c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Peace is not only the absence of war, but also a way of seeing the world, and the choices we make are how we express and manifest that vision of the world.
— Max Strom
If you knew how the journey was going to end, you could afford to be patient along the path.
— Joseph J. Ellis, Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence
They were trying to orchestrate a revolution, which almost by definition generated a sense of collective trauma that defied any semblance of coherence and control. If we wish to rediscover the psychological context of the major players in Philadelphia, we need to abandon our hindsight omniscience and capture their mentality as they negotiated the unknown.
— Joseph J. Ellis, Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence
If he (John Adams) could not control events, he could at least record them for posterity – perhaps the ultimate form of control.
— Joseph J. Ellis, Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence
I thought it peculiar how one new experience can alter your perspective on places you've known your whole life.
— M.J. Prest, Immersion
When we see everyone the way God sees them, all their frailties and weaknesses as well as their strengths,we can learn to treat them tenderly. We must also view ourselves from God's perspective: lovingly, tenderly, and patiently. We can do the same with our spouses and other children or family members.
— Laura   Lane, Two Mothers, One Prayer: Facing your Child's Cancer with Hope, Strength, and Courage
You'd expect academics, people who are by training comfortable with complexity, to be the most resistant to the idea that we're shaped by any single factor. In fact, they are often the worst offenders. Immersed in their own research, shaped by their own work, many logically see everything else as a natural extension of it.
— Nicholas Day, Baby Meets World: Suck, Smile, Touch, Toddle
Leo Strauss's discoveries in the history of political philosophy had the effect of liberating his students from the yoke of contemporary thought.
— William Kristol
I figure I'll win the fight in twenty years or so anyways when I end up with a decent life and their unemployed and living at home.
— Alexandra Robbins, The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School
Working is prayer for the likes of us,” his master often said. “It’s the way we commune with God.”“Then how does He respond to us?” Jahan had once asked, way back when he was younger.“By giving us more work, of course.
— Elif Shafak, The Architect's Apprentice
Turn your face toward the sun and the shadows will fall behind you.
— Maori proverb
Everything in life is nonsense. It's just a question of perspective.
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón
If we don't understand our tools, then there is a danger we will become the tool of our tools. We think of ourselves as Google's customers, but really we're its products.
— Rebecca Goldstein, Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away
The larger question is, as virologist Jonas Salk once asked, "Are we being good ancestors?
— Steven Johnson, How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World
A world without glass would strike at the foundation of modern progress: the extended lifespans that come from understanding the cell, the virus, and the bacterium; the genetic knowledge of what makes us human; the astronomer's knowledge of our place in the universe. No material on Earth mattered more to those conceptual breakthroughs than glass.
— Steven Johnson, How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World
I have a Greek-American friend who named her daughter "Nike" and is often asked why she chose to name her offspring after a sneaker.
— Rebecca Goldstein, Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away
All too often I try to skate away from the things I'm afraid of and things I don't like and am unwilling to accept. I'm selfish and difficult to handle. I give my men cause for concern. I worry them, but they haven't given up on me yet and I love them all the more for it.
— Gillibran Brown, Gilliflowers
The author perceives nuances of Abigail Adams' character in the occasional errors she makes in readily quoting John Milton. Rather than giving the observer a reason to quibble, they are evidence that she had absorbed Milton's works enough to feel comfortable quoting them from memory.
— David McCullough, John Adams
Sometimes the effect arrives thanks to a different kind of breakthrough: a dramatic increase in our ability to MEASURE something, and an improvement in the tools we build for measuring. New ways of measuring almost always imply new ways of making.
— Steven Johnson, How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World
The Law Polarity decrease that everything has an opposite it's the flip side of the coin, you're right my left, consider this next time you disagree with someone because their right from their point of view.
— Bob Proctor
The role of biblical counselors is facilitate the discovery of a greater God awareness through spiritual eyes that look at life through scriptural lenses.
— James MacDonald, Christ-Centered Biblical Counseling: Changing Lives with God's Changeless Truth
The giving of undue prominence to one fact brings others inexorably on the head of the student to avenge his neglect of them,
— Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown's Schooldays & Tom Brown at Oxford
The philosopher often appears ridiculous in the practical affairs of life, because he or she has stepped out of the rush of time.
