Quotes About Perspective

Those who live to the future must always appear selfish to those who live to the present.

All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography.

The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone subdued by the insatiable demand of harmony in man. The mountain of granite blooms into an eternal flower, with the lightness and delicate finish, as well as the aerial proportions and perspective of vegetable beauty.

Keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years hence.

Every burned book enlightens the world.

You cannot see the mountain near.

To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in our private heart is for all men - that is genius.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs, as a tree bears apples.

Wealth and poverty are seen for what they are. It begins to be seen that the poor are only they who feel poor, and poverty consists in feeling poor. The rich, as we reckon them, and among them the very rich, in a true scale would be found very indigent and ragged.

All the thoughts of a turtle are turtles, and of a rabbit, rabbits.

Sorrow makes us all children again — destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest know nothing.

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books.

The hues of the opal, the light of the diamond, are not to be seen if the eye is too near.

All the mistakes I make arise from forsaking my own station and trying to see the object from another person's point of view.

I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.

We are as much informed of a writer's genius by what he selects as by what he originates.

If the red slayer think he slays,Or if the slain think he is slain,They know not well the subtle waysI keep, and pass, and turn again.

Nor knowest thou what argumentThy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.All are needed by each one;Nothing is fair or good alone.

Do you see that kitten chasing so prettily her own tail? If you could look with her eyes, you might see her surrounded with hundreds of figures performing complex dramas, with tragic and comic issues, long conversations, many characters, many ups and downs of fate.

We may like well to know what is Plato's and what is Montesquieu's or Goethe's part, and what thought was always dear to the writer himself; but the worth of the sentences consists in their radiancy and equal aptitude to all intelligence. They fit all our facts like a charm. We respect ourselves the more that we know them.

Whatever we think and say is wonderfully better for our spirits and trust in another mouth.

[A]s if life were a thunder-storm wherein you can see by a flash the horizon, and then cannot see your hand....

Far or forgot to me is nearShadow and sunlight are the sameThe vanished gods to me appearAnd one to me are shame and fame.They reckon ill who leave me outWhen me they fly, I am the wingsI am the doubter and the doubt,And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine