Perspective Quotes

“You meet a new person, you go with him and suddenly you get a whole new city...you go down new streets, you see houses you never saw before, pass places you didn't even know were there. Everything changes.”
― Samuel R. Delany, Dhalgren

“The number of people killed by the sanctions in Iraq is greater than the total number of people killed by all weapons of mass destruction in all of history.”
― Noam Chomsky

“Instead of thanking God for my two strong legs that are able to run and jump and climb, I whined about my "thunder thighs" and "thick" ankles. Instead of rejoicing that I have two capable arms that can lift and carry and balance my body, I complained about the flab that hung beneath them. I have been totally and unbelievably ungrateful for everything. Like a completely spoiled brat, I took my healthy body for granted. I criticized it and despised it. With crystal clarity, I know that I do not deserve the good health that God has mysteriously blessed me with. Not only have I been unappreciative of my body and its amazing working parts, I tortured it by overexercising, and I put my entire health at serious risk by starving myself. What on earth was wrong with me? As I watch these kids with their less-than-perfect bodies, I feel so thoroughly ashamed of myself. I mean, how could I have been so stupid and shallow and self-centered?”
― Melody Carlson, Faded Denim: Color Me Trapped

“True friends don't come with conditions.”
― Aaron Lauritsen, 100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip

“But to look back from the stony plain along the road which led one to that place is not at all the same thing as walking on the road; the perspective to say the very least, changes only with the journey; only when the road has, all abruptly and treacherously, and with an absoluteness that permits no argument, turned or dropped or risen is one able to see all that one could not have seen from any other place.”
― James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain

“We mourn the future because it's easier than admitting that we're miserable in the present.”
― Robyn Schneider, Extraordinary Means

“I've wanted to win at everything, every day, since I was a kid. And time doesn't change a person, it just helps you get a handle on who you are. Even at age 41, I still hate losing--I'm just more gracious about it. I'm also aware that setbacks have an upside; they fuel new dreams.”
― Dara Torres, Age Is Just a Number: Achieve Your Dreams at Any Stage in Your Life

“The huge problems we deal with every day are actually really small. We’re so focused on what bothers us
that we don’t even try to see our lives from a clearer perspective.”
― Susane Colasanti, Something Like Fate

“...You don't always get what you expect. I wish someone, sometime when I was growing up, would have told me what expectations would get me. ...
Our parents, schools, everyone tells us things will be a certain way when we're adults and if they're not that way, we should make them be; or at least pretend. But after a certain point that just doesn't work.”
― Chris Crutcher

“Remember where you came from, where you’re going, and why you created the mess you got yourself into in the first place. You're going to die a horrible death, remember. It's all good training, and you'll enjoy it more if you keep the facts in mind. Take your dying with some seriousness, however. Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less-advanced life-forms, and they'll call you crazy.”
― Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

“Those who achieve the extraordinary are usually the most ordinary because they have nothing to prove to anybody. Be Humble.”
― Aaron Lauritsen, 100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road Trip

“When things get too complicated, it sometimes makes sense to stop and wonder: Have I asked the right question?”
― Enrico Bombieri

“It's brainless to assume that making changes to your window's view will give a new perspective”
― Death Cab for Cutie

“Trust is not a gasoline-soaked blanket that succumbs to the matches of betrayal, never able to be used for its warmth again; it’s a tapestry that wears thin in places, but can be patched over if you have the right materials, circumstances, and patience to repair it. If you don’t, you’re always the one who feels the coldest when winter comes.”
― A.J. Darkholme, Rise of the Morningstar

“heir eyes met. They both smiled, aware that they were in public, where anyone could see them on the street and in the window. But the rest of the world did not matter. For that moment, everything else vanished. He was there, she was there, no trouble could touch them.”
― Jeanette Watts, My Dearest Miss Fairfax

“There comes a time when something changes you... No matter the impact... Where the world no longer beats in time with you. You no longer feel amongst the fray.. And the feeling of loneliness is a brandished armor you wear the rest of your life.”
― Solange nicole

“Oh, why does compassion weaken us?'

It doesn't, really ... Somewhere where it all balances out - don't the philosophers have a name for it, the perfect place, the place where the answers live? - if we could go there, you could see it doesn't. It only looks, a little bit, like it does, from here, like an ant at the foot of an oak tree. He doesn't have a clue that it's a tree; it's the beginning of the wall round the world, to him.”
― Robin McKinley, Spindle's End

“Things that are falling apart encourage me: whatever else, I’m in better shape than they are.”
― Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye

“Unfortunately in this world of ours, each person views things through a certain medium, which prevents his seeing them in the same light as others…”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“MANAGE YOUR MOOD: Name 1 thing that surprised you today...Name 1 thing that moved you...Name 1 thing that inspired you...”
― Gino Norris

“Of course it was a terrible thing, and the world would be a much better place without someone in it who could do that, but did that mean we had to miss lunch?”
― Jeff Lindsay, Dearly Devoted Dexter

“Reality is, Hope and Despair lie in the same places.
And they're just a matter of perspective.

What changed my perspective, was her.”
― Richie Singh, Chasing Butterflies

“Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial feeling is not roused—in whose mind some pleasant associations are not awakened—by the recurrence of Christmas. There are people who will tell you that Christmas is not to them what it used to be; that each succeeding Christmas has found some cherished hope, or happy prospect, of the year before, dimmed or passed away; that the present only serves to remind them of reduced circumstances and straitened incomes—of the feasts they once bestowed on hollow friends, and of the cold looks that meet them now, in adversity and misfortune. Never heed such dismal reminiscences. There are few men who have lived long enough in the world who cannot call up such thoughts any day of the year. Then do not select the merriest of the three hundred and sixty-five for your doleful recollections, but draw your chair nearer the blazing fire—fill the glass and send round the song—and if your room be smaller than it was a dozen years ago, or if your glass be filled with reeking punch, instead of sparkling wine, put a good face on the matter, and empty it offhand, and fill another, and troll off the old ditty you used to sing, and thank God it’s no worse.”
― Charles Dickens, Sketches by Boz Vol. I

“Of course, in our train of thought, we would all like to think we're on the right track, or at least the same railroad company as the right track.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Everything that happens, happens at the only possible time it can happen, and it is always at exactly the right time. We cannot get to an appointment before we arrive—or after. It is only at the instant of our arrival that we can arrive, and that is always at exactly the right moment, the perfect moment, the only possible moment.”
― Wu Wei, I Ching Wisdom Volume Two: More Guidance from the Book of Answers: 2

“Eurocentrism is quite simply the colonizer's model of the world.”
― J.M. Blaut, The Colonizer's Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History

“He would get up and go out into a world which seemed very unfamiliar, but with a tantalizing unfamiliarity like the world of boyhood to which an old man returns.”
― Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men

“The work of art is the object seen sub specie aeternitatis; and the good life is the world seen sub specie aeternitatis. This is the connection between art and ethics.

The usual way of looking at things sees objects as it were from the midst of them, the view sub specie aeternitatis from outside.

In such a way that they have the whole world as background.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“After a few moments, he spoke again. "When I was younger, I thought the Ashkar must be very dangerous, to be kept within walls."

"When I was young," Lin said, reaching for bandages, "I thought the malbushim must be very dangerous, for us to have to keep them out with walls."

"Ah," he said, and yawned again. "Perspective is everything, isn't it?”
― Cassandra Clare, Sword Catcher

“Maybe it's just that some of us have had certain facts and truths slapped up against our heads so hard and so often that we have to see them and pay our respects to their reality.”
― Ralph Ellison in Juneteenth