652 Perspective Quotes

A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things but cannot receive great ones.

That's a bit like asking a man crawling across the Sahara whether he would prefer Perrier or Malvern water.

Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy.

Providence conceals itself in the details of human affairs, but becomes unveiled in the generalities of history.

Taking a year off and going to school was the best thing I could have done after The Princess Diaries. It taught me that I don't need Hollywood or a job to make me happy.

Strangely enough, this is the past that somebody in the future is longing to go back to.

The majority is never right, unless it includes me.

Dying is a part of living, but only a very small part.

Nothing really matters except a few things that really don't matter very much.

Things are gradually falling into place on top of me.

A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.

If you don't win, it's not a great tragedy - the worst that happens is that you lose a game.

Know the difference between a catastrophe and an inconvenience. - To realize that it's just an inconvenience, that it is not a catastrophe, but just an unpleasantness, is part of coming into your own, part of waking up.

Tragedy is a close-up; comedy, a long shot.

Comedy is tragedy plus time.

I bet you think an egg is something you casually order for breakfast when you can't think of anything else. Well, so did I once, but that was before the egg and I.

Humans are divided between those who can still look through the eyes of youth and those who cannot. Though it causes me frequent pain, I find it very easy to place myself in the shoes of almost any boy, and can conjure my own youth with an ease that is troublesome.

The people who send us fan mail written in blood say the nicest things, so it doesn't freak us out too much.

The ability to perceive or think differently is more important than the knowledge gained.

It sometimes takes a foreigner to come and see a place and paint it. I remember someone saying they had never really noticed the palm trees here until I painted them.

There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.

The psychological profiling [of a programmer] is mostly the ability to shift levels of abstraction, from low level to high level. To see something in the small and to see something in the large.

But romantic vision can also lead one away from certain very hard, ugly truths about life that are important to know.

That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.

When I get sick of what men do, I have only to walk a few steps in another direction to see what spiders do. Or what the weather does. This sustains me very well indeed.

In a sense, one can never read the book that the author originally wrote, and one can never read the same book twice.

Tomorrow is a satire on today, And shows its weakness.

A pessimist is a man who has been compelled to live with an optimist.

I would rather be able to appreciate things I can not have than to have things I am not able to appreciate.

Life is just one damned thing after another.

Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.

Old age equalizes - we are aware that what is happening to us has happened to untold numbers from the beginning of time. When we are young we act as if we were the first young people in the world.

He said it was her fault. She said it wasn't at all. But the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Anybody can they say they are being 'spiritual' - and they are, because everybody has some type and level of concern. Let us therefore see their actual conception, in thought and action, and see how many perspectives it is in fact concerned with, and how many perspectives it actually takes into account, and how many perspectives it attempts to integrate, and thus let us see how deep and how wide runs that bodhisattva vow to refuse rest until all perspectives whatsoever are liberated into their own primordial nature.

If you are talking to me about your new car, you are the first person, I am the second person, and the car is the third person. These pronouns actually represent three perspectives that human beings can take when they talk about the world or attempt to know the world... The fascinating part is that these three perspectives might actually give rise to art, morals, and science. Or the Beautiful, the Good, and the True: the Beauty that is in the eye (or the 'I') of the beholder; the Good or moral actions that can exist between you and me as a 'we'; and the objective Truth about third-person objects (or 'its') that you and I might discover: hence, art ('I'), morals ('we'), and science ('it').

'What's this? Am I falling? My legs are giving way under me,' he thought, and fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle of the French soldiers with the artilleryman was ending, and eager to know whether the red-haired gunner artilleryman was killed or not, whether the cannons had been taken or saved. But he saw nothing of all that. Above him there was nothing but the sky - the lofty sky, not clear, but still immeasurably lofty, with gray clouds creeping quietly over it.

I know well enough, from my own experience, the historical ebb and flow. They are governed by their own laws. Mere impatience will not expedite their change. I have grown accustomed to viewing the historical perspective not from the stand point of my personal fate. To understand the causal sequence of events and to find somewhere in the sequence one's own place - that is the first duty of a revolutionary. And at the same time, it is the greatest personal satisfaction possible for a man who does not limit his tasks to the present day.

I suppose every child has a world of his own - and every man, too, for the matter of that. I wonder if that's the cause for all the misunderstanding there is in Life?

