Perspective Quotes

“If peace comes from seeing the whole,
then misery stems from a loss of perspective.

We begin so aware and grateful. The sun somehow hangs there in the sky. The little bird sings. The miracle of life just happens. Then we stub our toe, and in that moment of pain, the whole world is reduced to our poor little toe. Now, for a day or two, it is difficult to walk. With every step, we are reminded of our poor little toe.

Our vigilance becomes: Which defines our day—the pinch we feel in walking on a bruised toe, or the miracle still happening?

It is the giving over to smallness that opens us to misery. In truth, we begin taking nothing for granted, grateful that we have enough to eat, that we are well enough to eat. But somehow, through the living of our days, our focus narrows like a camera that shutters down, cropping out the horizon, and one day we’re miffed at a diner because the eggs are runny or the hash isn’t seasoned just the way we like.

When we narrow our focus, the problem seems everything. We forget when we were lonely, dreaming of a partner. We forget first beholding the beauty of another. We forget the comfort of first being seen and held and heard. When our view shuts down, we’re up in the night annoyed by the way our lover pulls the covers or leaves the dishes in the sink without soaking them first.

In actuality, misery is a moment of suffering allowed to become everything. So, when feeling miserable, we must look wider than what hurts. When feeling a splinter, we must, while trying to remove it, remember there is a body that is not splinter, and a spirit that is not splinter, and a world that is not splinter.”
― Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

“I don't believe that. I don't believe that there are bad things about you. Only things that you think are bad.”
― Jessica Sorensen, The Coincidence of Callie & Kayden

“Every game is winnable if you change your mind about what the prize should be and your perspective about the players at the table.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“It's HE-RO," the boy argued.
"No," the girl insisted,
"it's HER-O.”
― Joseph Gordon-Levitt, The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, Vol. 1

“The only difference between you and the person you admire is their perspective on life.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“I’m supposed to figure out if the glass is half full or half empty,” I told her.

Without a moment’s hesitation, in a split second, my grandmother shrugged and said: “It depends on if you’re drinking or pouring.”
― Bill Cosby

“Remember, whatever you focus upon, increases. . . . When you focus on the things you need, you'll find those needs increasing. If you concentrate your thoughts on what you don't have, you will soon be concentrating on other things that you had forgotten you don't have--and feel worse! If you set your mind on loss, you are more likely to lose. But a grateful perspective brings happiness and abundance into a person's life.”
― Andy Andrews, The Noticer: Sometimes, All a Person Needs Is a Little Perspective

“Who would you impress if the world was blind?”
― Shannon L. Alder

“You have to thank God for the seemingly good and the seemingly bad because really, you don't know the difference [until we get to heaven].”
― Jennie Allen, Anything: The Prayer That Unlocked My God and My Soul

“Being put in our place by something larger, older, greater than ourselves is not a humiliation; it should be accepted as a relief from our insanely hopeful ambitions for our lives.”
― Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion

“It's good to look at life from the bottom up so you can see that things have risen above what they once were.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, & Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

“the greater number of a man's errors come before him disguised under the specious form of necessity; then, after error has been committed in a moment of excitement, of delirium, or of fear, we see that we might have avoided and escaped it.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Oh, what can you do with a man like that? What can you do? How can you dissuade his eye in a crowd from seeking out the cheek with acne, the infirm hand; how can you teach him to respond to the inestimable greatness of the race, the harsh surface beauty of life; how can you put his finger for him on the obdurate truths before which fear and horror are powerless? The sea that morning was iridescent and dark. My wife and my sister were swimming--Diana and Helen--and I saw their uncovered heads, black and gold in the dark water. I saw them come out and I saw that they were naked, unshy, beautiful, and full of grace, and I watched the naked women walk out of the sea.”
― John Cheever, The Stories of John Cheever

“We have all at one time been stranded on islands shouting lies across the seas of misunderstanding, hoping the fog will carry our mischief to the distant ports in people’s minds.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“A thorn in your side will drive you to find someone or thing to remove it. Therefore, don't hate your enemies. Thank them. Without them, you wouldn't have traveled as far in your life to find peace and happiness.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Let me be one of the upward and outward lookers, not one of the downward and inward lookers.”
― Alfred Edersheim

“Don’t go to Men about God. Go to God about Men.”
― Todd Stocker

“How Horrid" has a slightly facetious tone that strikes me as Wildean. It appears to embrace the actual horror--puberty, public disgrace--then at the last second nimbly sidesteps it, laughing.”
― Alison Bechdel, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

“...you have changed everything for me- you rearranged the furniture and now you've changed the view from my window!...”
― John Geddes, A Familiar Rain

“I live in a world where people are guided by limited imagination; only facts that are favorable to them are truths. They are unable to live anyway else. When a person finds out that a fact is against them, it's usually because it's the truth. No one tries to step outside of the edge of reason. No one tries to step beyond the edge of the world.”
― Lionel Suggs

“Narratives are the primary way in which we make sense of our lives, as opposed to, for example schema,cognition, beliefs, constructs. Definition of narrative include the important element of giving meaning to events and experiences over time by connecting them as a developing, continuing story.”
― Jacqui Stedmon

“A dreadful thing one day befell me when a horse came to stand on my toe.  Having no power to remove him, I found that I could not go.

