Quotes About Perspective

Quand'ero bambina, invidiavo le donne come Momina, Mariella e le altre, le invidiavo e non sapevo chi fossero. Le immaginavo libere, ammirate, padrone del mondo. A pensarci adesso non mi sarei cambiata con nessuna di loro. La loro vita mi pareva una sciocchezza, tanto più sciocca perché non se ne rendevano conto. Ma potevano far diverso? al loro posto avrei fatto diverso?

They were the good old days. Don't give up hope in the bad new days, which will become the good old days. We appreciate Kennedy because he was killed; Martin Luther King was a great man. If you'd meet Naropa or Tilopa on the spot you'd be pissed off. History is very deceptive, reality is more important. There is a piece of philosophy for you.

Joy develops into the panoramic situation of seeing or feeling the whole ground, the open ground. This open situation has no hint of limitation, of imposed solemnity. And if you do try to treat life as a "serious business," if you try to impose solemnity upon life as though everything is a big deal, then it is funny. Why such a big deal?

At first, the mountains are mountains and streams are streams. Then, the mountains are not mountains and streams are not streams. But in the end, mountains are mountains again and streams are streams again.

And don't forget to enjoy simple stuff like...being alive, which in itself is amazing news. For me, personally, it means I'm not dead, and I'm a fan of that. Optimism can start small, ya know?

Instead of feeling like you are the computer genius, descending from computer heaven to save your poor customer from purgatory, turn the tables around. If you're, for example, working in the insurance industry, think of your customer as a subject matter expert in insurance from which you have to learn in order to get your job done.

As you're reading through code, you will find things that you would have never done. You will find things you might have never even thought of. Why? What was the developer thinking? What were his or her motivations? You can even learn from bad code with this kind of critical, self-aware exploration of an existing work.

All of us grow up in particular realities - a home, family, a clan, a small town, a neighborhood. Depending upon how we're brought up, we are either deeply aware of the particular reading of reality into which we are born, or we are peripherally aware of it.

What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye? … I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something.

As you grow older you will discover that the most important things that will happen to you will often come as a result of silly things, as you call them --"ordinary things" is a better expression. That is the way the world is.

No one knows he is fortunate until he becomes unfortunate, that's the way the world is.

Art begins . . . when someone interprets, when someone sees the world through his own eyes. Art happens when what is seen becomes mixed with the inside of the person who is seeing it.

Oh, it makes a difference, I thought. And if it doesn't make a difference you will make it make a difference.

The world's biggest power is the youth and beauty of a woman.

It is 'where we are' that should make all the difference, whether we believe we belong there or not.

You can be affected by a person because of something particular they said or did but sometimes how a person was, a manner of being, that gets most deeply absorbed, and prompts you to revisit certain parts of your life with an enhanced perspective, flowing forward right up to now.

A tale, like the universe, they tell us, expands ceaselessly each time you examine it, until there is finally no telling exactly where it begins, where it ends, or where it places you now.

Don't sanctuaries become prisons, and vice versa, foremost in the mind?

The truth, finally, is who can tell it.

My boat goes west, your's east. Heaven's a wind for both journeys.

All my life I have made it a rule never to permit a religious man or woman take for granted that his or her religious beliefs deserved more consideration than non-religious beliefs or anti-religious ones. I never agree with that foolish statement that I ought to respect the views of others when I believe them to be wrong.

We who know both sides know that in giving up the belief in deity we have lost nothing of value, nothing that need cause us a single regret. And on that point we certainly can speak with authority; for we have been where the Theist is, he has not been where we are.

Even though friends say they are interested in your life, they never really want to talk about you as much as you want them to. (68)

Sometimes when you're upset it's so easy to forget what's real and go for what makes you feel better. (131)