Quotes About Perspective

Per goderci la vita forse dovremmo smettere di pensare a quello che non riusciremo mai a leggere, guardare, dire e fare, e iniziare a pensare a come goderci il mondo all'interno dei nostri limiti. A come vivere in una dimensione umana.

Every second of every day we are entering into 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.

But the point is: history is everywhere. It's about making people realise that. It makes you understand a place.

I don't know for sure that the words I write were the words that were actually spoken. They probably weren't. But this is how I remember these things, and all we can ever be is faithful to our memories of reality, rather than the reality itself, which is something closely related but never precisely the same thing.

You don't have to understand life. You just have to live it.

Depression is also . . . Smaller than you. Always, it is smaller than you, even when it feels vast. It operates within you, you do not operate within it. It may be a dark cloud passing across the sky, but—if that is the metaphor—you are the sky. You were there before it. And the cloud can't exist without the sky, but the sky can exist without the cloud.

I mean, it would have made things a lot easier if we understood 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.

how life sometimes simply gave you a whole new perspective by waiting around long enough for you to see it.

There was no way of living that could immunize you against sadness. And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness.

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

Hugo shrugged. 'If I was religious, I'd say it was God. And as God is probably someone we can't see or comprehend then He – or She – or whichever pronoun God is

When you stay too long in a place, you forget just how big an expanse the world is. You get no sense of the length of those longitudes and latitudes. Just as, she supposed, it is hard to have a sense of the vastness inside any one person.

Every book written is the product of a human mind in a particular state. Add all the books together and you get the end sum of humanity.

it would have made things a lot easier if we understood 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.

Understand, for instance, that having a sad thought, even having a continual succession of sad thoughts, is not the same as being a sad person. You can walk through a storm and feel the wind but you know you are not the wind.

It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.

Doing one thing differently is often the same as doing everything differently. Actions can't be reversed in a lifetime, however much we try...

and all we can ever be is faithful to our memories of reality, rather than the reality itself, which is something closely related but never precisely the same thing.

You don't become a good person by believing you are a bad one.

When you look up at the sky, on a clear night, and see thousands of stars and planets, realise that very little is happening on most of them. The important stuff is further away.

Depressie is ook kleiner dan jij. Zij is altijd kleiner dan jij, zelfs al lijkt ze onmetelijk. Ze zit binnen in jou, niet andersom. Als een donkere wolk die overtrekt, maar - als dat de metafoor is- dan ben jij de lucht. Jij was er eerder. En een luchtloze wolk bestaat niet, maar een wolkeloze lucht wel.

I have bemoaned people who say they feel old, but I now realize it is perfectly possible for anyone to feel old. All they need to do is become a teacher.

I mean, it would have made things a lot easier if we understood there was no way of living that can immunise you against sadness. And that sadness is intrinsically part of the fabric of happiness.

I wanted to be dead. No. That's not quite right. I didn't want to be dead, I just didn't want to be alive. Death was something that scared me. And death only happens to people who have been living. There were infinitely more people who had never been alive. I wanted to be one of those people. That old classic wish. To never have been born. To have been one of the three hundred million sperm that hadn't made it.