Best 2585 quotes in «perspective quotes» category

We are way less often deceived by looks than we are by the act of looking.

We begin to learn wisely when we're willing to see world from other people's perspective.

We can always choose not what we see but how we look at what we see.

We could all stand to learn something from the Queen. Kudos to her for saying with her actions that it's okay to alter tradition and accept people where they are.

We don't see the world as it is; we see the world as we are...if someone has a critical eye, they will always find something to be critical about. And if they have a grateful eye, they will find something to celebrate even in the worst of circumstances...Having a "good eye" in life changes how you see yourself and everything around you... your focus determines your reality.

We don't force ourselves to be happy; to be happy we change ourselves

We do things because we want it, not because they’re good for us.

We form a mental map, and then that shape, shapes us

We gain new perspectives on life after every voyage.

We have a choice as to what we emotionally attach ourselves to. We can hear someone’s opinion objectively.

We have the power as individuals to create a different perspective. We can physically rewire our brains to see our work and lives in a more positive light. We can reduce our stress and increase our peace and happiness. We can use our minds to change our brains for a better life.

We have to care what someone thinks of us. We are incapable of seeing ourselves [sometimes].

We know dates and times and locations and participants but accounts of what happened depend upon the perspective from which the event is viewed.

We listened to the man because he had something to tell us, and us alone. Not how to play baseball, though he did that better than anyone. Not how to win, though winning was wonderful. Not even how to sacrifice. He was teaching us something far more important: how to cope with the two greatest enemies of a well-lived life, fear and failure. To make the lesson stick, he made sure we encountered enough of both.

We live in a messed up world, two people give more importance to how their relationship looks when viewed from the perspective of other people than the views of their own perspective.

We live our entire lives thinking we know those closest to us. But do we ever really?

We love our partners for who they are, not for who they are not.

We mourn the future because it's easier than admitting that we're miserable in the present.

We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be.

We need to forgive the adolescent versions of ourselves, if only because we need the practice to forgive those who are maturing awkwardly in our lives.

We need more portrayals of women as competent professionals and happy mothers - or even happy professionals and competent mothers.

We often need to lose sight of our priorities in order to see them.

We often lose ourselves to where we think we should be, rather than celebrate where we already are.

We often think that there is just one way to look at things - the way we always have. In fact, there are an infinite number of ways to look at most everything. An open mind allows for a multitude of perspectives from which to choose in any given moment. That suppleness of mind allows for true choice, and opens us to a whole new realm of possibility.

We’re always looking, but we never really see.

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.

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

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?

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

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

What you do consistently shapes your life.

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

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

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?