Quotes About Perspective

This was all the easier because Mr. Marvell was so matter of fact about the whole thing—the picture might have been a still life of a jar of roses, or of a cabbage, rather than the naked figure of his wife. After all, he's her husband, thought Barbara vaguely, and that seemed to help.

It's turned out all right after all," she said contentedly. "Things usually do, somehow. You worry and fuss and try to make things go the way you think they should, and then you find that the other way was best. I'm going to try not to worry about things anymore.

Yes, it is. Some people would find it frightfully dull to be the daughter of the parson at Chevis Green." "But we don't," cried Liz. "That's exactly what I mean. It's in you from the beginning. Either there's this mysterious thing in you that makes you happy—that makes you interested in everything and interesting to yourself—or else there isn't, and you're dull and dreary and discontented.

Tim admires everything he sees and waxes more and more enthusiastic as we proceed from room to room. I become more and more depressed at the prospect of trying to keep the place moderately clean with two maids.

When at last a new clerk was engaged to take my place they were forced to believe it and were frankly envious. " Gosh! " exclaimed Wrigson. " Fancy being able to lie in bed as long as you like! Fancy having nothing to do except amuse yourself! " " But that isn't the idea at all," I told him. " I'm exchanging one job—which I'm not particularly good at—for another job which I hope to do better.

Yes," says Grace nodding. "I should enjoy it, but you think I shouldn't enjoy it so blatantly. Well, you may be right, but I can't help it." She looks thoughtful for a moment and then continues, "Good things come in waves. This is one of the times when everything goes right . . . then there are times when everything goes wrong. That's my experience of life.

She smiles and says I only think so because my standard has gone up. Reply that she really does not know me, I am a rebel at heart. 'The only people who are not rebels are vegetable marrows,' says Mrs. Parsons. Reply that it would be rather nice to be a vegetable marrow never to be discontented or miserable without any reason for being so. Mrs. Parsons laughs and says 'Perhaps but how dull never to be joyful and happy without any reason for being so!

Mrs. Parsons says, 'I know exactly what you mean but I envy you all the same. I envy you going to new places every few years – meeting new people and making new friends. It is such an interesting thing to study people, to get inside their skins and see life from their point of view. And you can do it. Some people travel all over the world and see nothing. They go about clad in a thick fog of their own making through which no impressions can penetrate

Offer him Ardfalloch for three months,' said Mr. Simpson. 'You need the money.' I told him I did not want to let Ardfalloch. 'You will sell a farm then,' he told me. 'Something you must do, MacAslan.' He showed me figures in a book, Donald, and I saw, then, that it was true. Something must be done. Figures are strange things," continued the voice in the darkness thoughtfully. "Columns of figures—and when they are added up—

You worry and fuss and try to make things go the way you think they should – and then you find that the other way was best. I'm going to try not to worry about things any more.

Her eyes are full of tears and I realise that she must be comforted, so I proceed to explain my own particular method of "carrying on". None of us could bear the war if we allowed ourselves to brood upon the wickedness of it and the misery it has entailed, so the only thing to do is not to allow oneself to think about it seriously, but just to skitter about on the surface of life like a water beetle.

After about an hour she asks if we are nearly there, and I reply firmly that we shall not be there for hours and hours. 'But we've been hours and hours already,' she says, 'and we were in Scotland when we started so we must be nearly there. Scotland's quite small on the map.' I

An American travelling acquaintance once said to Peter: "I guess you like to look on at life from a third-floor window." It was such a startling insight into his character that Peter was quite alarmed.

in those days nobody talked about being happy, like they do now – nobody minded whether children were happy, the really important thing was that they should be good. But I really think that people were just as happy as they are now, only they never thought about whether they were or not.

If we don't have troubles sent us we can generally make them for ourselves,' I reply. 'It's easy to make yourself miserable over trifles; I've done that sometimes, and then, quite suddenly, you get sent something to be sorry about, and you think looking back how happy I was yesterday, and I never knew it.

If strangers see you behaving like lunatics, it doesn't matter, because they don't know who you are. And if your friends see you behaving like lunatics, it doesn't matter, because they know who you are.

Prayers are not always answered, " Malcolm replied. "Sometimes it's better for us that they're not answered; sometimes they're answered differently from what we expect.

Query – Why do people with no children of their own seem to think the shocking behaviour of other people's offspring a fit subject for mirth?)

It isn't what happens to you that matters, it's how you take it.

The Major would be laughing at me,' replies Alec, smiling. 'But no, I would be wanting no war for him. It is only that I am glad now there was one for me. I was not glad at the time, no, not altogether glad. Wars are bad things, and we want no more of them – but there is good in them for the lucky ones.' 'I believe you are right,' says

Men who understand women being sometimes too understanding of women other than their wives.

They don't understand anything," declared Mother smiling at me rather sadly. "They don't even know that there's anything to understand. They're like horses with blinkers —they just see what's in front of their noses and nothing more. I'm always terribly sorry for horses with blinkers," added Mother with a sigh.

Life is like looking out of a lot of different windows," explained Malcolm.

But is it?' Guthrie says, waving his hands in the effort to explain. 'We're living in the twentieth century, of course, but are they?