet. Dat is het verschil tussen het bijvoeglijk en het zelfstandig naamwoord. De ziekte moet ziekte blijven. Ik ben het zelfstandig naamwoord.

Roland Oberstein is gelukkig, zou hijzelf verklaren, omdat hij niets wil wat hij niet kan krijgen. Wat hij wil kan hij krijgen. Wat hij niet kan krijgen, wil hij niet. Zo eenvoudig is het recept voor geluk.

I've never understood what the upside of marriage would be for me personally.

Never forget that God has given every single one of us the most astonishing uniqueness. There's no one in the world who can do what you can do, who can think and see the way you do, who can create what you can create. You are a complex mesh of finely woven styles, view-points, abilities, tastes, and gifts. If you don't get to live your life, you've lost an incalculable treasure.

I don't believe we are put through hard times in order to learn a lesson that we couldn't learn some other way. But if we never get off the "why" question, if we never get unstuck from the idea that life is unfair to us, then we will never have a healthy response to living. We'll buy into all the reactions that take away our inner peace and eat away at us.

People think that an expensive car--a stimulus--will lead to a response of happiness. If they have a great paying job--the proper stimulus, they believe--then their response will be happiness. But what if the opposite is true? What if happiness is the stimulus and the response is whatever life brings from that happiness?

What I did was focus on what I had and no on what I didn't have. Through that focus, I was able to make more changes.

We seem to be going through a period of nostalgia, and everyone seems to think yesterday was better than today. I don't think it was, and I would advise you not to wait ten years before admitting today was great. If you're hung up on nostalgia, pretend today is yesterday and just go out and have one hell of a time.

His column explaining Thanksgiving to the French when he wrote for the Paris edition of the Herald Tribune there. --bb

I've learned it's always better to have a small percentage of a big success, than a hundred percent of nothing.

With any work worth its salt, you have to trust the author enough to take its measure. And if you apply too many preconceptions, you are not taking its measure.

It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us in trouble. It's the things we know that ain't so.

We are accused of pessimism, as though pessimism were but one among a number of possible attitudes, as if man were capable of choosing between two alternatives.

I know I earn less at my primary school than you do, but I don't have to work as hard at my primary school.

Logic always seems to be telling us, in language quite unnecessarily technical, what we understood much better before it was explained.

Biography should be written by an acute enemy.

Nothing matters very much, and few things matter at all.

An optimist believes we live in the best of all possible worlds. A pessimist fears this is true.

Satisfaction = what you have ÷ what you want

So what do the young hotshots need? Old people on product teams, old people in marketing, and old people in the C-suite. They need not just whiz-bang ideas but actual wisdom that only comes with years in the school of hard knocks.

There is evidence that as we become less exposed to opposing viewpoints, we become less logically competent as people.

Most of our days, I am thinking me, me, me. It's like watching the same dreary television show, over and over, all day long. It's so boring. Faith forces me into the cosmos, to consider the source of truth, the origin of life, and the good of others. This focus brings refreshment and relief.

Even better, research shows that we tend to see important past events—even undesirable ones at the time—as net positives over time.