Quotes About Perspective

It would be a thousand pities if women wrote like men, or lived like men, or looked like men, for if two sexes are quite inadequate, considering the vastness and variety of the world, how should we manage with one only?

Sir William said he never spoke of 'madness'; he called it not having a sense of proportion.

Let us not take for granted that life exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought small.

No decent man ought to read Shakespeare's sonnets because it was like listening at keyholes.

So that was the Lighthouse, was it? No, the other was also the Lighthouse. For nothing was simply one thing

The world is crammed with delightful things. I think young people make such a mistake about that — not letting themselves be happy. I sometimes think that happiness is the only thing that counts.

One wanted fifty pairs of eyes to see with, she reflected. Fifty pairs of eyes were not enough to get round that one woman with, she thought.

The sky is blue,' he said, 'the grass is green.' Looking up, he saw that, on the contrary, the sky is like the veils which a thousand Madonnas have let fall from their hair; and the grass fleets and darkens like a flight of girls fleeing the embraces of hairy satyrs from enchanted woods. 'Upon my word,' he said [...], 'I don't see that one's more true than another. Both are utterly false.

Here am I shedding one of my life-skins and all they will say is, 'Bernard is spending ten days in Rome'.

The root of things, what they were all afraid of saying, was that happiness is dirt cheap. You can have it for nothing. Beauty.

It is one of those invaluable seeds, from which, since it is impossible to have every experience fully, one can grow something that represents other people's experiences. Often one has to make do with seeds; the germs of what might have been, had one's life been different.

To be myself (I note) I need the illumination of other people's eyes, and therefore cannot be entirely sure what is my self.

Nobody sees any one as he is, let alone an elderly lady sitting opposite a strange young man in a railway carriage. They see a whole--they see all sorts of things--they see themselves...

These then are some of my first memories. But of course as an account of my life they are misleading, because the things one does not remember are as important; perhaps they are more important.

Las mujeres han servido durante siglos como espejos dotados del mágico y delicioso poder de reflejar la figura del hombre duplicando su tamaño natural.

but after reading a chapter or two a shadow seemed to lie across the page. It was a straight dark bar, a shadow shaped something like the letter 'I.' One began dodging this way and that to catch a glimpse of the landscape behind it. Whether that was indeed a tree or a woman walking I was not quite sure. Back one was always hailed to the letter 'I.

It won't seem to you nonsense in ten years' time,' said Mrs. Hilbery. 'Believe me, Katharine, you'll look back on this these days afterwards; you'll remember all the silly things you've said; and you'll find that your life has been built on them. The best of life is built on what we say when we're in love. It isn't nonsense Katherine,' she urged, 'it's the truth, it's the only truth.

The success of the masterpieces seems to lie not so much in their freedom from faults — indeed we tolerate the grossest errors in them all — but in the immense persuasiveness of a mind which has completely mastered its perspective.

Distance had an extraordinary power.

I know this room too well - this view too well - I am getting it all out of focus, because I can't walk through it.

As I write, there rises somewhere in my head that queer and very pleasant sense of something which I want to write; my own point of view...

But it is always a question whether I wish to avoid these glooms. These weeks give one a plunge into deep waters. One goes down into the well & nothing protects one from the assault of truth.

Clearly the mind is always altering its focus, and bringing the world into different perspectives.

The man looks the world full in the face, as if it were made for his uses and fashioned to his liking. The woman takes a sidelong glance at it, full of subtlety, even of suspicion. Had they both worn the same clothes, it is possible that their outlook might have been the same.