Quotes About Perspective

mistaking feeling less for feeling better.

Before you speak, ask yourself, What is this going to feel like to the person I'm speaking to?

Sometimes the changes you want in another person aren't on that person's agenda—even if he tells you they are.

A therapist will hold up a mirror to patients, but patients will also hold up a mirror to their therapists.

There's a difference between pain and suffering. You're going to have to feel pain -- everyone feels pain at times -- but you don't have to suffer so much. You're not choosing the pain, but you're choosing the suffering. ... If I'm clinging to the suffering so tightly, I must be getting something out of it. It must be serving some purpose for me.

Many of us take for granted the people we love and the things we find meaningful, only to realize, when our deadline is announced, that we'd been skating by on the project: our lives.

Wendell says that if I've been taking such copious notes during our phone calls, I probably haven't been able to listen to Boyfriend, and if my goal is to be open to understanding his perspective, that's hard to do when I'm trying to prove a point rather than have an interaction in earnest. And, he adds, I'm doing the same thing to him in our sessions.

There's a difference between pain and suffering. You're going to have to feel pain—everyone feels pain at times—but you don't have to suffer so much. You're not choosing the pain, but you're choosing the suffering.

Happiness equals reality minus expectations. Apparently, you can make people happy by delivering bad news and then taking it back

It's not about lowering your standards—it's about maturing and having reasonable expectations.

There's a difference between pain and suffering," Wendell says. "You're going to have to feel pain—everyone feels pain at times—but you don't have to suffer so much. You're not choosing the pain, but you're choosing the suffering.

You have two ears and one mouth; there's a reason for that ratio"),

by diminishing my problems, I was judging myself and everyone else whose problems I had placed lower down on the hierarchy of pain. You can't get through your pain by diminishing it, he reminded me. You get through your pain by accepting it and figuring out what to do with it. You can't change what you're denying or minimizing. And, of course, often what seem like trivial worries are manifestations of deeper ones.

Our must-haves and deal-breakers are the "what," when they should be the "why.

Her changing perception of time had altered the sum of her reflections.

As I grew older, I found I could surrender my own comfort so effortlessly it didn't qualify as sacrifice.

You think about these words final last never a lot, and there are not many things, when you come right down to it, that you'll be happy to see the end of.

It's not that you like being sad, but you start to see the value of it. You don't judge sadness so harshly.

The strangest thing about strange things is that they're only strange when you hear about them or think about them later, but never when you're living them.

It was Aunt Lovey's belief that all ordinary people led extraordinary lives, but just didn't notice.

How could she have been so ungrateful? She envied the French singer who regretted nothing. She regretted all.

The climb speaks to our character, but the view, I think, to our souls. The

Plus vieux, tu comprendras que, malgré les apparences, il n'y a pas de bon ou mauvais moment. Il y a un moment, point final.

The strangest thing about strange things is that they're only strange when you hear about them or think about them later, but never when you're living them.