Quotes About Perspective

I'm not religious. But I grew up religious in the Bible Belt.

The tourists who come to visit may be disappointed if they can't see the mountain clearly, but it's all the same to the mountain--seen or unseen, in sun or clouds, broiling or frigid, it just sits, being itself.

It means that how we relate to all our moments, all our experiences, is a choice.

But meditation is different. From the perspective of meditation, every state is a special state, every moment a special moment.

By grounding yourself in mindfulness early in the morning, you are reminding yourself that things are always changing, that good and bad things come and go, and that it is possible to embody a perspective of constancy, wisdom, and inner peace as you face any conditions that present themselves.

We imagine that one or two big things will have a profound effect [on our happiness]. But it looks like happiness is the sum of hundreds of small things….The small stuff matters.

Remember when you see the stars that you are looking back in time millions of years. The past is present now and here.

Too often our unexamined and deluded story-lines become self-fulfilling prophecies. We can always marshal any evidence we want in support of a particular view, and then believe it even if it is patently not true. This is delusion.

I thought climbing the Devil's Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams.

It seems more than a little patronizing for Westerners to lament the loss of the good old days when life in the Khumbu was so much simpler and more picturesque. Most of the people who live in this rugged country seem to have no desire to be severed from the modern world or the untidy flow of human progress. The last thing Sherpas want is to be preserved as specimens in an anthropological museum.

One man's faith is another man's delusion. . . .

Achieving the summit of a mountain was tangible, immutable, concrete. The incumbent hazards lent the activity a seriousness of purpose that was sorely missing from the rest of my life. I thrilled in the fresh perspective that came from the tipping the ordinary plane of existence on end.

If you get killed," she argued with a mix of despair and anger, "it's not just you who'll pay the price. I'll have to pay, too, you know, for the rest of my life. Doesn't that matter to you?

He offered a crystal-clear notion of right and wrong, an unambiguous definition of good and evil. And although his perspective was absolutist and unyielding, it presented a kinder, gentler alternative to Calvinism, which had been the ecclesiastical status quo in the early years of the American republic.

There are no true answers, just shades of grey, coincidence, and circumstance.

But at times I wondered if I had not come a long way only to find that what I really sought was something I had left behind. Thomas F. Hornbein

One of the differences between us was that Marc wanted very badly to climb the Eiger, while I wanted very badly only to have climbed the Eiger. Marc, understand, is at that age when the pituitary secretes an overabundance of those hormones that mask the subtler emotions, such as fear. He tends to confuse things like life-or-death climbing with fun.

I came to understand that I had baffled and infuriated my father at least as much as he had baffled and infuriated me.

And although his perspective was absolutist and unyielding, it presented a kinder, gentler alternative to Calvinism, which had been the ecclesiastical status quo in the early years of the American republic.

Whether a belief is considered to be a delusion or not depends partly upon the intensity with which it is defended, and partly upon the numbers of people subscribing to it.* ANTHONY STORR, FEET OF CLAY

I wondered if I had not come a long way only to find that what I really sought was something I had left behind.

For a few minutes the roof of the bus remains visible among the stunted trees, a tiny white gleam in a wild green sea, growing smaller and smaller, and then it's gone.

Pat was a serious listener. He was one of the first people who really challenged my ideas: 'Do you really believe that? Why? Don't accept everything you read. You should question it all, take what makes sense, and throw away the rest.' He was constantly asking, 'Did you ever consider this? What about that?' He changed the way I thought. (quoting Russell Baer, Army Ranger.)

If someone like Pete Schoening was the equivalent of a major-league baseball star, my fellow clients and I were like a ragtag collection of pretty decent small-town softball players who'd bribed their way into the World Series.