Quotes About Perspective

Whether you get up one morning with a foggy mind and the world around you appears to be dark and foggy, or you awaken with a clear mind and your world seems beautiful and light, understand that these different impressions are coming from your own mind rather than from changes in the external environment. Instead of misinterpreting whatever you experience in life through wrong conceptions, realize that it's not outer reality, but only mind.

We may mistakenly conclude, for example, that the source of our dissatisfaction and frustration is a particular intellectual view or opinion that we hold and that all we have to do to correct the situation is adopt a higher, more respectable philosophical position. But such a superficial approach never strikes at the root of our difficulties.

All of us, the religious and the non-religious, Easterner and Westerner alike, want to be happy. Everybody seeks happiness, but are you looking in the right place? Perhaps happiness is here but you're looking there. Make sure you seek happiness where it can be found.

Through thorough examination you can realize that dedicating your entire life to seeking happiness through chocolate and icecream completely nullifies the significance of your having been born human. Birds and dogs have similar aims. Shouldn't your goals in life be higher than those of dogs and chickens?

The way we tend to perceive things to be does not accord with the way they are. Again, this does not nihilistically deny the fact of our experience. The existence of things and events is not in dispute; it is the manner in which they exist that must be clarified.

Anger becomes limiting, restricting. You can't see through it. While anger is there, look at that, too. But after a while, you have to look at something else.

There are too many people too angry at a world that isn't the least bit angry at them.

Isn't it obvious?" "Apparently not." "I'm not just writing about you," said Shane. "I'm writing to you.

Adulthood is a lie, Audre. We're all just tall toddlers.

I thought you were a problem that needed solving. But you don't need solving. You need understanding.

Lizette didn't lay eyes on Audre till she was two. It was cruel. She hadn't raised her daughter to have such ghastly manners. But in the end, maybe Genevieve had been right to sever ties. Genevieve was Eva now, and she and Audre were both thriving. Everything turns out the way it oughta, she thought.

I know you twist history to make things easier for you, but I've never made you do anything. Do you ever think about your role in all of this?

How do you know anything about me? You're not on social media." "Nah, people are strange enough in real life. I don't need to view their psychosis through a zany filter.

I don't know why they call it life, it's just a moment with memories.

Once you've been backstage at a theater, the theater is never the same for you. Once you've noticed the crack in the vase, the vase is never the same for. Once you've seen a friend do something appalling, the friendship is never the same. That does not mean you won't go to the theater, or keep the vase or the friend. You can choose.

We might not want to share our food or our money, but we do want to share our judgement. We want others to think we have more fun.But we need meeting-places of the mind. A Kilimanjaro of spirit that we've all visited so we can say of other things: it's shorter, or taller, or the same height as Kilimanjaro.

Book-writing is always much easier in other people's lives.

The concept of time, as it's commonly understood by normal people with normal jobs and normal goddamn lives, doesn't exist on the road. The nights spread out like the dark, godforsaken highways that distinguish them, and the days run together like Thanksgiving dinner smothered in gravy. You never really know where you are or what time it is, and the outside world starts to fade away. It's cool.

Do you realize what you accomplished today? You're supposed to be happy right now." "I am. That's the most fucked-up part," he said. "I've never been happier in my life. But when dreams come true in reality they never feel the same as when you imagine them, and you know what that means? It means that no matter how good things are, maybe they'll never be good enough, and there's something seriously wrong with that.

For what its worth, I think happiness is a fleeting condition, not a permanent goddamn state of mind. I've learned that if you chase after moments of bliss here and there, sometimes those moments will sustain you through the shit. ...Personally, I don't like inherently happy people. I don't trust them. I think there is something seriously wrong with anyone who isn't at least a little let down by the world." - Paul Hudson

You know what I was thinking about on my way home? How different my life would be if you'd made that gash a little deeper. Or how different yours would be if I'd vaulted myself off a roof nine years ago. Do you ever think about things like that? Like, if either you or I wouldn't have made it, where would the other one be right now? It was something I thought about all the time: how death changes every remaining moment for those still living.

He's more than just a good-looking guy and you know it." But, I thought, he doesn't have flashlight eyes or a cocky-bastard smile that can boil water or a voice from the heavens and most of all he says things like, It's only rock 'n' roll.

When dreams come true in reality they never feel the same as when you imagine them, and you know what that means? It means that no matter how good things are, maybe they'll never be good enough, and there's something seriously wrong with that.

It drives me crazy when people know me well enough to remind me what I believe.