Quotes About Perspective

You see, nothing matters except pleasure - which is the opposite of happiness, its tragic part, I expect.

Like all young men I set out to be a genius, but mercifully laughter intervened.

watching the world walk by in its curious shoes

The world is a beautiful place to be born into if you don't mind happiness not always being so very much fun if you don't mind a touch of hell now and then just when everything is fine because even in heaven they don't sing all the time

If you're too open-minded; your brains will fall out.

Having a strategy suggests an ability to look up from the short term and the trivial to view the long term and the essential, to address causes rather than symptoms, to see woods rather than trees.

There are no endings. If you think so you are deceived as to their nature. They are all beginnings. Here is one. —Hilary Mantel

Empathy involves at least emotional sensitivity to others and at most an ability to understand another's point of view.

idea that the best strategic practice may now consist in forming compelling accounts of how to turn a developing situation into a desirable outcome.

At one point in one's life you get a sense of your own mortality. You view death in a certain way. From that point on you look at your fellow man with a new understanding. I have some feelings for it now. They say it happens in your mid-thirties. Sometimes I have a fantasy of my corpse being carried around in a box, people mourning me. Saying, "We shouldn't have treated him so badly.

The idea that we should be open to all ideas, is very different from the supposition that all ideas are equally valid.

One time the wife asked everyone if they wanted lemonade, and after she went in to make it, one of the children said to her husband, "Your mom is really nice." Nonparents, even if they are recognized as being adults, can be accepted as "one of the gang" in a way that parents generally can't. And children benefit from a thoughtful, respectful adult who can be seen as an ally rather than as the enemy.

I haven't seen Clones, which has been during this period when I haven't seen much of anything, but I did see Phantom Menace, and see my feelings about it - see, first of all, I think that when you make a lot of movies, your attitude about the movies changes.

The world is what you make of it, friend. If it doesn't fit, you make alterations.

Is it not at least occasionally the case that we set out on a clear and simple mission and return with something undreamed of? Whether or not we accomplish our original intention becomes unimportant.

But we must not think that just because we have words for all the parts of a tree, a tree really has all those parts. The leaf does not know, for instance, when it stops being a leaf and becomes a twig. And the trunk is not aware that it has stopped being a trunk and has become the roots. Indeed, the roots do not know when they stop being roots and become soil, nor the soil the moisture, nor the moisture the atmosphere, nor the atmosphere the sunlight." (pp 54-55)

Reality doesn't owe us comfort.

the history of science cannot be written by pulling scientific 'firsts' out of their historical context, but only by seeing with eyes and minds of our historical characters.

If the world were perfect, it wouldn't be.

You should always go to other people's funerals, otherwise, they won't come to yours.

One never knows, do one?

The real inferiority of women to men is shown by their hate of paederasty , which they regard as unfair competition. Men on the other hand rather approve of Sapphism , as saving them trouble & expense. — Aleister Crowley . 1929-03-09 diary entry.

Irony has always seemed the best approach to life, the best way to keep it at arm's length.

There are many countries where you can only believe more or you can believe less. But in the United States we have this incredible smorgasbord, and it really interests me why people are drawn to one faith rather than another, especially to a system of belief that to an outsider seems absurd or dangerous.