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Perspective Quotes
"Some people see the cup as half empty. Some people see the cup as half full. I see the cup as too large."
27
"If there was anything the last year had taught her-if there was anything Caleb had taught her, the Metigen War had taught her-it was that perspective was everything. If you wanted to understand your enemy, you must understand that they were the hero in their own story."
26
"An eye for beauty instead of bleakness might have lightened some of his load."
26
"Life shouldn't be about the either/or. We're capable of more than that, you know?"
26
"This sense of my own weakness and emptiness comforts me. I feel myself a mere speck of dust lost in space, yet I am part of that endless grandeur which envelopes me. I could never see why that should be cause for despair, since there could very well be nothing at all behind the black curtain."
26
"It may be that we're not seeing the wonder in life because all we're doing is wondering how we're going to survive life."
25
"Right knowledge (samikit) means right vision. What does the wrong vision do? It will make one say, 'this person caused me a loss. This person profited me. That person insulted me. That person hurt me. This person made me happy.' There is no one out there giving you pain or pleasure! Indeed, it is all within you."
25
"Sometimes I find that in my happy moments I could not believe that I had ever been miserable."
25
"The state of minds vary according to the angle under which one examines them."
25
"When you are fulfilled within, big problems look small and when you have a vacuum within small problems look big!!!"
25
"Your imagination and some masturbation is a much better alternative to finding out what kind of person a bit of casual sex transforms you into."
25
"You can only call someone crazy if there's someone else who's normal."
25
"When you are being judged by someone that has no idea who you are always remember this: Dogs always bark at strangers and usually there is always some wacko neighbor that wants to try out their new gun on an intruder."
25
"I know many versions of truth that explain one fact."
24
"Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)... There are just some kind of men who - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results."
24
"You've seen what you've seen you've felt what you've felt. Ideology is for people who don't trust their own experiences and perceptions of the world."
24
"Vous eprouves trop d'emotion, Hastings, It affects your hands and your wits. Is that a way to fold a coat? And regard what you have done to my pyjamas. If the hairwash breaks what will befall them?''Good heavens, Poirot,' I cried, 'this is a matter of life and death. What does it matter what happens to our clothes?''You have no sense of proportion Hastings. We cannot catch a train earlier than the time that it leaves, and to ruin one's clothes will not be the least helpful in preventing a murder."
24
"If you look at today through the eyes of the past, you can never see what the present moment has to offer."
23
"Life is never a competition."
23
"The view of the local scene through the eyes of a native participant in that scene is a different window."
23
"I've never lost perspective on who I am. Well, maybe briefly, but generally I'm pretty balanced."
22
"If you do not raise your eyes you will think you are the highest point."
22
"He has his head in the clouds. He must live in a skyscraper."
22
"It is not the size of the candle that matters, but the size of its light."
21
"If you continue to concentrate so deeply on the negative factors you are unable to acknowledge all the positive results."
21
"You know, my main reaction to this money thing is that it's humorous, all the attention to it, because it's hardly the most insightful or valuable thing that's happened to me."
21
"Things are not as we would like them to be. There is only one way to deal with it, namely to try and be all right oneself."
21
"He would sit down and consider the situation carefully. Not only did this help to identify the solution to the problem, but it also gave him the opportunity to remind himself that things were not really as bad as they seemed; it was all a question of perspective. Sitting down and looking up at the sky for a few minutes--not at any particular part of the sky, but just at the sky in general--at the vast, dizzying, empty sky of Botswana, cut human problems down to size."
21
"Wise is the man who has the potential for height in his muscles but who renounces climbing in his consciousness. By virtue of his gaze, he has all hills, and by virtue of his position, all valleys. The sun that gilds the summits will gild them more for him than for someone at the top who must endure the bright light; and the palace perched high in the woods will be more beautiful for those who see it from the valley than for those who, imprisoned in its rooms, forget it."
21
"Remain open-minded, even when you believe yourself to be a king among peasants. You never know what blessings can be gained or crises averted just by listening."
20
"To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell."
20
"You can't believe what a lovely planet we have until you see her from outside."
20
"Well, you finally got me," Helen had whispered to him, tearfully, but Garp had sprawled there, on his back on the wrestling mat, wondering who had gotten whom."
20
"The difference between darkness and brightness is how you thrive on those moments and how you use such circumstances with goodwill in your spirit."
20
"I can see by your face that I'll never persuade you. And that's surprising, because usually you at least try to see my side."I can see your side," said Cecily. "I've got a much clearer view of it than you do, from over here on my side."
20
"It will be awesome, if the people had the chance all stuff which surround them to see them as larger as possible so to be differences like you are a mice or something like this.... - I'm sure that people will see stuff which as normal size everything they won't see!"
19
"You don't need to climb the mountain; you need to see it."
19
"The language of Cat's generation was far harder than that of her own, and more pithily correct: in their terms, he was a hunk. But why, she wondered, should anybody actually want a hunk, when non-hunks were so much more interesting?"
19
"The greatest mountain is still made of grains of sand."
18
"When you think of the condition the world is in now you sometimes wish that Noah had missed the boat."
18
"The circularity of influence was like a trail of dominoes falling in four dimensions. Each time one slapped another and fell to the ground, from a different vantage point it appeared knocked upright, ready to be slapped and fall again. Everything was not merely relative, it was--how to put it? --relevant. Representational. Revealing. Referential and reverential both."
18
"Our perceptions are influenced by our surroundings."
18
"I just wish moments weren't so fleeting!' Isaac called to the man on the roof, 'They pass so quickly!' 'Fleeting?!' responded the tilling man, 'Moments? They pass quickly?! . . . Why, once a man is finished growing, he still has twenty years of youth. After that, he has twenty years of middle age. Then, unless misfortune strikes, nature gives him twenty thoughtful years of old age. Why do you call that quickly?' And with that, the tilling man wiped his sweaty brow and continued tilling; and the dejected Isaac continued wandering. 'Stupid fool!' Isaac muttered quietly to himself as soon as he was far enough away not to be heard."
18
"But if two's company, three's a crowd - and that demands the omniscient point of view."
18
"The world is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment, every sin already carries grace in it."
17
"My perspective is that you should be IN the world, but not OF the world."
17
"There appears to be value in getting past a mentality that good things can only rest in good things."
16
"To call someone 'anti-American', indeed, to be anti-American, (or for that matter anti-Indian, or anti-Timbuktuan) is not just racist, it's a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those that the establishment has set out for you: If you're not a Bushie you're a Taliban. If you don't love us, you hate us. If you're not Good you're Evil. If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists."
16
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