'Short-term inequality remains a problem,' writes [right-wing scholar Dinesh] D'Souza... 'but is it a problem we can live with?' ...After searching his soul for a few seconds, he apparently concludes that we can live with it. Of course, inequality always feels like less of a problem to those who don't live in corrugated shacks, which is why sales of D'Souza's book have probably been brisker in Manhattan than in, say, Addis Ababa or Khartoum.

Most days I wake up thinking I'm the luckiest bastard alive.

Sometimes I have a sense of what I'm seeing being a small fraction of what's there. Not always there, but probably more often than I realize. Something will come up, and I'll realize I'm thinking about the world a little differently than my friends.

East is west, up is down, and being falsely arrested for getting your C.O.'s throat cut is a simplification. I must be on Barrayar.

Suave magni maro turbantibus aequora ventis e terra magnum alterius spectare laborem; non quia vexari quemquamst jucunda voluptas, sed quibus ipse malis careas quia cernere suave est.

An Elephant is powerless to think in terms of an ant, in spite of the best intentions.

Every case can be seen in seven different points of view. All of which are correct by themselves, but not correct at the same time, in the same circumstances.

One who has faith reads in them the merciful providence of God.

I have a vague expectation of some crisis, - I know not what. But it has long seemed, that, in the year 1850, I should stand on a plateau in the ascent of life, where I should be allowed to pause for a while, and take more clear and commanding views than ever before. Yet my life proceeds as regularly as the fates of a Greek tragedy, and I can but accept the pages as they turn.

Tomorrow is the yesterday of two days from now.

'My cup is half full, but his is empty.' - Hole in the Bucket.

Calm down dear, it's a commercial.

I'm not sure it's entirely a good thing... I've always loved the gutter.

Women have not had much to do with making wars, though some wars in ancient times have been blamed on them; and as men have written the histories we have never heard the woman's side of the story. I have always wanted to hear from Helen of Troy.

It's hard to imagine any American reading this book and not seeing his country in a new, and deeply troubling, light. --Jonathan Freedland, June 25, 2006 [233]

You have accounted yourselves happy on being environed with a great ditch from all the world beside.

'I'm accusing you of violating the laws of nature,' he said, irritated at my failure to respond. 'Nature's virtue is intact,' I reassured him. 'I just know some different laws.'

Sometimes I thought I was the only one who understood, even though half the time I didn't know what it was that I was understanding. I withdrew and watched, and because I didn't have any personal ego on the line... I could see more clearly than any of them.

Will you shut up about your envy of [them]? For one day, for one hour, for one minute will you just stop and give a thought to reality?

It made me wonder if perhaps our ancestors' crimes were not in fact far more terrible than they claimed. After all, the only histories we possessed told their version of what happened, and in their accounts they were completely innocent. But aren't all monstrous criminals innocent in their own eyes? Don't all their victims somehow deserve to die, in their imagination at least?

I might have been on the outside looking in; at the bottom looking up. Now I'm on the outside, all right, but above, looking down. I don't need anything these people have to offer. What I need, they don't even care about. Some of them probably even have it, and are wasting it, losing it.

This is my world! within these narrow walls, I own a princely service.

I get all the news I need from the weather report.

In your life, you can talk about it. Oh in your life, you can live without. Can live without. ~ 'Come Back Home'

Carl's all right. It's just like EastEnders really. He's still my kid.

All the thoughts of a turtle are turtles, and of rabbits, rabbits.

One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty another's ugliness; one man's wisdom another's folly.

Do you see that kitten chasing so prettily her own tail? If you could look with her eyes, you might see her surrounded with hundreds of figures performing complex dramas, with tragic and comic issues, long conversations, many characters, many ups and downs of fate, - and meantime it is only puss and her tail. How long before our masquerade will end its noise of tambourines, laughter, and shouting, and we shall find it was a solitary performance?

It is an amiable illusion, which the shape of our planet prompts, that every man is at the top of the world.

The new masters paint a subject as they please, And Veronese is prosecuted by the Inquisition For the dogs playing at the feet of Christ, The earth is a planet among galaxies. Later Christ disappears, the dogs disappear: in abstract Understanding, without adoration, the last master puts Colors on canvas, a picture of the universe In which a bright spot somewhere in the corner Is the small radioactive planet men called Earth.

The writer does not get from his work as he writes and reads it the same aesthetic shock that the reader does; and since the writer is so accustomed to reading other stories, and having them produce a decided effect upon him, he is disquieted at not being equally affected by his own.

