Quotes About Perspective

What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner.

The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.

We want more than chocolate cake, said Rachel. We need your help. Jacques seemed unflustered by the girl's sudden impatience. But chocolate cake is a good starting point, oui?

One cannot ignore half of life for the purposes of science, and then claim that the results of science give a full and adequate picture of the meaning of life. All discussions of 'life' which begin with a description of man's place on a speck of matter in space, in an endless evolutionary scale, are bound to be half-measures, because they leave out most of the experiences which are important to use as human beings.

I think everyone should love life above everything else in the world,' Alyosha tells him. 'Love life regardless of the meaning of it?' 'Certainly—it must be regardless of logic—'it's only then one can understand its meaning.

Man is as much a slave to his immediate surroundings now as he was when he lived in tree-huts. Give him the highest, the most exciting thoughts about man's place in the universe, the meaning of history; they can all be snuffed out in a moment if he wants his dinner, or feels irritated by a child squalling on a bus.

If I examine a painting through a microscope I shall learn about the texture of the paint, but nothing about the artists intention in painting the picture

The Outsider is primarily a critic, and if a critic feels deeply enough about what he is criticizing, he becomes a prophet.

In keeping with my family's affection for doomed product lines and hexed formats, we purchased a Betamax. The year before, we'd bought a TRS-80 instead of an Apple II, and in due course we'd unbox Mattel's Intellivision, instead of Atari's legendary gizmo. This was good training for a writer, for the sooner you accept the fact that you are a deluded idiot who is always out of step with reality the better off you will be.

It was the softest bed she had ever lain in. But then, it was the only bed she had ever lain in.

Freedom was a thing that shifted as you looked at it, the way a forest is dense with trees up close but from outside, from the empty meadow, you see its true limits.

Crossing a single street transformed the way people talked, determined the size and condition of the homes, the dimension and character of the dreams.

She watches the people through the sooted panes. They walk slower than they do when she reports to work and when she leaves work, and differently still from weekend strolling. They are the tin men and rag dolls who wake after hours in the toy store.

The way he saw it, living taught you that you didn't have to live the way you'd been taught to live. You came from one place but more important was where you decided to go.

You go on about reasons," Cora said. "Call things by other names as if it changes what they are. But that don't make them true.

IF THEY THINK those two words New York will fix them, who are we to say otherwise.

To see chains on another person and be glad they are not your own—such was the good fortune permitted colored people, defined by how much worse it could be any moment.

It was a gorgeous and intricate delusion, Manhattan, and from crooked angles on overcast days you saw it disintegrate, were forced to consider this tenuous creature in its true nature.

Elwood never ceased to marvel how you could walk around and get used to seeing only a fraction of the world. Not knowing you only saw a sliver of the real thing.

Black hands built the White House, the seat of our nation's government. The word we. We are not one people but many different people. How can one person speak for this great, beautiful race—which is not one race but many, with a million desires and hopes and wishes for ourselves and our children?

I was nostalgic for everything big and small. Nostalgic for what never happened and nostalgic about what will be, looking forward to looking back on a time when things got easier.

Llamas a las cosas por otro nombre como si así combinaras lo que son. Pero eso no las convierte en verdad.

This or this," his eye doctor asked at checkups, a choice between two lenses of different power. Elwood never ceased to marvel how you could walk around and get used to seeing only a fraction of the world. Not knowing you only saw a sliver of the real thing. This or this?

Att se bojor på en annan människa och vara glad att de inte är ens egna – sådan var den lycka som stod färgade till buds, de som definierades av hur mycket värre det närsomhelst kunde blir.