Quotes About Perspective

He remembered a speaker at a seminar who had put five large stones in a glass. Those were the important things in life, the speaker said and went on to demonstrate how the small stones, or less important things, could easily be put in and shaken down among the cracks. However, if the small stones were put in first, it was impossible to add the large stones.

No two persons every read the same book.—Edmund Wilson "Nor does any one person ever reread the same book!

She was thinking about the future too, though most times it appeared in her mind as a complete blank. 'That's the way the future should appear,' Olivia once said. 'We're asked not to fret about the future and to take no thought for tomorrow. We must try to live in the present or we shall miss it entirely.' Living in the present was exactly what she'd been trying to do.

I've found that if we keep our eyes on Christians, we can be disappointed in a major way. The important thing is to keep our eyes on Christ….

Someone had said that in Ireland there's no such thing as bad weather—only the wrong clothes.

Sometimes you have to gag on fancy before you can appreciate plain, th' way I see it.

Wilderness is good, it gives me perspective. I get small again, the ego deflates.

In Ireland there's no such thing as bad weather ~~~ only the wrong clothes.

Sometimes you have to gag on fancy before you can appreciate plain, th' way I see it. For too many years, I ate fancy, I dressed fancy, I talked fancy. A while back, I decided to start talkin' th' way I was raised t' talk, and for th' first time in forty years, I can understand what I'm sayin'.

I worried too much about what others thought—I can tell you it's a tragic waste of time and energy and pokes God in the eye.

A journey need not be long, in terms of time, to turn everything upside down. A day or two in a strange place can change your life

Av alle blendverk livet truer på oss, er dette det farligste; å tro at det bare er én virkelighet og at den er forståelig.

She couldn't see the mathematical beauty in a leaf, the miracle in a seed that becomes a seedling, the absolute wonder that is the earth and the sea and the sky. He would try to talk to her of these things and receive only dismissive comments in reply. He learned from her to keep his mouth shut.

T]he mechanics of life should never be allowed to interfere with living.

Left wing...Right wing...it's so limited; why doesn't it ever occur to any of them that what one is really longing for is the wishbone?

Not that he disliked school; but it had to be regarded, he found, as another life, to be approached only by way of the Styx. You died on the station platform, were reborn, not without pangs, in the train, and emerged at the other end a different person, with a different language, a different outlook, and a different scale of values.

Hansi, after a day or two's distant politeness, had taken her by the hand and led her to a row of curiously-shaped pebbles in a secret hiding-place between the wood-stacks. "Meine Sammlung," he said briefly. "My election," echoed Toby's voice in her memory. Her heart turned over: how could there be this ridiculous talk of war, when little boys in all countries collected stones, dodged cleaning their teeth, and hated cauliflower?

Mrs. Miniver put the last sheet back on top of the others and clipped them all together again. No, she could not possibly throw them away: they contained too much of her life. Besides, however clear one's memories seemed to be, it did one no harm to polish them up from time to time. One is what one remembers: no more, no less.

The situation is desperate," runs an old Viennese saying, "but not serious.

We tend to listen to Mozart with ears trained by Beethoven, and that's not the best way to listen to Mozart.

Ik houd me maar aan de regel van de oude koning, die heeft gezegd dat één ontstoken vuurpijl meer licht verspreidt dan honderd kisten vuurwerk op zolder.

Ze voelden zich goden op de Olympus, die neerzagen op het ijverige, maar dom aandoende gewriemel van de mieren onder zich [...] Weg Olympus. Ze tuimelden naar beneden volgens een nieuwe wet van Newton, die zegt dat zelfvertrouwen gelijk is aan verbeelding gedeeld door werkelijkheid.

If we can't laugh at ourselves, who can we laugh at?" I stared at her. "Other people?

Did you ever think you had all the answers when you were in the thick of something, but then when you take a step back, you realize you were so busy getting things done that you never stopped to ask yourself if it's what you really want to do?