— Theaetetus
Reading can break us out of the tunnel vision of the narrow specialty and lead us into many intriguing and important avenues of thought.
— Gene Edward Veith Jr., Reading Between the Lines
It was then that we connected. His sound bounced through my head and out my eyes, painting my world with new shades of color. I still remember the smile that unnoticeably took my face as I inched for another touch.
— Charles   Lee, The Way To Dawn: End of Days
If there is such a thing as philosophical progress, then why – unlike scientific progress – is it so invisible? Philosophical progress is invisible because it is incorporated into our points of view. What was torturously secured by complex argument comes widely shared intuition, so obvious that we forget its provenance.
— Rebecca Goldstein, Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away
My life will not be an apology. It will be a statement
— Andy Andrews, The Traveler's Gift: Seven Decisions that Determine Personal Success
Hope is when we have a beautiful vision of something and a positive emotion to go along with it. When our world comes crashing down, when we are trapped in a deep, dark, despairing hopelessness, we need a bigger perspective. Hope comes when we reflect on all that we hold dearand true, when we acknowledge a higher power, when we acknowledge God in our lives and begin to see what He has planned for our lives.
— Laura   Lane, Two Mothers, One Prayer: Facing your Child's Cancer with Hope, Strength, and Courage
Tolstoy does not tell us how things look to the author; he tells us how they look to the characters. In short, he does not use simile and metaphor. (That astonishing assertion in Wood’s review is what got me started reading Tolstoy in the first place. How can anyone write without using metaphor and simile? That would be like—never mind.)
— John Mark Reynolds, The Great Books Reader: Excerpts and Essays on the Most Influential Books in Western Civilization
People only see what they want to see
— Krishna Prakash
Plato dramatically puts the detachment of the philosopher from his time this way: to philosophize is to prepare to die.
— Rebecca Goldstein, Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away
What is it precisely, that they are doing when they are doing science. Are they refining their instruments for observation or discovering new aspects of reality?
— Rebecca Goldstein, Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away
I'd never had a mind for math. ... It was a logic that made little sense to me. In my perception, the world wasn't a graph or a formula or an equation. It was a story.
— Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
Every choice in life sets us on a different path and carries its own set of “what ifs” and consequences that we could worry about, but what’s the use? Rather than plaguing our thoughts with the unknown, we should focus on and accept only what we do know – and all we know is the path we’re currently on.
— A.J. Darkholme, Rise of the Morningstar
Wisdom is not measured by age ,Intelligence is not measured by grades ,Personality is not measured by what others say
— O.Z "Osama Alzoubi"
One must always forgive another's passion.
— Pat Conroy, South of Broad
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: More Guidance from the Book of Answers, Volume Two
As children', wrote Alice Raikes (Mrs. Wilson Fox) in The Times, January 22, 1932, 'we lived in Onslow Square and used to play in the garden behind the houses. Charles Dodgson used to stay with an old uncle there, and walk up and down, his hands behind him, on the strip of lawn. One day, hearing my name, he called me to him saying, "So you are another Alice. I'm very found of Alices. Would you like to come and see something which is rather puzzling?" We followed him into his house which opened, as ours did, upon the garden, into a room full of furniture with a tall mirror standing across one corner.' "Now", he said giving me an orange, "first tell me which hand you have got that in." "The right" I said. "Now", he said, "go and stand before that glass, and tell me which hand the little girl you see there has got it in." After some perplexed contemplation, I said, "The left hand." "Exactly," he said, "and how do you explain that?" I couldn't explain it, but seeing that some solution was expected, I ventured, "If I was on the other side of the glass, wouldn't the orange still be in my right hand?" I can remember his laugh. "Well done, little Alice," he said. "The best answer I've heard yet." "I heard no more then, but in after years was told that he said that had given him his first idea for Through the Looking-Glass, a copy of which, together with each of his other books, he regularly sent me.
— Lewis Carroll
Our view of history diminishes the reality of the past. We concentrate on the historic event as something that has happened, and in so doing we ignore it as a moment which, at the time, is happening.
— Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England
I love objectivity when mine.
