Quotes About Perception

Did your childhood circumstances teach you to believe, "Nobody loves me"? Then you are sure to be lonely. Even when you bring a friend or relationship into your life, it will be short-lived.

All the events you have experienced in your lifetime up to this moment have been created by your thoughts and beliefs you have held in the past. They were created by the thoughts and words you used yesterday, last week, last month, last year, 10, 20, 30, 40, or more years ago, depending on how old you are.

What we call reality is an agreement that people have arrived at to make life more livable.

We are a mirror of our times.

I was tired of seeing the Graces always depicted as beautiful young things. I think wisdom comes with age and life and pain. And knowing what matters.

Myrna could spend happy hours browsing bookcases. She felt if she could just get a good look at a person's bookcase and their grocery cart, she'd pretty much know who they were.

Aid workers, when handing out food to starving people, quickly learn that the people fighting for it at the front are the people who need it least. It's the people sitting quietly at the back, too weak to fight, who need it the most. And so too with tragedy.

After spending most of her life scanning the horizon for slights and threats, genuine and imagined, she knew the real threat to her happiness came not from the dot in the distance, but from looking for it. Expecting it. Waiting for it. And in some cases, creating it. Her father had jokingly accused her of living in the wreckage of her future. Until one day she'd looked deep into his eyes and saw he wasn't joking. He was warning her.

It's a shame that creativity and sloth look exactly the same.

What people mistook for safety was in fact captivity.

Don't believe everything you think," said Gamache, before releasing the hand and opening the door. "Pema Chödrön. A Buddhist nun.

So much more comforting to see bad in others; gives us all sorts of excuses for our own bad behavior. But good? No, only really remarkable people see the good in others.

But correct and right were two different things. As were facts and truth.

Almost invariably people expected that if you were a good person you shouldn't meet a bad end, that only the deserving are killed and certainly only the deserving are murdered. However well hidden and subtle, there was a sense that a murdered person had somehow asked for it. That's why the shock when someone they knew to be kind and good was a victim. There was a feeling that surely there had been a mistake.

Light is every bit as challenging as dark. We can discover a great deal about ourselves by looking at beauty.

Not a spoon clinked against a mug, not a creamer was popped, peeled and opened, not a breath. It was as though something else had joined them then. As though silence had taken a seat.

Just because it's the truth doesn't make it less insulting.

the pain of neuralgia…she knew what they thought. That she was cold. Couldn't feel. But in fact she felt too much. Too deeply.

Funny how imperfections on the outside mean something splendid beneath.

But sometimes that comfort was an illusion. Masquerading as protecting, while actually imprisoning.

We choose our thoughts. We choose our perceptions. We choose our attitudes

She felt if she could just get a good look at a person's bookcase and their grocery cart, she'd pretty much know who they were.

All the mistakes I've made have been because I've assumed something and then acted as though it was fact. Very dangerous, Agent Lemieux. Believe me. I wonder if you haven't already leaped to a false conclusion?

In the kitchen Gamache's German shepherd, Henri, sat up in his bed and cocked his head. He had huge oversized ears which made Gamache think he wasn't purebred but a cross between a shepherd and a satellite dish.