Best 2585 quotes in «perspective quotes» category

We put up a kind of spiritual firewall and make a conscious effort to shut out the headlines, because our (Bible) discussions are meant to be timeless.

We're not on the same page right now, but that's okay. Were still in the same story, and there's still so much more to be written. I won’t put down my pen if you won’t.

We’re so self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. “Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.” And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. I’m tired of this shit. I’m tired of f-ing Earth Day. I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me. The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles … hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages … And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are! We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam … The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ’cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?” Plastic… asshole.

We see only a part of the surface of things. The rest will be forever hidden from us, to be appreciated for its felt but unfathomed presence.

We sense the changes in stuff, not the stuff itself. it would be useless to have direct access to the "stuff" because in isolation it would mean absolutely nothing...much in the same way that a single water molecule doesn't tell us about whirlpools

We see people and things not as they are, but as we are.

We spread our sleeping bags on the snow and crawled inside. The vantage point was dizzying. It was impossible to tell whether the comet was above us or we were above the comet; we were all falling through space, missing the stars by inches.

We still thought that we were the only two people in the world who were interested in the right kind of things in the right kind of way. C.S. Lewis

...we think so much about the present and so little about eternity that we turn eternity into nothing and nothing into eternity.

We tend to teach mathematics as a long list of rules.You learn them in order and you have to obey them, because if you don't obey them you get a C-.This is not mathematics. Mathematics is the study if things that come out a certain way because there is no other way they could possibly be.

We've got a form of brainwashing going on in our country," Morrie sighed. "Do you know how they brainwash people? They repeat something over and over. And that's what we do in this country. Owning tings is good. More money is good. More property is good. More commercialism is good. More is good. More is good. We repeat it-and have it repeated to us-over and over until nobody bothers to even think otherwise. The average person is to fogged up by all this, he has no perspective on what's really important anymore.

We were sleeping on the same bed with our backs to each other trying to imagine a new life.

What a lovely bit of light to change an entire perspective of an experience. So powerful, so subtle and so pure in nature that I can’t argue it away.

What did I think was wrong? That made it sound as if nothing was reallywrong, I only thought it was wrong.

What do you mean, 'Angle of Repose?' she asked me when I dreamed we were talking about Grandmother's life, and I said it was the angle at which a man or woman finally lies down. I suppose it is; and yet ... I thought when I began, and still think, that there was another angle in all those years when she was growing old and older and very old, and Grandfather was matching her year for year, a separate line that did not intersect with hers. They were vertical people, they lived by pride, and it is only by the ocular illusion of perspective that they can be said to have met. But he had not been dead two months when she lay down and died too, and that may indicate that at that absolute vanishing point they did intersect. They had intersected for years, for more than he especially would ever admit.

​ Whatever we are given is supposed to be given away, not kept.

What happens to us are tiny matters compared to us response to any situation.

...what happens tomorrow is the future but what happened yesterday is already part of on-going history...

What if you treated each day like it was your last? What would you do differently? What would you be grateful for? What would be important to you? How mindful would you be? What would your interactions with others be like? How meaningful would your day be? How much depth would that add to your experience?

What is always needed in the appreciation of art, or life, is the larger perspective. Connections made, or at least attempted, where none existed before, the straining to encompass in one's glance at the varied world the common thread, the unifying theme through immense diversity, a fearlessness of growth, of search, of looking, that enlarges the private and the public world. And yet, in our particular society, it is the narrowed and narrowing view of life that often wins

What is a man but another man's memory

What I think is that there is no perspective in grief, or in love. How can there be, when one person becomes the center of the universe - either because he has been lost or because he has been found?

What you do consistently shapes your life.

What we think isn’t so important; it’s what we see that really counts.

What we call coincidences, accidental and remarkable events occurring at the same time, are actually circumstances and events that have come into your life to serve a purpose- and that purpose is to benefit you.

What you believe, is all there is for you. Believe more.

What you say to yourself after a failed experience or setback is as important as what you say when you succeed.

What you see and what you focus on has a profound impact on your behaviour.

What you see is highly dependent on how you look.

What you remembered? Probably. More or less. Different people remember things differently, and you'll not get any two people to remember anything the same, whether they were there or not. You stand two of you lot next to each other, and you could be continents away for all it means anything.

When actors encounter a mishap during a stage performance, they transform it for good purpose by employing a technique called, “use the difficulty.” How can you “use the difficulty” in your life?

When a precious secret is collected It tends to glow in the darkness. Placed in daylight, fitted along a wide landscape of fact, it often loses its brilliance.

When critics surrender to the prevailing orthodoxy, the author says they adopt the rhetoric of an occupied country, "one that expects no liberation from liberation.

When dealing with a married couple one can never be neutral. The hot magnetic power of each one's view of the other makes the spectator sway.

When someone says they love you, don’t believe it. Love is shown with actions and not words.

When one has little faith, one must survive from day to day signs-

When someone says you can't, look at where they are sitting. Perhaps they meant they can't.

When strangers meet, great allowances should be made for differences in custom and training.

When the convert emerges from the water, the world seems changed. The world has not changed, it is always wonderful and horrible, iniquitous and filled with beauty. But now, after baptism, the eyes that see the world have changed.

Whenever we are faced with adversity or circumstances that cause us to bow, it is in those times that we are being taught, our hearts are forced open to feel to receive, to grow, to stretch not only our minds but to see the possibilities, and change our perspective."- E

When Gregory says, ‘Are they guilty?’ he means, ‘Did they do it?’ But when he says, ‘Are they guilty?’ he means, ‘Did the court find them so?’ The lawyer’s world is entire unto itself, the human pared away.

When he came in first, he was happy to find all sorts of meaning in the results.

When I went out, light of day seemed a darker color than when I went in.

When someone is cruel, harsh, mean, to not take their words personally is one thing, but to hear the silent cry within those words is another. This sort of perspective can not only liberate us from crippling self-doubt in the face of criticism, it can also liberate us from automatically becoming blind participants in the interaction patterns that the cruel person has become accustomed to—a favour we do for the other person as much as for ourselves.

When we lead with the values that inform our faith - compassion, forgiveness, and love - we enter into even the most emotionally charged discussions with a new perspective. We might not change our minds about the outcomes, but we can change our conversations by listening with openness and receptivity to those who think differently than we do.

When we encounter personal problems, those things most deeply personal are the most difficult to bring out for our logic to scan.

When we change our perspective, we change our perception.

When we know that it's a planet just like this one, only with a better climate and worse people--when we know they're all propertarians, and fight wars, and make laws, and eat while other starve, and anyhow are all getting older and having bad luck and getting rheumatic knees and corns on their toes just like people there...when we know all that, why does it still look so happy--as if life there must be happy?..."... "If you can see the whole thing," he said, "it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives....But close up, a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the art is, is to see it as the moon. They way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.

When will you open your eyes to the possibility of the world?

When we critique our parents we forget that they are the result of a time where we were not present, we also forget that our children will do the same to us.