— Brian Spellman, Cartoonist's Book Camp
You were contemplating the mountain, Mr. Conway?" Came the inquiry."Yes, it's a fine sight. It has a name, I suppose?""It is called Karakal""I don't think I've ever heard of it. Is is very high?""Over twenty-eight thousand feet.""Indeed? I didn't realize there would be anything on that scale outside the Himalayas. Has it been properly surveyed? Whose are the measurements?""Whose would you expect, my dear sir? Is there anything incompatible between monasticism and trigonometry?
— James Hilton, Lost Horizon
By reading older books we get a taste of the conversation of Heaven.
— John Mark Reynolds, The Great Books Reader: Excerpts and Essays on the Most Influential Books in Western Civilization
Know the enemy, know yourself and victory is never in doubt, not in a hundred battles.
— Sun Tzu, The Art of War
If I walk along a shore towards a ship which has run aground, and the funnel or masts merge into the forest bordering on the sand dune, there will be a moment when these details suddenly become part of the ship, and indissolubly fused with it. As I approached, I did not perceive resemblances or proximities which ﬁnally came together to form a continuous picture of the upper part of the ship. I merely felt that the look of the object was on the point of altering, that something was imminent in this tension, as a storm is imminent in storm clouds.Suddenly the sight before me was recast in a manner satisfying to my vague expectation. Only afterwards did I recognize, as justiﬁcations for the change, the resemblance and contiguity of what I call ‘stimuli’— namely the most determinate phenomena, seen at close quarters and with which I compose the ‘true’ world. ‘How could I have failed to see that these pieces of wood were an integral part of the ship? For they were of the same colour as the ship, and ﬁtted well enough into its superstructure.’ But these reasons for correct perception were not given as reasons beforehand. The unity of the object is based on the foreshadowing of an imminent order which is about to spring upon us a reply to questions merely latent in the landscape. It solves a problem set only in the form of a vague feeling of uneasiness, it organizes elements which up to that moment did not belong to the same universe and which, for that reason, as Kant said with profound insight, could not be associated. By placing them on the same footing, that of the unique object, synopsis makes continuity and resemblance between them possible. An impression can never by itself be associated with another impression.
— Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception
Moon is a shining ball,from the window on my wall.Moon is blemish-laden,from the terrace of my mansion.Moon is a cold flame,from the porthole of my airplane.Yet I have heard,Moon is muse to philosophy brothers,Moon is nurse to romantic lovers.How can it be so various?Are we not the same?Or did the Moon really change?
— Jasleen Kaur Gumber
Florrie smiles with unmoderated joy, because she can't see that most people bank their happiness like it's something you might run out of
— Lauren Beukes, Broken Monsters
Historical revisionists find what they set out to find.
— Gregg Frazer
You don't realize your story is changing you until you look back.
— Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life
A fantastically huge, roiling cloud, glowing bluish gray, swaggered over the city. It was more than three miles tall. Below it Hiroshima was boiling.
— Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
Past ages come to us in new ways. For instance, they bore or disturb us. The dead say things we would or could not say in ways that appall , bless, and startle us. Reading them is part of diversity. The easiest voices to ignore are those of the dead; nevertheless, they often on the ones we need most.
— John Mark Reynolds
I had this dream about you. We went hunting up in the mountains and I caught a unicorn. You told me now I know how it feels to be you.
— Crystal Woods, Dreaming is for lovers
Perspective is an incredibly powerful tool. It tempers how we receive information, and guides what we choose do with it.
— T.A. Sorensen
As a matter of fact, when it comes to seeing, men display two tendencies: they see what they wish to see, what is useful to them, what is agreeable. The second is the tendency toward inhibition; they do not see what they do not wish to see, what is useless to them, or disagreeable.
— Rémy de Gourmont, Philosophic Nights in Paris,: Being Selections from Promenades Philosophiques
Believe that a further shore is reachable from here.
— Seamus Heaney, The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles' Philoctetes
We are all the heroes of our own stories, and on of the arts of perspective is to see yourself small on the stage of another's story, to see the vast expanse of the world that is not about you, and to see your power, to make your life, to make others, or break them, to tell stories rather that be told by them.
— Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby
Personal problems appear big because we press our nose to the glass to observe them. This only serves to magnify our troubles. The problems of others we tend to view at a reasonable distance from the window, making their woes and bothers appear ordinary. Too bad we don't naturally take a few steps back before considering our own plight.
