Best 2585 quotes in «perspective quotes» category

For human nature is such that grief and pain—even simultaneously suffered—do not add up as a whole in our consciousness, but hide, the lesser behind the greater, according to a definite law of perspective. It is providential and is our means of surviving in the camp. And this is the reason why so often in free life one hears it said that man is never content. In fact it is not a question of a human incapacity for a state of absolute happiness, but of an ever-insufficient knowledge of the complex nature of the state of unhappiness; so that the single name of the major cause is given to all its causes, which are composite and set out in an order of urgency. And if the most immediate cause of stress comes to an end, you are grievously amazed to see that another one lies behind; and in reality a whole series of others.

For me to simply tell you to find your life’s purpose, would only worsen your anxiety, not make it better. But that’s not what I want you to do. I simply want you to realise that there is something to be found. That your calling is still out there, and that’s why you might be unhappy.

For several years, while I searched for, found, and studied black women writers, I deliberately shut O'Connor out, feeling almost ashamed that she had reached me first. And yet, even when I no longer read her, I missed her, and realized that though the rest of America might not mind, having endured it so long, I would never be satisfied with a segregated literature. I would have to read Zora Hurston and Flannery O'Connor, Nella Larsen and Carson McCullers, Jean Toomer and William Faulkner, before I could begin to feel well read at all.

For the Earth itself is a blossom, she says, on the star tree, pale with luminous ocean leaves.

For the Arab, the past does not merely live. The past defines the present.

From the perspective of abnormal psychology, President Trump is a very interesting case study.

From the sky, everything looked fake. The buildings were doll houses. The cars were Matchbox racers. People scuttled about, but they weren’t really people anymore. Their little lives meant absolutely nothing from this altitude.

From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck, drag him a quarter of a million miles out, and say, 'Look at that, you son of a bitch.

From this vantage point, Sam's view was pastoral. Rabbits and squirrels scurried on the hillside, while birds darted in and out of the orchard's trees and bushes. The morning's low light illuminated the world from one side in a dramatic way: apples were split in two, red and black; halves of trees were luminescent of green, while the other halves were dark and brooding. Life is divided into shadow and light, Sam thought. You can see it either way, based on your own perspective Sam stopped and considered that, before adjusting her thought. Based on your own light level.

From time to time, Marvel enjoyed imagining himself from the vantage point of history, which stretches onward until the morality of events is winnowed until it appears to be fate—one action begetting the next and so on. Progress. This was the place where treachery and failure transformed themselves. What once seemed terrible could become courageous if given enough time. Marvel imagined that one day his sins might be tallied as virtues, that time could render him honorable, as he knew himself to be.

Gen. de Gaulle is only concerned about history, and no jury can dictate the judgment of history." Georges Pompidou

Generosity creates the higher life. There is no nobler virtue than the care one person shows to another.

Get around people who are trying to make a difference in the world. Iron sharpens iron.

Get some perspective. A lot of things that may aggravate you only do so because you have the luxury of not wrestling with bigger issues. Today, be thankful for everything you have: being alive, your friends and family, your health, a roof over your head, something to eat, clean water to drink, indoor plumbing, heating, air conditioning, clothes, shoes, a job, and freedoms. Many, many people have it worse.

Give perspective, to old one, in a new way; and discover.

Goals help you look towards the future with anticipation and excitement rather than with anxiety, and when clearly defined and broken into smaller steps, they enable you pay the price needed to achieve your dreams.

Goals reveal your path to success, greatness and significance. Become a master goal setter and you will chart the course of your life.

Goals are the result of bringing your dreams, ideas, and ideals into a real and examinable form by giving them permanence in written form.

GOD made you a masterpiece, stop treating yourself like a shattered piece.

Good mentors and coaches will help you reach your destination faster than you can by yourself.

GON. How lush and lusty the grass looks! how green! ANT. The ground indeed is tawny. SEB. With an eye of green in 't. ANT. He misses not much. SEB. No; he doth but mistake the truth totally.

Greatness is achieved when you fulfil your purpose by doing what you were born to do.

Gratitude magnifies the sweet parts of life and diminishes the painful ones.

Hard work without purpose seldom leads to success.

Hallucinations aren’t always out of the ordinary. How do we know we’re not hallucinating if everything seems plausible?

Having a nice library doesn’t make you smart. Don’t buy books and stack them up in your library; read them.

Have you decided how great you want to be? It’s really up to you. Greatness is a choice.

