Quotes About Perspective

Once when I was young I asked what mortals looked like. My father said, "You may say they are shaped like us, but only as the worm is shaped like the whale.

perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When we look we see only the mirror of our own faults.

It is not fair," I said. "It cannot be." "Those are two different things," my grandmother said.

I cannot account for the fact that she married me, but since it is to my benefit, I try not to bring it to her attention.

It was a trick of his, to set a sentence out like a plate on a table to see what you would put on it.

I saw then how I had changed. I did not mind anymore that I lost when we raced and I lost when we swam out to the rocks and I lost when we tossed spears or skipped stones. For who can be ashamed to lose to such beauty?

You ask a question that philosophers argue over," Chiron had said. "He is worth more to you, perhaps. But the stranger is someone else's friend and brother. So which life is more important?

because I knew nothing, nothing was beneath me.

In the old days I would have rushed forth with a brimming cup of answers, to give him all he wanted. But I was not the same as I had been.

And when I do say to she: 'Bain't Prior Bog of Bumset as good a church-lord as any old Saint?' she's answer to I is allus the same: 'Bog be Bog and Bumset be Bumset,' she do say, 'but when thee do pray to They Above, 'tis a very different style of Holy Man thee dost need for thee's pass to Salvation!

I'm sceptical about the reality of everything; even about the reality of Nature. Sometimes I think that there are several Natures ... several Universes, in fact ... one inside the other ... like Chinese boxes ...

If no one were allowed to be thrilled by anything, as long as someone is made wretched by something, the life of the whole planet would perish!

History is full of people who thought they were right -- absolutely right, completely right, without a shadow of a doubt. And because history never seems like history when you are living through it, it is tempting for us to think the same.

Navy: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision. Civilian: Recommend you divert your course 15 degrees to South to avoid a collision. Navy: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert your course. Civilian: No, I say again, divert your course. Navy: This is the aircraft carrier Enterprise. We are a large warship of the US Navy. Divert your course now!! Civilian: This is a lighthouse. Your call." Canadian naval radio conversation38

The task is not to explain the being of the world but to interpret our place in the world based upon what we know about the world at the time, which is what is what the authors of the scriptures were doing and why we have to start all over again in every new age.

There are middle-aged children who spend a part of every day thinking of their college or their war, but the ones who grow up to be men do not have this plaintive need for a flavor of past importance, and Callowell was one of these.

There are middle-aged children who spend a part of every day thinking of their college or their war, but the ones who grow up to be men do not have this plaintive need for a flavor of past importance

When I play with my cat, who knows but that she regards me more as a plaything than I do her? —MICHEL EYQUEM DE MONTAIGNE

When anybody looks directly at me, right into my eyes, which isn't normal, and doesn't do any fidgeting, which again isn't normal, and drops their voice level about a half octave and gets real grammatical, I just lay back and wait for them to bring out the three walnut shells and the rubber pea.

Children lack empathy about how the adults around them feel. Children have a tendency toward self-involvement which makes them give too much weight to trivia, too little weight to significant things. If the house burns down, the charred sister and the charred kitten are equally mourned.

A man's wealth must be determined by the relation of his desires and expenditures to his income. If he feels rich on ten dollars, and has everything else he desires, he really is rich.

If insanity is contagious, and it is, so is sanity. Sanity is more contagious than insanity. It's just that there aren't enough carriers. Become a source of infectious sanity.

redemptive purpose in mind for it? Jonah was surprised at the way God looked at Nineveh.

between Don Quixote the mystic and Sancho Panza the sensualist there is no middle ground.