— Richelle E. Goodrich
I don't understand why when I wish for happiness it inevitably rains. However, I do tend to find myself grateful for sunlight once the storm ceases.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Making Wishes
When you're finally up at the moon looking back on earth,all those differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend, and you're going to get a concept that maybe this really is one world and why the hell can't we live together like decent people?
— Frank Borman
When the convert emerges from the water, the world seems changed. The world has not changed, it is always wonderful and horrible, iniquitous and filled with beauty. But now, after baptism, the eyes that see the world have changed.
— Liturgy Training Publications
it was so hard to see what the future held because to perform at this game, you have to be “in the mud,” obsessed with the task at hand. Perspective is neutralized, stunted so that you can capture only the most relevant, time-sensitive data that will determine how to approach your opponent that day. Then you look up and realize your 20-year career has been a collection of days where you couldn’t see tomorrow.
— Doug Glanville
When you change the way you see and interpret events, suddenly everything will be different for you. Everything will make sense.
— Chris Prentiss, Be Who You Want, Have What You Want: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life
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.
What we call coincidences, accidental and remarkable events occurring at the same time, are actually circumstances and events that have come into your life to serve a purpose- and that purpose is to benefit you.
— Chris Prentiss, Be Who You Want, Have What You Want: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life
No two people see things the same.
— David Patneaude, Thin Wood Walls
Perspective is a powerful attitude, providing the ability to see circumstances, no matter how challenging, as an opportunity.
— Chris Vonada
In 1935, when there were no other programs, the founders of AA, Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith, stepped up to the plate and took action to help a crippled population. All credit for the establishment of their wonderful, life-saving group goes to them and to those who came after them who have continued the tradition. However, there are hundreds of millions of people who still need help who are not among the estimated two or three million who attend twelve-step meetings.
— Chris Prentiss, The Alcoholism and Addiction Cure
Much of our understanding of God's action in outlying is achieved in hindsight. When a particular crisis or event in our life has passed we cry out in astonishment like Jacob, "The Lord is in this place and I never knew it.
— Sheila Cassidy
It appears, from all this, that our eyes are uncertain. Two persons look at the same clock and there is a difference of two or three minutes in their reading of the time. One has a tendency to put back the hands, the other to advance them. Let us not too confidently try to play the part of the third person who wishes to set the first two aright; it may well happen that we are mistaken in turn. Besides, in our daily life, we have less need of certainty than of a certain approximation to certainty. Let us learn how to see, but without looking too closely at things and men: they look better from a distance.
— Rémy de Gourmont, Philosophic Nights in Paris,: Being Selections from Promenades Philosophiques
Each moment has an unrealized dimension of beauty that only your perspective can liberate.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
Not having any drink about ain’t the same as not understanding the need for one. Times like these change a body’s perspective.
— Samuel Snoek-Brown, Hagridden
I rather be a stupid person wanting clarification and answers, in order to be wiser, than be a stupid person that blindly believes the lies they are told, without question.
— Shannon L. Alder
Letting go is to love yourself enough to look at the past with a different perspective. It is to accept that you can't change the past, but that you can change whether your perspective poisons or nourishes you.
— Steve Maraboli
You won't change anything significant in the world if you try to be like it. Change comes when you do something different.
— Shannon L. Alder
As I leave the gardenI take with me a renewed view,And a quiet soul.
— Jessica Coupé, Life Abundant a 30 day devotional for Latter-day Saint Women
The old bitterness came up in him and he did not have time to cogitate and push it down.
— Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
The space reminded me of the small hay-bale clubhouses and scrap-wood tree forts that my brothers and I had made as kids - high up spaces where you could see things differently, where you could get your bearings.
— Dee Williams
Historians are not scientists. They cannot (and should not even trying to) establish universal laws of social or political "physics" with reliable predictive powers. Why? Because there is no possibility of repeating the single, multi-millennium experiment that constant to the past. The sample size of human history is one.
— Niall Ferguson, Civilization: The West and the Rest
The dead outnumber the living fourteen to one, and we ignore the accumulated experience of such a huge majority of mankind at our peril
— Niall Ferguson, Civilization: The West and the Rest
I wrote this book because I had formed a strong impression that the people currently living were paying insufficient attention to the dead.
