Quotes About Perspective

Unless our ideas are questioned, they become part of the furniture of eternity.

The people who really matter in social affairs are neither those who wish to stop short like a mule, or leap from crag to crag like a mountain goat.

What place does a woman have here, in the realm of men?

Happiness doesn't just happen. I'm convinced that for the most part, those who focus their minds on it, obtain it.

If you really want to help your daughter manage her distress, help her see the difference between complaining and venting.

Few moments in life spark more maturation than when a young person recognizes that her parents have strengths and limitations that were in place long before she came along and that will be there long after she moves out. In letting go of the dream of turning you into the perfect parent, your daughter recovers a lot of energy that has been devoted to being angry with you, feeling hurt by you, or trying to change you.

In good marriages, partners can help their children appreciate what they should and shouldn't take personally in the other parent's behavior. My husband has told our daughters that I've been clean crazy for as long as he's known me and that he stopped taking it personally years ago.

Parents think the worst thing that can happen to their five-year-old is cancer. They're wrong; the worst thing that can happen to their five-year-old is mental illness.

Her favorite animal was sea lions. Mine was giraffes. Her favorite movie was Casablanca, which she said was old and black-and-white and very romantic. She tried to tell me what it was about, but it all sounded about as much fun as eating burned bread crusts.

At least I wasn't Major Disaster. That was Tommy's mom.

But 'contentment'. Is that happiness? Or is that only resignation wearing a funny hat?

Look," I say at last. 'You know me. You know my life. I always thought-or hoped-" "You thought what?" "I just want to be happy," I finally say. She stares at me hard. "You have been," she says.

perhaps it is true that, as Bertrand Russell once suggested, "to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

And is there a difference, I wonder, watching the ease with which T.J. settles back into her reading, between the happiness of being happy and the happiness of being happy because you think someone might be less happy than you?

We manifest what we believe, even if those beliefs trip us up and create roadblocks to personal growth. As the old adage by Henry Ford goes: Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right. The goal is not to be "right" but to be whole and self-actualized.

Usually any advice I hand out is advice I need to hear as well." "So

Please don't. We're an ocean apart in who we are, how we look at life, as well as in our hopes and dreams for the future.

He] didn't view the less idyllic chapters of his life as the results of "mistakes." He didn't believe in mistakes. He believed in a preordained path, and so far every point on this path had felt right. Every bad relationship had felt right, every shitty job he'd done had felt right - because he'd chosen them.

because I remember being twenty-one and thinking that my personality was a solid thing, that me was set in stone, that I would always feel what I felt and believe what I believed. But now I know that me is fluid and shape-changing. So whatever you're feeling now, it's temporary.

You know, how you get to forty and you suddenly stop giving a shit about all the stupid things you worried about your whole life.

room. She stood for a while in the middle, imagining herself not in it anymore, imagining herself instead in her sister's

And it occurs to her for the very first time that maybe Hanna isn't intrinsically unhappy. That maybe she just doesn't like her.

People could look and see just a man, but in the same glance, the answer to all their problems.

He knows there's more to life than five major events, that life is made up of all the moments in between.