Quotes About Perspective

Writers seldom write the things they think. They simply write the things they think other folks think they think.

When a man of 40 falls in love with a girl of 20, it isn't her youth he is seeking but his own.

Oh, to be only half as wonderful as my child thought I was when he was small, and only half as stupid as my teenager now thinks I am.

Every generation is a secret society and has incommunicable enthusiasms, tastes, and interests which are a mystery both to its predecessors and to posterity.

The youth gets together this material to build a bridge to the moon, or perchance, a palace or temple on earth, and at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.

No blubbering over spilt wine.

Attitude is the "little" thing that makes the big difference.

I believe it would do us good to rise above the little things, the disappointing things, the difficult things, and to see the larger things that are now facing us and to ask ourselves how we are to meet them.

Age 40. — I'm not 40, I'm eighteen with 22 years experience.

Age 45. — At sixteen I was stupid, confused, insecure and indecisive. At twenty-five I was wise, self-confident, prepossessing and assertive. At forty-five I am stupid, confused, insecure and indecisive. Who would have supposed that maturity is only a short break in adolescence?

Age 50. — At 50 a man can be an ass without being an optimist but not an optimist without being an ass.

Late 50s. — ...on the shady side of fifty...

Age 65. — I'm sixty-five and I guess that puts me in with the geriatrics. But if there were fifteen months in every year, I'd only be fifty-two. That's the trouble with us. We number everything. Take women, for example. I think they deserve to have more than twelve years between the ages of twenty-eight and forty.

Age 67. — Life was a fairy-tale, then, it is a tragedy now. When I was 43 and John Hay 41 he said life was a tragedy after 40, and I disputed it. Three years ago he asked me to testify again: I counted my graves, and there was nothing for me to say. I am old; I recognize it but I don't realize it. I wonder if a person ever really ceases to feel young — I mean, for a whole day at a time.

Ages 70+. — The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion.

The most beautiful view is the one I share with you.

There is no such thing as a happy life — there are only happy days.

We are slaves to words. Speak often enough of an unreal thing, and after a while it becomes real. For instance, we have used the word "nation" for centuries. There is, however, no such thing as a nation. All that really exists is the individuals that compose a nation.

For in art there is no such thing as a universal truth.

There is no study of human nature more interesting than the aspects of the same subject seen in the points of view of different characters. One might almost imagine that there were no such thing as absolute truth, since a change of situation or temperament is capable of changing the whole force of an argument.

Like age, a new year is just a number.

There's more to the truth than just the facts.

When you get there, there isn't any there there.

A thousand men can't undress a naked man.