— Niall Ferguson, Civilization: The West and the Rest
No mountain is of any appreciable height to break the curve of the sphere.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet
Sometimes you just have to stop and take in your surroundings. Really look at where you are in life, otherwise it's just going to pass you by. Regret is a heavy word to live with." - Riley
— Justine Winter, Nature’s  Destiny
We were sleeping on the same bed with our backs to each other trying to imagine a new life.
— Kalyani Rao, Bubble Wrap
I had a dream about you last night... and in it you said "Chin up; it only gets harder.
— Marshall Ramsay, Dreaming is for lovers
And I understand now, maybe not completely, but more, that in times of overwhelming joy, immobile sadness, hysterical laughter, absolute fear, and sometimes just perfect quiet there is Life. Real Life. And it really is that simple. I take my gift now. I go live.
— Dito Montiel, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
Imagine a wall that's green on one side and red on the other. You stand on one side and only see green. I stand on the other side and only see red. We'll both be right about the color we see, even though we disagree on what color the wall is. Being able to realize that the other person has a valid point, even if you disagree with it, that's maturity.
— Oliver Gaspirtz
...and that there were many things grow-ups did which couldn't properly be judged by young people until the young people were grown-ups themselves...
— Nick Joaquín, The Woman Who Had Two Navels
The historian, like everyone else, is forever trapped in the egocentric predicament, and 'presentism' is his original sin.
— Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Cycles of American History
When Gregory says, ‘Are they guilty?’ he means, ‘Did they do it?’ But when he says, ‘Are they guilty?’ he means, ‘Did the court find them so?’ The lawyer’s world is entire unto itself, the human pared away.
— Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies
My step-dad’s rendition of events was uncontested even by me and therefore, it became our truth. Truth I’d never be able to prove or change; truth that protected him from suspicion and penalty. Truth that I now knew was a lie.
— J.M. Northup, A Prisoner Within
The key is to put your outrage in a place where you can get it when you need to, but not have it bubble up so much, especially when you're asked to explain new ideas or explain what you observed two people who share none of your experiences.
— Ron Suskind, A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League
Our side has agents. Their side has spies.
— Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, Espionage and Covert Operations: A Global History
Espionage is the world's second oldest profession.
— Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, Espionage and Covert Operations: A Global History
On the Rules of PerspectiveA bad trick. Mistake. Dishonesty. These are the views of Braque. Why? Braque rejected perspective. Why? Someone who spends his life drawing profiles will end up believing that man has one eye, Braque felt. Braque wanted to take full possession of objects. He said as much in published interviews. Watching the small shiny planes of the landscape recede out of his grasp filled Braque with loss so he smashed them. Nature morte, said Braque.
— Anne Carson, Plainwater: Essays and Poetry
Life is something like a doctor's prescription: taken alone, and the ingredients might kill you; but properly blended, they bring healing.
— Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Satisfied (Ecclesiastes): Looking for the Answer to the Meaning of Life
...and that there were many things grown-ups did which couldn't properly be judged by young people until the young people were grown-ups themselves...
— Nick Joaquín, The Woman Who Had Two Navels
With improved historical records, and easier access to them, we actually have better reasons for hating one another, for anger and violence toward one another.
— Richard Rohr, Adam's Return: The Five Promises of Male Initiation
History is the preceptor of prudence, not principles.
— Edmund Burke
…wondering, not for the first time, if there was a kind of dark bliss built into dementia: an immunity from death and abandonment, a way of fixing a point in time so that nothing can change, nothing can be rewritten, no one can leave.
— Jonathan Miles, Want Not
I will never listen to ocean waves or view a beautiful sunset in quite the same way again. That is perhaps the greatest gift one can gain by delving into calculus: It is a whole new way of looking at the world, accessible only through the realm of mathematics.
— Jennifer Ouellette, The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Apocalypse
Mujizat gampang terlihat dari sudut pandang takhayul.Miracles are easily seen from superstitious perspective.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
Peter Aykroyd has a wonderful eye for the telling detail, cameos that stick in the mind. Thse are the little touches that make it past come alive.
— J.J. Scarisbrick
The only people who really think they have seen something new are those whose experience is limited or whose vision can't penetrate beneath the surface of things. Because something is recent, they think it is new; they mistake now the for originality.
— Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Satisfied (Ecclesiastes): Looking for the Answer to the Meaning of Life
No wonder the sky had to be blotted out by advertisements. The stars drowned with lights. If everyone could see beyond Coalition horizons, perhaps they'd see the titans of humanity for what they were: tiny creatures, smaller than insects, and in the scale of things, every bit as insignificant.
— S.J. Kincaid
Sometimes I lose perspective, but it helps to stop and look around. I may not have it all, but I have more than enough. And enough, it seems, is more than most have...
— J.M. Darhower, Sempre: Redemption
Perhaps I am an insensitive rich woman. That doesn't change the fact that you can be downright mean and offensive, Kaladin Stormblessed.
— Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance
There are those among us who have erred, deeply and significantly. Who have wounded the world and broken themselves. The worst of them lose themselves in their errors. The best of them crawl back, one foot at a time, and seek to amend their breaches. That is the way of the brave.
— Chloe Neill, Wild Things
The whole underneath of Paris was an ant nest, Metro tunnels, sewer shafts, catacombs, mines, cemeteries. She'd been down in the city of bones where skulls and femurs rose in yellowing walls. Right down there, win the square before them. through a dinky little entrance, were the Roman ruins like honeycomb. The trains went under the river. There were tunnels people had forgotten about. It was a wonder Paris stood up at all. The bit you saw was only half of it. Her skin burned, thinking of it. The Hunchback knew. Up here in the tower of Notre Dame he saw how it was. Now and then, with the bells rattling his bones, he saw it like God saw it -- inside, outside, above and under -- just for a moment. The rest of the time he went back to hurting and waiting like Scully out there crying in the wind.
— Tim Winton, The Riders
Nothing is clear now. Something must be the matter with my way of viewing things. I have no middle view. Either I fix on a detail and see it as thought it were magnified -- a leaf with all its veins perceived, the fine hairs on a man's hands -- or else the world recedes and becomes blurred, artificial, indefinite, an abstract painting of a world. The darkening sky is hugely blue, gashed with rose, blood, flame from the volcano or wound or flower of the lowering sun. The wavering green, the sea of grass, piercingly bright. Black tree trunks, contorted, arching over the river.
— Margaret Laurence, A Jest of God
After 25 the only thing you’ll be precocious at is death.
— Patricia L. Steffy, My Letter to Fear: Essays on Life, Love and the Search for Prince Charming
In a period of less than 150 years, to progress from slavery to Pennsylvania Avenue speaks volumes about this family and our nation. Distracted by the rush of our everyday life, we might shrug it off today, but 100 years from now, historians will be discussing this precedent.
— Megan Smolenyak, Hey, America, Your Roots Are Showing
Where you are today is where you're from tomorrow.
— John R. Dallas Jr., We Need to Have a Word: Words of Wisdom, Courage and Patience for Work, Home and Everywhere
The truth is often so much more complicated than the digest version that's handed down to us.
— Megan Smolenyak, Hey, America, Your Roots Are Showing
Education itself is Marketing--marketing tools and perspectives to people who don't necessarily realize why they need them, how it will serve them, what they might accomplish with them. And, ensuingly, Marketing itself is Education (with no attempt to assess the value of what is being marketed).
— Shellen Lubin
What used to be edgy (divorces) has become mainstream and what used to be mainstream (racism and sexism) has become shocking.
— Sara Sheridan
Trying to analyze a situation without enough data was like looking at a photograph of a ball in flight and trying to gauge its direction. Is it going up, down, sideways? Is it about to collide with a baseball bat? Is it moving at all, or is something on the blind side holding it in place? A single frame didn't mean a thing. Patterns were based on data. With enough datapoints, you could predict just about anything.
— Marcus Sakey, Brilliance
In wartime, she thought to herself, you don’t call a death murder.
— Sara Sheridan, Brighton Belle
Your violin has only two strings,” I say. “You’re missing the other two.” Yes, he says. He’s well aware. “All I want to do is play music, and the crisis I’m having is right here. This one’s gone,” he says of the missing top string, “that one’s gone, and this little guy’s almost out of commission.” His goal in life, Nathaniel tells me, is to figure out how to replace the strings. But he got used to playing imperfect instruments while taking music classes in Cleveland’s public schools, and there’s a lot you can do, he assures me, with just two strings
— Steve López, The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music
The blazing sun beat down on the concrete of the museum's front yard- Reverend Ryu Yosop felt as if the heat were sucking up all the moisture in his brain and heart. What different colors he and his brother Yohan must have used as each of them painted their own picture of home, of the carnage. These people have constructed yet a different vision of their own, Yosop thought to himself, but it all stems from the same nightmare, the one we created together.
