Quotes About Perspective

An idealist believes the short run doesn't count. A cynic believes the long run doesn't matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.

Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway

Happiness is a direction, not a place.

If a small thing has the power to make you angry, does that not indicate something about your size?

The French may be straining the truth in their famous saying that "to understand all is to forgive all"," but it is certainly true that the more we know of any given person, the harder it becomes to hate him.

The way in which we say something is often more important than what we say.

when the createdness of the other person is not viewed as necessary as our own—then there is no reason (beyond expediency) to treat the other as a person. All injustice and cruelty come, basically, from this distorted view of reality.

The truly terrible thing about the war spirit, about the fear and hate hysteria it generates, is that it forces us to think and talk and feel in terms of abstractions—those "communists" this time, those "fascists" last time. But those we are fighting and killing are people—men, women and children—not political, geographic or economic abstractions. They are, in the main, as decent and fearful and confused as we are. And they regard us as abstractions as much as we do them.

Nobody can misunderstand a child as much as his own parents.

Don't take life seriously, nobody gets out alive anyway

That sign of old age, extolling the past at the expense of the present.

Take short views, Hope for the best, and Trust in God.

Many in this world run after felicity like an absent man hunting for his hat, while all the time it is on his head or in his hand.

Because most artists have not told us of their intentions, and beacause those artists ( and patrons or agents) who have stated their intentions may not be fully reliable sources, and because we inevitably see things from our own points of view, think twice before you attribute intention to the artist [...].

Essentially, he taught that it doesn't make sense to upset ourselves about what is beyond our control. We don't get a choice about what hand we are dealt in this life. The only choice we have is our attitude about the cards we hold and the finesse with which we play our hand.

If I can't see around my personal story, I'll have no way to see sit in context: This is one event in a life of events. It is whatever it is, but it is temporal. The pain is terrible, but it won't last. I can manage it. or this joy is incredible, but it won't last. Celebrate it now! [pp. 104-105]

I have become more passionate, not less. When I am delighted, which is often, I am ecstatic. When I am sad, I cry easily. Nothing is a big deal. It's whatever it is, and then it's something else.

I'd say, "But I'm not happy." And she'd say, "Where is it written that you're supposed to be happy all the time?

There are different kinds of truth. And if our kind is more mature than theirs, it's so only because we know that.

If nobody believed anything except what they understood, how limited we'd be.

Why, if nobody believed anything except what they understood, how limited we'd be!

Technically he was right, Jarel knew. So why should it seem so important?

because wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my eyes and all is born again.