Quotes About Perspective

told Louis one sunlit afternoon that the essence of the Dalai Lama's teaching for non-Buddhists was contained in the line we'd read at school, from Hamlet: "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

The title of the work, its place in the collective library, the nature of the person who tells us about it, the atmosphere established in the written or spoken exhange, among many other instances, offer alternatives to the book itself that allow us to talk about ourselves without dwelling upon the work too closely.

there exists around the written world opened by the work a multitude of other possible worlds, which we can complete by means of our images and our words. Denying oneself this work of completion in the name of some hypothetical fidelity to the work is bound to fail: we can indeed reject filling these gaps in a conscious way, but we cannot prevent our unconscious from finishing the work, according to its priorities and those of the era in which it was written.

It is the reader who comes to complete the work and to close, albeit temporarily, the world that it opens, and the reader does this in a different way every time.

It is only by maintaining a reasonable distance from the book that we may be able to appreciate its true meaning.

It's not a matter of painting life. It's a matter of giving life to painting.

From Boulez, an authorized biography by Joan Peyser) At the chapel door he [a priest associated with a school Boulez attended] asked me if what he had been told was true: that Boulez no longer believed in God. I said it was...

It is not a scientific proposition to determine that some cultures lack political power because they show nothing similar to what is found in our culture. It is instead the sign of a certain conceptual poverty.

As our self-interests differ, so do our feelings.

On croit que les événements importants arrivent à une allure solennelle, un peu comme le Tsar débarquant en visite officielle. Mais ensuite on découvre que ces fameuses "choses importantes" se présentent de biais, furtivement. Et beaucoup plus tard encore, on ne sait plus si ces choses sont vraiment importantes.

People would much rather argue their own visions and conceptions about a book than engage in a dialogue with the author, because the author could always trump you with, 'I wrote it.'

When people say all politicians are the same, ask yourself if Obama was the same as Bush, if Francois Hollande is the same as Sarkozy. They are not. They are human beings with different views and different visions for the world.

The solution as consumers is - perhaps surprisingly - to take adverts very, very seriously. We should ask ourselves what it is that we find lovely in them - the visions of friendship, togetherness, repose, or whatever. And then consider what would actually help us find these qualities in our lives.

Since cancer, I feel like I have dreams rather than ambitions, visions rather than plans.

When I worked at Microsoft, I got to go and visit a bunch of different companies. Probably a hundred different companies a year. You'd see all the different ways they'd work. The guys who did Ventura Publisher one day, and then United Airlines the next. You'd see the 12 guys in Texas doing Doom, and then you'd go see Aetna life insurance.

One single visit is not enough to be able to say that you know Mexico.

When I lived in Chicago, I didn't like it. It's nice to visit.

My life is an awkward visit from the kids table.

I sound, convincingly, twice my age whenever I visit New York City neighborhoods I frequented in my 20s and grumble about how much they have changed.

Growing up in Singapore, I wasn't allowed to visit China. So when I was finally able to go there after the country began opening up to tourism in the 1990s, I found it to be utterly astounding.

A visit to Israel is always an experience in cognitive dissonance. The Israel you personally see and hear is so completely different from the Israel you read and hear about in the media.

I would like to visit a dog's mind to know what he's thinking and feeling.

Those who visit foreign nations, but associate only with their own country-men, change their climate, but not their customs. They see new meridians, but the same men; and with heads as empty as their pockets, return home with traveled bodies, but untravelled minds.

I've been quite fortunate to visit juvenile detention centers in Australia, jails in Western Australia. To be able to go out there and visit and see what it's like, you get a feeling for it.