— Hwang Sok-yong, The Guest
From the landscape: a sense of scale. From the dead: a sense of scale.
— Richard Siken
The definition of stupid is the inabilitly to see another side to an argument other than one's own.
— James Rozoff
People have the power to change their perspective. They just get caught up in an endless cycle of foolish things that don’t matter.
— Jamie Magee, Insight
When one has little faith, one must survive from day to day signs-
— Stephen King, Bag of Bones
No two people ever view the world from exactly the same perspective, understand things the same way, human or not. The best we can ever do is try.
— Debra Driza, MILA 2.0
...otherwise, one of you, most likely the man, would go wandering off on a trajectory of his own, taking his addictive body with him and leaving you with bad withdrawal, which you could counteract by exercise. If you didn't work it out it was because one of you had the wrong attitude. Everything that went on in your life was thought to be due to some positive or negative power emanating from inside your head.
— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
Like it! Yes—the way I'd like a hot stove if I was to set on it long enough. No, Tom, I won't be rich, and I won't live in them cussed smothery houses. I like the woods, and the river, and hogsheads, and I'll stick to 'em, too.
— Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Oceans recede and coastlines wither and crack. Nations lapse; others soon swagger in their places. Mountains crumble to dust, rains vanish into the sea, winds return whence they came, and every city men build has but a jumble of bones for its foundation. What is your need to me? I am the Watcher in the Dark.
— J. Aleksandr Wootton, The Eighth Square
One of the powerful functions of a library — any library — lies in its ability to take us away from worlds that are familiar and comfortable and into ones which we can neither predict nor control, to lead us down new roads whose contours and vistas provide us with new perspectives. Sometimes, if we are fortunate, those other worlds turn out to have more points of familiarity with our own than we had thought. Sometimes we make connections back to familiar territory and when we have returned, we do so supplied with new perspectives, which enrich our lives as scholars and enhance our role as teachers. Sometimes the experience takes us beyond our immediate lives as scholars and teachers, and the library produces this result particularly when it functions as the storehouse of memory, a treasury whose texts connect us through time to all huma
— Richard F. Thomas
History does not usually make real sense until long afterward.
— Bruce Catton
That's one of the compensations for being mediocre. One doesn't have to worry about becoming mediocre.
— Rebecca Goldstein, The Mind-Body Problem
-I don't know that thin and pretty is what Nat is supposed to be, though. Does that make any sense?"If she'd been holding on to any illusions about how much she liked Vince Grasso-not lusted for him, which she also did-that last speech would have cinched it. "It makes perfect sense. She's beautiful in her own way, but pretty is something...else. And I've had friends who were really pretty-it didn't always help them all that much.'"Yeah," he said. "My wife was pretty, and she was miserable her whole life. I just want my girls to be happy. Be themselves, you know, whatever it is.
— Barbara O'Neal, The Secret of Everything
Sometimes she wondered if the shape of his eyes affected how he saw things. That was probably the most racist question of all time.
— Rainbow Rowell
I am most right because I realize I am most wrong
— Markus R
Worry is a weighty monster with poisoned tentacles. It clutches at us, grabs at our minds, steals our breath, our will. It lurks. It pounces. It colors how we perceive the world.
— Mary E. DeMuth, Everything: What You Give and What You Gain to Become Like Jesus
Personally, I’m choosing to dwell upon the glory of the kingdom of which I am a part, even though I’m still a witness and sometimes a victim of the junk in ‘this’ world.
— Van Harden, Life in the Purple Wedge!
Sometimes life holds more than people allow themselves to see. Such individuals may continue to live as though they are blind for eternities before realizing they were merely clamping their eyes shut.
— Emily Herr
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.
— Dinah Sanders, Discardia
I suppose history always did have in it a large bit of the perspective of those who wrote it. People tend to make their own truth of what was right loom larger than other truths just as true but somehow less favorable to telling.
— Na'ama Yehuda, Outlawed Hope
The nature of God's plan can be difficult to fathom when you are toiling in some small corner of it, but it is glorious from above, if you allow yourself the perspective.
