Quotes About Perspective

Beyond the hand holding this book that I'm reading, I see another hand lying idle and slightly out of focus—my extra hand.

Read the best writers from all different periods; keep your reading of contemporaries in proportion - you do not want a steady diet of contemporary literature. You already belong to your time.

it occurs to me that I must not know altogether what I am, either, and that others know certain things about me better than I do, though I think I ought to know all there is to know and I proceed as if I do. Even once I see this, however, I have no choice but to continue to proceed as if I know altogether what I am, though I may also try to guess, from time to time, just what it is that others know that I do not know.

ô literatura! Por que as coisas nos parecem sempre belas quando protegidas pela distância?

Não sei explicar mas o que quero dizer é que acreditar no homem não me deixa tão feliz como acreditar nessas histórias absurdas que os homens contam.

O vinho ela aceita. Também aceita a lagosta, fala lagostim. Mas precisa lembrar a estatística das criancinhas morrendo de fome no Nordeste, esse assunto de Nordeste às vezes exorbita.

The sun shineth upon the dunghill, and is not corrupted.

In the choice of a wife, sundry men are of sundry minds. One looketh high as one that feareth no chips, saying that the oil that swimmeth on the top is the wholesomest. Another poreth in the ground, as dreading all dangers that happen in great stocks, alleging that the honey that lieth in the bottom is the sweetest.

If I had only life's book to read ... I should not believe in a God of love. I should turn Persian, and believe in two gods, one of love and good-will, one of hate and malice.

The years pass in review before me. Thank God for the dear wife who three years ago persuaded me that I was a Christian more than a Congregationalist. The years have not been unfruitful. The work has been, oh! so little, and the harvest so great!

His father thought he had a wond'rous wise look when he was born, and so he named him Solomon, thinking that if indeed he turned out to be wise the name would fit him nicely, whereas, should he be mistaken, and the boy grow up stupid, his name could be easily changed to Simon.

The accumulation of facts, even if interesting in themselves, should not constitute the main part of education; these facts, whether they be of classical learning or knick-knacks of history, will be of little use unless the mind has been trained to see them in proper perspective.

It is doubtful if even experience of riches and success is as intense among those who have experienced nothing else as among those who have also experienced poverty and failure. There is little romance in wealth to those who have been born wealthy and whose families have been wealthy for generations.

It is almost impossible to remember how tragic a place this world is when one is playing golf.

It makes all the difference whether you hear an insect in the bedroom or in the garden. In the garden the voice of the insect soothes; in the bedroom it irritates. In the garden it is the hum of spring; in the bedroom it seems to belong to the same school of music as the buzz of the dentist's drill or the saw-mill.

W. B. Yeats has created, if not a new world, a new star. He is not a reporter of life as it is, to the extent that Shakespeare or Browning is. One is not quite certain that his kingdom is of the green earth. He is like a man who has seen the earth not directly but in a crystal.

If I didn't try to eavesdrop on every bus ride I take or look for the humor when I go for a walk, I would just be depressed all the time.

You keep seeing your picture on posters that you are missing but you're not. That'd be weird, right? Or say you look down at the sidewalk and earthworms are spelling your name. Or you open a peanut bag and the 'hello' is written in your writing on the inside of the shell. Would that weird ya?

If I could only turn the etch-a-sketch of my life upside down.

something can only become an illusion after disillusionment. before that, it is something real. what caused the disillusionment? no one told me the print on the wall was just ink and paper and had no life of its own. at some point the cat stopped blinking, and i stopped thinking it could.

A man who has been dead for a week in a hot trailer looks more like a man than you would first expect.

painted three quadrants

How can there be a true History, when we see no man living is able to write truly the History of the last week?', as Sir Will demands in Thomas Shadwell's play The Squire of Alsatia (1688)

What if the kid you bullied at school, grew up, and turned out to be the only surgeon who could save your life?