An awful thing sometime later befell me when the horse was removed from my toe.  Alone and with naught to secure me, I found I was forced to go.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, & Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

“...I look out at the world through your transparent face...”
― John Geddes, A Familiar Rain

“It doesn’t take objectivity to know what you want, and you’re not objective enough to know what you need.”
― Amy Neftzger, The Orphanage of Miracles

“You Are What You Eat

Take food for example. We all assume that our craving or disgust is due to something about the food itself - as opposed to being an often arbitrary response preprogrammed by our culture. We understand that Australians prefer cricket to baseball, or that the French somehow find Gerard Depardieu sexy, but how hungry would you have to be before you would consider plucking a moth from the night air and popping it, frantic and dusty, into your mouth? Flap, crunch, ooze. You could wash it down with some saliva beer.How does a plate of sheep brain's sound? Broiled puppy with gravy? May we interest you in pig ears or shrimp heads? Perhaps a deep-fried songbird that you chew up, bones, beak, and all? A game of cricket on a field of grass is one thing, but pan-fried crickets over lemongrass? That's revolting.

Or is it? If lamb chops are fine, what makes lamb brains horrible? A pig's shoulder, haunch, and belly are damn fine eatin', but the ears, snout, and feet are gross? How is lobster so different from grasshopper? Who distinguishes delectable from disgusting, and what's their rationale? And what about all the expectations? Grind up those leftover pig parts, stuff 'em in an intestine, and you've got yourself respectable sausage or hot dogs. You may think bacon and eggs just go together, like French fries and ketchup or salt and pepper. But the combination of bacon and eggs for breakfast was dreamed up about a hundred years aqo by an advertising hired to sell more bacon, and the Dutch eat their fries with mayonnaise, not ketchup.

Think it's rational to be grossed out by eating bugs? Think again. A hundred grams of dehydrated cricket contains 1,550 milligrams of iron, 340 milligrams of calcium, and 25 milligrams of zinc - three minerals often missing in the diets of the chronic poor. Insects are richer in minerals and healthy fats than beef or pork. Freaked out by the exoskeleton, antennae, and the way too many legs? Then stick to the Turf and forget the Surf because shrimps, crabs, and lobsters are all anthropods, just like grasshoppers. And they eat the nastiest of what sinks to the bottom of the ocean, so don't talk about bugs' disgusting diets. Anyway, you may have bug parts stuck between your teeth right now. The Food and Drug Administration tells its inspectors to ignore insect parts in black pepper unless they find more than 475 of them per 50 grams, on average. A fact sheet from Ohio State University estimates that Americans unknowingly eat an average of between one and two pounds of insects per year.

An Italian professor recently published Ecological Implications of Mini-livestock: Potential of Insects, Rodents, Frogs and Snails. (Minicowpokes sold separately.) Writing in Slate.com, William Saletan tells us about a company by the name of Sunrise Land Shrimp. The company's logo: "Mmm. That's good Land Shrimp!" Three guesses what Land Shrimp is. (20-21)”
― Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha

“There were always people who struggled their way to the top of the heap, no matter how much that heap looked like garbage when seen from the outside.”
― Michelle Sagara West, Cast in Silence

“...what happens tomorrow is the future but what happened yesterday is already part of on-going history...”
― Peggy Herbert, Tales from Toothaker: How We Used Humor, Hard Work, and Hand-me-downs to Create an Island Home

“Perspective gets lost in moral certainties. Which only means that no one was ever burned at the stake by a doubter.”
― Thomas H. Cook, The Quest for Anna Klein

“Sometimes there is a microcosm and a macrocosm, and if you're dyslexic like me you can't tell the difference.”
― Bruce Bickford

“Semakin bersedia seseorang untuk menilai sesuatu dari sudut pandang orang lain yang berbeda, maka semakin beragamlah perspektifnya terhadap sesuatu tersebut.
Semakin beragam perspektifnya terhadap sesuatu tersebut, maka semakin dekatlah persepsinya dengan kebenaran utuh dan apa adanya akan sesuatu tersebut.
Inilah proses pembentukan sikap objektif dalam diri manusia.”
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity