Quotes About Perspective

Viajar por el imperio no solo significaba atravesar zonas horarias tal como lo entendemos nosotros, sino moverse entre formas completamente distintas de calcular las fechas o las horas del día (es un auténtico misterio comprender cómo manejaban la agenda).

Polybius more than 150 years earlier

The history of art is about how we look. It is not only about the men and women who – with their paints and pencils, their clays and chisels – created the images that fill our world, from cheap trinkets to 'priceless masterpieces'. It is even more about the generations of humankind who have used, interpreted, argued over and given meaning to those images.

The more power flaunts itself in your face, the more it risks undermining its claims to be taken seriously. Ancient viewers were not all naïve consumers of any message that was thrown at them. Even if some would have looked on these statues in awe and wonderment, it is a fair guess that others would have walked by and laughed, or even spat. In the end, images of power are only as powerful as those who view them allow them to be.

I no longer think, as I once naively did, that we have much to learn directly from the Romans – or, for that matter, from the ancient Greeks, or from any other ancient civilisation.

London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books or the Times Literary Supplement

Denn bei historischer Forschung geht es doch gerade darum, Fremdartigkeit zu erhalten.

Past and to come seem best things present worst.

Fairness has its place but not in the big things.

Don't get your drawers in a twist,' was one of her favourite phrases, 'or you'll find yourself bum-bare in the market-place . . . .

How does a mother tell her child that the memories he holds of his father are incorrect, that the truth does not even remotely resemble the memory? How does she tell him about the gaping holes in the recall that make it all a sham?

And when you look at him again, it's not the speck of drool on his pillow you see or the way his belly hangs over his pants a lot more than it used to. What you see, deep down, is the love, and the memories, and the hope. That's what makes everything worthwhile.

Lily's room transformed into a treasure chest told from a child's perspective; minute details unearthed, bits and scraps of memory whose retelling left poignant longings, soft-spoken, reverent whispers, exposing more about the private life of Charles Blacksworth and his family than any detective ever could.

Be happy with the life you got, not the one you didn't get.

It's life, Alice. We can either choose to live it, or lose it. Grant has years ahead, but he's got to let go of his bitterness.

Life was filled with so many twists and turns, like the sides of a prism, giving off light; what seemed wrong before seemed almost right when viewed from a different angle.

Gardeners, I think, dream bigger dreams than emperors.

If I was not really at home with everyone, neither was I a stranger to anyone, and if all my acquaintances were slightly skewed, well then, so was I.

That was the thing about signs, they were open for interpretation. Meaning was in the eye of the beholder.

The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe.

My sisters and I were fortunate to travel through Asia and Europe at very young ages. We confronted extraordinary beauty in Athens and unspeakable poverty in India.

Where do shadows fall when there is only light.

There are no frigid women, only clumsy men.

Nobody will ever win the battle of the sexes. Theres too much fraternizing with the enemy.