Having problems is not nearly as tormenting as being had by problems.

He found his irritation that the American memory could be short.

He did something he rarely did. He decided not to see things from the other guy's point of view.

He had no ideal world of dead heroes; he knew little of the life of men in the past; he must find the beings to whom he could cling with loving admiration among those who came within speech of him.

He had allowed the advertisers to multiply his wants; he had learned to equate happiness with possessions, and prosperity with money to spend in a shop.

He had refused fancy clothes or makeup for this interview. His philosophy was that death should to be embarrassing; he was not about to powder its nose.

He hasn’t really seen you, not as you want to be seen, but he’s starting to, a little.

He realized suddenly that it was one thing to see the past occupying the present, but the true test of prescience was to see the past in the future. Things persisted in not being what they seemed.

Her action in defending Marcão meant one thing to him and something quite different to her; it was so different that it was not even the same event.

Here march the eaters of earth, the swallowers of rain.

Her faith was a conscious decision, a hard earned achievement, constantly evolving to deal with her family's agnosticism and her own bisexuality. I wore my own faith like the shirt I fell asleep in because I was too lazy to change.

Here there was no monster greater than the ragged mountains.

Her father was stern. Her father disapproved. Her father had very strong reservations...Half Belgian, half Persian, staunch British conservative, he'd seen the Himalayas and Harrogate and had chosen accountancy.

Her hands warming on tea looked like chunks of knitting a child had felted in grubby palms. Enough decades, and a body slowly twists into one great cramp, but there was a time once, where she had been sexy, and if not sexy, at least odd-looking enough to compel. Through this clear window she could see how good it all had been. She had no regrets. That's not true, Mathilde. The whisper in the ear. Oh, Christ, yes, there was one. Solitary, gleaming, a regret. It was that all her life she had said no. From the beginning she had let so few people in. That first night, his young face glowing up a hers in the black light, bodies beating the air around them, and inside there was that unexpected sharp recognition, oh, this. A sudden peace arriving for her. She who hadn't been at peace since she was so little. Out of nowhere, out of this surprising night with its shatters of lightning and the stormy black campus outside, with the heat and song and sex and animal fear inside. He had seen her and made the leap and swung through the crowd and taken her hand, this bright boy who was giving her a place to rest. He offered not only his whole laughing self, the past that build him and the warm beating body that moved her with its beauty and the future she felt compressed and waiting, but also the torch he carried before him in the dark, his understanding, dazzling, instant, that there was goodness at her core. With the gift came the bitter seed of regret, the unbridgeable gap between the Mathilde she was and the Mathilde he had seen her to be. A question, in the end, of vision. She wished she'd been the kind Mathilde, the good one, his idea of her. She would have looked smiling down at him, she would've heard beyond marry me to the world that spun behind the words. There would have been no pause, no hesitation. She would've laughed, touched his face for the first time, felt his warmth in the palm of her hand. 'Yes,' she would've said. 'Sure.

Hertzfeld recalled that Gates just sat there coolly, looking at Steve in the eye, before hurling back, in his squeaky voice, what became a classic zinger. "Well, Steve, I think there's more than one way of looking at it, I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.

Her logic was a combination of half-truths and clichés, her worldview a compound of misconceptions deriving from a history of our nation as written from the perspective of a subway tunnel.

He said that when you want to change things, you can't please everyone. If you do please everyone, you aren't making enough progress. Mark was right.

He showed me the lowest. I had to surmise the highest.

He wanted the show to be fresh to audiences 50 years down the line.

He trusted the cosmos – but not necessarily the powers that held sway on earth.

He was as bold as a lion about it, and 'mightily convinced' not only himself, but everybody that heard him;—but then his idea of a fugitive was only an idea of the letters that spell the word,—or at the most, the image of a little newspaper picture of a man with a stick and bundle, with "Ran away from the subscriber" under it. The magic of the real presence of distress,—the imploring human eye, the frail, trembling human hand, the despairing appeal of helpless agony,—these he had never tried. He had never thought that a fugitive might be a hapless mother, a defenseless child,—like that one which was now wearing his lost boy's little well-known cap; and so, as our poor senator was not stone or steel,—as he was a man, and a downright noble-hearted one, too,—he was, as everybody must see, in a sad case for his patriotism.

He was "more passionate than most intelligent men, and more intelligent and reasoned than most passionate men.

He wasn’t a good person, but I painted him to be and since I painted it, I believed it.