Quotes About Perspective

Men are wrong to think that the blind cannot see. The truth is that they see, but differently. I would even say that they see something other.

Every tragedy is unique, just as every human is unique. When a person loses someone dear to her, who am I to say that my tragedy was greater? I have no right. For that person, her tragedy is the greatest in the world—and she is right in thinking so.

I'm serious, she said. I read your articles. They are written by a man who has come to the end of his life, to the end of his hopes. That is a sign of youth, I answered. The young today don't believe that someday they'll be old: they are convinced they'll die young. Old men are the real youngsters of our generation. They at least can brag about having had what we do not have: a slice of life called youth.

When you peered into the windows of someone else's life, you could only guess what was going on.

And the worst thing about being young is not being able to appreciate that you're young because you aren't old enough to know any better.

Women clearly felt things more deeply: they read sub-text where men saw only white space.

Some people don't like being happy. They're much more comfortable when they have a problem.

What I think is that every family is happy in their own fashion, and every family is unhappy in their own fashion. Every family is both functional and dysfunctional.

When we become sorry for ourselves we make our misfortunes harder to bear, because we lose courage and can't think without bias.

One polite fellow asked her where she was from. She told him from New York State. Why, he asked, do New Yorkers always say State? Why, because, she answered,—and her eyes were big with surprise,—no one would want to say they were from New York City.

Insanity used to be a stranger that lived on the other side of the world. Now it's moved next door. It's only a matter of time until it becomes shipmate, lover, self.

Travel is life-changing. That's the promise made by a thousand websites and magazines, by philosophers and writers down the ages. Mark Twain said it was fatal to prejudice, and Thomas Jefferson said it made you wise. Anais Nin observed that we travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls. It's all true. Self-transformation is what I sought and what I found.

It was the inverse of an island in the sea.

The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.

George Macdonald said, 'If you knew what God knows about death you would clap your listless hands', but instead I find old people in North America just buying this whole youth obsession. I think growing older is a wonderful privilege. I want to learn to glorify God in every stage of my life.

Let not him who accepts light in an instant despise him who gropes months in shadows.

If you believe in a God who controls the big things, you have to believe in a God who controls the little things. It is we, of course, to whom things look "little" or "big.

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should enjoy things made for us to enjoy. What is not at all fitting or proper is that we should set our hearts on them. Temporal things must be treated as temporal things - received, given thanks for, offered back, but enjoyed. They must not be treated like eternal things.

The secret is Christ in me, not in a different set of circumstances.

Nothing has done more damage to the Christian view of life than the hideous notion that those who are truly spiritual have lost all interest in the world and its beauties.

Señor Jaime," said little Moquetin, a bright-eyed imp of six, "why is it that your face is always red?" Jim countered, "Why is it that your face is always brown?" "Because it is much prettier that way," was the unexpected reply.

A few clear pronouncements on one side and a few honest questions on the other had, in a matter of minutes, shown me that life was not going to be as simple, ever again, as I had thought.

If in fact I do believe these great things we say and sing together, then those little things (and what is not little by comparison?)

Men like mystery. They don't want to be told everything woman are thinking.