Quotes About Perception

Firestone came to the conclusion that "appraisals and evaluations from others, when they validate a person's distorted view of himself, tend to arouse an obsessive thought process." Since we are already tortured by our own critical thoughts and self-attacks, we feel very threatened whenever others attack us the same way.

it is difficult to discern where "you" end and the remainder of the world begins.

There's an ingrained distrust in our society of highly intelligent, highly trained, highly competent persons. One need only look at the last presidential election for proof of that.

We're aware of the scale of the planet, so we don't accept that our own circumscribed horizons constitute reality. Much more real is what's relayed to us by the TV.

a sneaking feeling that people are wrong when they say human beings can't keep track of the world any more, we have to leave it up to the machines.

A little thing, lasting only a second, and the odds were a thousand to one that I might have had my eyes on my cards at the time and missed it. But I didn't, and, in a flash, the air seemed to clear. Some shadow lifted from my brain, and I was looking at the three men with full and absolute recognition.

We are all, even the best of us, egotists and self-deceivers, and without a little comfortable make-believe to clothe us we should freeze in the outer winds.

We've exalted our womenfolk into little tin gods, and at the same time left them out of the real business of life.

You will never hear a bird cry or a sheep bleat or a weasel scream.

Tommy sniffed the spring breeze like a supercilious stag.

Why does wealth make dull people so much duller?

A child's laughter is the greatest sound in the world. A child's laughter in a cornfield is the creepiest sound in the world. --

Times slows when your life is in danger. Every second takes a minute to pass, and even the smallest event gets chiseled into memory. (95)

They now see with Heaven's eyes the schemes, traps, enticements, and entertainments of the world in a new way. So

They hold on to their beliefs, even though all other men oppose them. But I'm for religion that is tolerant of the times and not a threat to my safety. They are for Religion when he dresses in rags and is considered contemptible. But I am for him when he walks in his silver slippers, in the sunshine, and with applause." Mr.

Now I was, as they said, become godly; now I was become a right honest man.  But oh! when I understood these were their words and opinions of me, it pleased me mighty well.  For, though as yet I was nothing but a poor painted hypocrite, yet, I loved to be talked of as one that was truly godly. 

saw there the

I want to tell this right. I was thirty-eight years old. I had spent my entire adult life reading meanings into other people's stories, finding the figure in the carpet, the order in things. God in the details and no place else.

She was Mattie Tucker now, mother of three and a good forty pounds heavier, casting that burning eye over them all, reaching way back for a southern pleasantry that was more like a Halloween apple with a razor blade in it: 'Well, don't y'all make just the perfect family of four?

The burden of being intelligent and shy and young is that you will always know, cannot not know; have grown up in a fiction of perpetual responsibility, believing that whatever cracks in life you find must be your cracks, that anything at all can be your fault.

It's amazing how difficult it is for a man to understand something if he's paid a small fortune not to understand it.

The sum of all your thoughts comprises your overall attitude.

When you realize that people treat you according to how they see themselves rather than how you really are, you are less likely to be affected by their behavior.

Where success is concerned, people are not measured in inches, or pounds, or college degrees, or family background; they are measured by the size of their thinking.