Quotes About Perspective

There was a rose that faded young; I saw its shattered beauty hung Upon a broken stem. I heard them say, What need to care With roses budding everywhere? I did not answer them. There was a bird, brought down to die; They said, A hundred fill the sky-- What reason to be sad? There was a girl, whose lover fled; I did not wait, the while they said, There's many another lad.

I Didn't Ask to Be a Senior Citizen (I Was Drafted)

A healthy perspective really is the foundation of joy and happiness, because the way we see the world is the way we experience the world. Changing the way we see the world in turn changes the way we feel and the way we act, which changes the world itself. Or, as the Buddha says in the Dhammapada, With our mind we create our own world.

When we take the perspective of others, we can empathize with them.

Reality is frequently inaccurate.

This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

So this is it, said Arthur, We are going to die. Yes, said Ford, except... no! Wait a minute! He suddenly lunged across the chamber at something behind Arthur's line of vision. What's this switch? he cried. What? Where? cried Arthur, twisting round. No, I was only fooling, said Ford, we are going to die after all.

What to do if you find yourself stuck in a crack in the ground underneath a giant boulder you can't move, with no hope of rescue. Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far, which given your current circumstances seems more likely, consider how lucky you are that it won't be troubling you much longer.

Did I do anything wrong today, he said, or has the world always been like this and I've been too wrapped up in myself to notice?

All you really need to know for the moment is that the universe is a lot more complicated than you might think, even if you start from a position of thinking it's pretty damn complicated in the first place.

First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII — and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we've realized it's a brochure.

What's so unpleasant about being drunk? Ask a glass of water!

It can be very dangerous to see things from somebody else's point of view without the proper training.

My universe is my eyes and my ears. Anything else is hearsay.

Capital Letters Were Always The Best Way Of Dealing With Things You Didn't Have A Good Answer To.

and then I decided I was a lemon for a couple of weeks.

The quality of any advice anybody has to offer has to be judged against the quality of life they actually lead.

I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge?

He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.

The point is, you see, said Ford, that there is no point in driving yourself mad trying to stop yourself going mad. You might just as well give in and save your sanity for later.

Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.

Life... is like a grapefruit. Well, it's sort of orangey-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It's got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half a one for breakfast.

What's up? [asked Ford.] I don't know, said Marvin, I've never been there.

You cannot see what I see because you see what you see. You cannot know what I know because you know what you know. What I see and what I know cannot be added to what you see and what you know because they are not of the same kind. Neither can it replace what you see and what you know, because that would be to replace you yourself. Hang on, can I write this down? said Arthur, excitedly fumbling in his pocket for a pencil.