Quotes About Perspective

When you stay too long in a place, you forget just how big and expanse the world is. You get no sense of the length of those longitudes and latitudes

Cuando te quedas demasiado tiempo en un mismo lugar, olvidas lo gigantesco que es el planeta. Pierdes las referencias y dejas de ser consciente de hasta dónde se extienden los paralelos y los meridianos. Del mismo modo, supuso, uno puede ignorar la vastedad interior de las personas

immunise 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 for ever. And imagining there is just breeds more unhappiness in the life you're in.

In the face of death, life seemed more attractive, and as life seemed more attractive

She stared at her own window. She thought of herself in her root life, hovering between life and death in her bedroom – equidistant, as it were. And, for the first time, Nora worried about herself as if she was actually someone else. Not just another version of her, but a different actual person. As though finally, through all the experiences of life she now had, she had become someone who pitied her former self. Not in self-pity, because she was a different self now.

Of course, travel isn't always a solution. Or even an option. But it certainly helps me, when I get the chance to go away. I think, more than anything, it helps give a sense of perspective. We might be stuck in our minds, but we aren't physically stuck. And unsticking ourselves from our physical location can help dislodge our unhappy mental state. Movement is the antidote to fixedness, after all. And it helps. Sometimes. Just sometimes

It's hard to predict, isn't it? The things that will make us happy.

So, you see? Sometimes regrets aren't based on fact at all. Sometimes regrets are just . . . A load of bullshit.

It is quite a revelation to discover that the place you wanted to escape to is the exact same place you escaped from. That the prison wasn't the place, but the perspective. (…) It's not what you look at; it's what you see.

she hadn't tried to end her life because she was miserable, but because she had managed to convince herself that there was no way out of her misery

That the prison wasn't the place, but the perspective.

People might be encouraged to feel inadequate, but they don't have to, as soon as they realise that the feeling is separate from the thing they are worried about

there was no way of living that can immunise 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 for ever. And imagining there is just breeds more unhappiness in the life you're in.

Don't envy things you wouldn't actually want. Don't absorb criticism from people you wouldn't go to for advice. Don't fear missing parties you would probably want to leave.

It was as though she had reached some state of acceptance about life – that if there was a bad experience, there wouldn't only be bad experiences.

Aunt Carlotta is a lonely woman. She's a lot older than me. She's really an old lady now. She's forty-two. Hardly anyone lives to be forty-two.

was as though she had reached some state of acceptance about life – that if there was a bad experience, there wouldn't only be bad experiences. She realised that she hadn't tried to end her life because she was miserable, but because she had managed to convince herself that there was no way out of her misery.

You gave up the universe for a life on the sofa?' 'I didn't realise that at the time.

is quite a revelation to discover that the place you wanted to escape to is the exact same place you escaped from. That the prison wasn't the place, but the perspective.

There is no life where you can be in a state of sheer happiness for ever. And imagining there is just breeds more unhappiness in the life you're in.

So, if and when they discover aliens they'd be really pretty unsettled because then we'd have to know, once and for all, that there is nothing really unique or special about us at all.

if books had to replicate our exact experience of the world to be useful, the only books worth reading would be written by ourselves.

Sometimes regrets are just....a load of bullshit

You're overthinking it. I have anxiety. I have no other type of thinking available.