Quotes About Perspective

Los momentos felices pueden provocar dolor si se les da tiempo.

The sky doesn't start above us. There is no starting point for sky. We live in the sky.

on questioning why she looked so sad, she would remark, 'My life has been full of terrible misfortunes, most of which never happened.' 'That's Montaigne, isn't it?' And she would give the tiniest nod. 'I quote others only in order the better to express myself,' she'd say, which was itself, I sensed, another quote.

Because life is frightening, and it is frightening for a reason, and the reason is that it doesn't matter which branch of a life we get to live, we are always the same rotten tree.

We need to find out what is good for us, and leave the rest. We don't need another world. Everything we need is here, if we give up thinking we need everything. Invisible sharks One frustration with anxiety is that it is often hard to find a reason behind it.

Remember, looking at bad news doesn't mean good news isn't happening. It's happening everywhere. It's happening right now. Around the world. In hospitals, at weddings, in schools and offices and maternity wards, at airport arrival gates, in bedrooms, in inboxes, out in the street, in the kind smile of a stranger. A billion unseen wonders of everyday life.

Who knows? Every second of every day we are entering a new universe. And we spend so much time wishing our lives were different, comparing ourselves to other people and to other versions of ourselves, when really most lives contain degrees of good and degrees of bad.

When we feel or experience terrible things, it is useful to remember that nothing lasts. Perspective shifts. We become different versions of ourselves. The hardest question I have ever been asked is: "How do I stay alive for other people if I have no one?" The answer is that you stay alive for other versions of you. For the people you will meet, yes, sure, but also the people you will be.

I mean, it would have made things a lot easier if we understood there was no way of living that can immunize you against sadness. And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness. You can't have one without the other. Of course, they come in different degrees and quantities. But there is no life where you can be in a state of sheer happiness forever. And imagining there is just breeds more unhappiness in the life you're in.

I traveled with my work. I went to Paris, Boston, Rome, São Paolo, Berlin, Madrid, Tokyo. I wanted to fill my mind with human faces, in order to forget Isobel's. But I achieved the opposite effect. By studying the entire human species, I felt more toward her specifically. By thinking of the cloud, I thirsted for the raindrop.

She stepped outside, wondering whether a life could really be judged from just a few minutes after midnight on a Tuesday. Or maybe that was all you needed.

The best of life exists beyond the things we are encouraged to crave.

He didn't even seem bothered. To seem grateful in any way for the universe he was in. the universe she had felt so guilty for not allowing to happen.

but people only see the truth if it is close enough to their reality

History is people. Everyone loves history.' Daphne looks at me doubtfully, her face retreating into her neck as her eyebrows rise. 'Are you sure about that?' I offer a small nod. 'It's just making them realise that everything they say and do and see is only what they say and do and see because of what has gone before. Because of Shakespeare. Because of every human who ever lived.

To enjoy life, we might have to stop thinking about what we will never be able to do, and start to think of how to enjoy the world within our boundaries. To live on a human scale. To focus on the few things we can do, rather than the millions of things we can't

Let's just understand this. If we are tired or hungry or hungover, we are likely to be in a bad mood. That bad mood is therefore not really us. To believe in the things we feel at that point is wrong, because those feelings would disappear with food or sleep.

No infravalores nunca la gran importancia de las pequeñas cosas". -La Biblioteca de la Medianoche-

People didn't feel the enormity of the world or their own smallness within it. When I first travelled around the globe, it took over a year, on a boat full of men, who were lucky if they made it. Now, the world is just there. All of it. In an hour I will be on a flight to Sydney, and by lunchtime I will have arrived. It makes me feel claustrophobic, as if the world is literally shrinking, like a balloon losing air.

When things are taken from us, the stuff that remains has more value. It rises not only in visibility but also intensity. What we lose in breadth we gain in depth.

The one thing depression has told you is that a day can be a long and intense stretch of time.

we might have to stop thinking about what we will never be able to read and watch and say and do, and start to think of how to enjoy the world within our boundaries.

Travel makes one modest" said Gustave Flaubert. "You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world." Such a perspective can be liberating. Especially when you have an illness that may on one hand lower self-esteem but on the other intensifies the trivial.

You don't need the world to understand you. It's fine. Some people will never really understand things they haven't experienced. Some will. Be grateful.