Quotes About Perspective

When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.

We all die uneducated. But at least we will not feel quite so lost, so bewildered. We will have disenthralled ourselves from the merely contemporary. We will understand something—not much, but something—of our position in space and time.

The prospect of dating someone in her twenties becomes less appealing as you get older. At some point in your fife, your tolerance level goes down and you realize that, with someone much younger, there's nothing really to talk about.

It's not about you. It's about them.

Our stars weren't meant for their sky. We have never known the same horizon.

Every single time you set up a comparison between yourself and someone else, you lose, no one wins.

The paintings of Francis Bacon to my eye are very beautiful. The paintings of Bosch or Goya are to my eye very beautiful. I've also stood in front of those same paintings with people who've said, 'let's get on to the Botticellis as soon as possible.' I have lingered, of course.

The paintings of Francis Bacon to my eye are very beautiful. The paintings of Bosch or Goya are to my eye very beautiful. I've also stood in front of those same paintings with people who've said, 'let's get on to the Botticellis as soon as possible.' I have lingered, of course.

It's only when you've lost someone that you realize the nonsense of that phrase "It's a small world". It isn't. It's a vast, devouring world, especially if you're alone.

One man's pornography is another man's theology.

A man accepts the thankless burden of responsibility. We women do not. To us, life is a game we play one day at a time.

There is only one inborn error: and that is the notion that we exist in order to be happy. Arthur Schopenhauer

Many intellectuals in the social sciences and humanities do not concede that Earth scientists have anything to say that could impinge on their understanding of the world, because the "world" consists only of humans engaging with humans, with nature no more than a passive backdrop to draw on as we please.

It is a good rule in life to be wary of the company of people who think of themselves in the third person, no matter how well justified they might seem to be in doing so.

The inevitable effect of a biographer's hindsight is to belittle the subject's foresight.

Philosophers are divided on the question of whether the narrative therein unfolded [the Crossman Diaries] is grippingly boring or boringly gripping.

Fiction is life with the dull bits left out

Funny Debates at both Cambridge and Oxford eventually helped to convince me that the only place to be amusing is in a serious context.

bohemian's ability not to worry about money always starts with your money rather than his.)

Because the trivial concerns oneself, one fails to see it might be boring.

Tacitus, "qui abrégeoit tout parce qu'il voyoit tout." ("He abridged everything because he saw everything." Perfect.)

more typical essay is the one on Karl Kraus, of which Kraus confessed that the only thing he understood was that it was about him.

the NATO aircraft that are held to be the worst thing in the world by those who have no idea how bad the world can get.

even today, when I have a cold, it is the worst cold in the history of the house.