Quotes About Perception

How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.

Better remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it the tree is the real thing.

Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves.

What kills the skunk is the publicity it gives itself.

There are no bad pictures; that's just how your face looks sometimes.

Those who look for the bad in people will surely find it.

Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is and the tree is the real thing.

Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.

What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.

I joke, but I only half joke, that if you come to one of our hospitals missing a limb, no one will believe you till they get a CAT scan, MRI or orthopedic consult.

I'd become aware of human complexity--that's a kinder word than "deceit.

Life is full of signs. The trick is to know how to read them. Ghosh called this heuristics, a method for solving a problem for which no formula exists.

To see the miraculous in the ordinary is a more precious gift than prophecy.

just as she kept her thoughts to herself, I was learning to do the same. This was what growing up was about: HIDE the corpse, DON'T bare your heart, DO make assumptions about the motives of others.

This was what growing up was about: hide the corpse, don't bare your heart, do make assumptions about the motives of others. They're certainly doing all these things to you.

Love so strong, without ebb and flow or crests and troughs, indeed lacking any sort of motion so that it had become invisible to him these seven years, part of the order of things outside his head which he had taken for granted.

The crookedness of the serpent is still straight enough to slide through the snake hole.

He invited me to a world that wasn't secret, but it was well hidden. You needed a guide. You had to know what to look for, but also how to look. You had to exert yourself to see this world." p 224

You can't walk across a lake just because you change its name to "land." Labels matter.

The reader, knowing nothing about the 'dark continent,' filled in the blanks. Pictured Stone in a tent, kerosene lamp held up by a Hottentot providing the only light, elephants stampeding outside while the good doctor recited Cicero and excised part of himself as blithely as if he were cutting for stone on the body of another.

OUr teachers at LT&C had their A levels and the odd teaching certificate. It is astonishing how a black crepe robe worn over a coat or blouse gives a Cockney punter or a Covent Garden flower girl the gravitas of an Oxford don. Accent be damned in Africa, as long as it's foreign and you have the right skin colour.