For a' that, and a' that An' twice as muckle 's a' that, I've lost but ane, I've twa behin', I've wife eneugh for a' that.

I did not set out to be a writer. It's something that came to me after I was 50 years of age. And I already had the life that I wanted and the wife I wanted and at that age I was fairly clear about what was important. The success that my writing is enjoying is like finding out your rich uncle has left you a train full of hammers. I mean, how many hammers can you use? It's chocolate syrup. It's an extra. So I take it very lightly. And if I were to fall off the charts tomorrow, I've already had more fame than I deserve and more money than I've ever had in my life. The thought that I could finally pay off my Visa bill! That's rich.

The sense of not having the whole story that comes from living close up to traumatic events.

To Robinson Jeffers the earth was hopelessly prostrate.

When I started writing Imperium, I had a problem with my conscience, because if I wrote strictly from the point of view of this Polish experience, the book would be completely incomprehensible to the Western reader.

A woman who runs off with her lover does not abandon her husband; she rids him of an unfaithful wife.

In order to obtain the optimum view of what takes place in front of me, I should have to lower my eyes a little. But I lower my eyes no more. In a word, I only see what appears close beside me, what I best see I see ill.

I [Boswell] happened to say, it would be terrible if he should not find a speedy opportunity of returning to London, and be confined in so dull a place. JOHNSON: 'Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters. It would not be terrible, though I were to be detained some time here.'

One naturally regrets not being an expert or one of those insiders who thoroughly understand. It's hell to be an amateur. A little reflection calms your sorrow, however. The experts in their own little speedboat, the rest of us floating with the rest of mankind in a great barge - that is the picture.

I think if you take sexuality very seriously it becomes very oily.

While I was working on Downward Spiral, I was living in the house where Sharon Tate was killed. Then one day I met her sister. It was a random thing, just a brief encounter. And she said: 'Are you exploiting my sister's death by living in her house? 'For the first time, the whole thing kind of slapped me in the face. I said, 'No, it's just sort of my own interest in American folklore. I'm in this place where a weird part of history occurred. ' I guess it never really struck me before, but it did then. She lost her sister from a senseless, ignorant situation that I don't want to support. When she was talking to me, I realized for the first time, 'What if it was my sister?' I thought, 'Fuck Charlie Manson.' I went home and cried that night. It made me see there's another side to things, you know?

'This is my story of the India I know, with its biases, selections, omissions, distortions, all mine.... Every Indian must for ever carry with him, in his head and heart, his own history of India.' [16]

'How easily we Indians see the several sides to every question! That is what makes us such good bureaucrats, and such poor totalitarians. They say the new international organizations set up by the wonderfully optimistic (if oxymoronic) United Nations are full of highly successful Indian officials with quick, subtle minds and mellifluous tongues, for ever able to understand every global crisis from the point of view of each and every one of the contending parties. That is why they do so well, Ganapathi, in any situation that calls for an instinctive awareness of the subjectivity of truth, the relativity of judgement and the impossibility of action.' [16]

Were the happiness of the next world as closely apprehended as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live.

I have no idea when the Golden Age was, but as far as I'm concerned, wherever I am is the Golden Age!

I have to make it clear, however, that I haven't seen the whole film except for 20 minutes of the second part although I know the screenplay very well because Russians have a custom of making an extra copy for the author.

When I gave a lecture in Japan, I was asked not to mention the possible re-collapse of the universe, because it might affect the stock market. However, I can re-assure anyone who is nervous about their investments that it is a bit early to sell: even if the universe does come to an end, it won't be for at least twenty billion years. By that time, maybe the GATT trade agreement will have come into effect.

Phenomena unfold on their own appropriate scales of space and time and may be invisible in our myopic world of dimensions assessed by comparison with human height and times metered by human lifespans. So much of accumulating importance at earthly scales [:] is invisible by the measuring rod of a human life. So much that matters to particles in the microscopic world of molecules [:] either averages out to stability at our scale or simply stands below our limits of perception.

With the thermometer at 30 below zero and the wind behind him, a man walking on Main Street in Winnipeg knows which side of him is which.

Imagine how deep the sea would be if there weren't any sponges.

'Waiting is the worst part,' said Pismire. 'No it isn't,' said Owlglass, who wasn't even being trusted to hold a sword. 'I expect that having long sharp swords stuck in you is the worst part.'

From thousands of our undone widows One may derive some wit.

I showed you stars you never could see. It couldn't been that easy to forget about me.