— Thomm Quackenbush, Find What You Love and Let It Kill You
Perspective makes all the difference. It’s not what you look at; it’s what you see… Remember that the sun never actually sets; it's our perspective that makes it appear to. Our sunset is another’s sunrise. It's all perspective. How would your life be different if you applied this truth to the things that cause you stress? Letting go isn’t about erasing the past; it’s about looking at the same event and seeing something different. Activate this power in your life! Take the pain and poison of the past and allow it to nourish a new found wisdom. Remember, you can't change the past, but you can change the labels you place on events. Perspective - it’s not what you look at; it’s what you see.
— Steve Maraboli
You are a fool to speak of last great battles, Sam, for the last great battle is always the next one.
— Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light
You don't see the world as it is, you see it,as you are.
— Krishna Saagar
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
I'm a kindhearted but highly competitive pragmatist. When I seek to win something, I always make certain it's never at the expense of anything more serious than the inadequate efforts of others.
— Jonathan Kieran
It's a funny thing about Americans, we love to bitch about paying too much for the things we really need and are really a bargain, like gas and postage stamps, but we willingly shell out outrageous amounts for unnecessary crap like gourmet coffee and soap to make your crotch smell good. Two dollars a gallon to go ten miles is too much, but five to the parking valet to go ten feet is okay.
— Bill Maher, When You Ride Alone You Ride With Bin Laden: What the Government Should Be Telling Us to Help Fight the War on Terrorism
The vision one holds of one's life is so limited, reduced in scope to a moment, so that each person can make choices only within that narrowed reality.
— Arlene J. Chai, Eating Fire and Drinking Water
It was as if he'd suddenly become intimately aware of the fragility of life and how precious time really was. As a result, he made a conscious effort to simplify his life, with the goal of eliminating unnecessary stress. No longer interested in society's definition of success, he began purging his life of material things. Life, he decided, was for living, not for having, and he wanted to experience every moment that he could. At the deepest level, he'd come to understand that life could end at any moment, and it was better to be be happy than busy.
— Micah Sparks, Three Weeks With My Brother
An artistic perspective will jab at you from a different angle
—  its logic comes like a pitcher with a curveball.
Fear is and has always been dead. It's how we picture it that makes fear come to life.
— George Cooke
«Linkeree does what he likes. He likes to be alone and think his own thoughts. No one is hurt by it.» Sara said, «Jason said that we are one people. Linkeree is saying he does not want to be part of us, and if he is not part of us then we are all less than we were.» They were both very wise. It would be so much easier for Kapock if they had only agreed with each other.
— Orson Scott Card, The Worthing Saga
some students look at the problems that they're facing and they draw global conclusions from them. They say this is not just a professor giving me a bad grade or someone not sitting next to me in the cafeteria. This reflects that fact that I am not ready for college, or I shouldn't be in this college at all.
— Shankar Vedantam
Dreams are fragile. Reality is a clumsy postman.
— Faye McCray
countries who have a longer past are better able see further forward into the future and think about extending the time period that they've already been around into the distant future.
— Hal Hershfield
Sometimes it takes asking others for input to find out you have to ultimately look within yourself for the answers to the questions only you know the truth about...we choose the information we share. So, the person giving feedback is limited in view and their perspective will only keep your view of the situation distorted.
— C. Nzingha Smith
To a fireman, wind is a curse. To a sailor, wind is a blessing.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
It is always quietly thrilling to find yourself looking at a world you know well but have never seen from such an angle before.
— Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life
When someone says you can't, look at where they are sitting. Perhaps they meant they can't.
— Tim Fargo, Alphabet Success - Keeping it Simple
He [Wordsworth] invited his readers to abandon their usual perspective and to consider for a time how the world might look through other eyes, to shuttle between the human and the natural perspective. Why might this be interesting, or even inspiring? Perhaps because unhappiness can stem from only having one perspective to play with.
— Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel
When tradition is thought to state the way things really are, it becomes the director and judge of our lives; we are, in effect, imprisoned by it. On the other hand, tradition can be understood as a pointer to that which is beyond tradition: the sacred. Then it functions not as a prison but as a lens.
— Marcus J. Borg, The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic Contemporary Faith
Actually, it's nature itself that creates the most beautiful pictures, I'm only choosing the perspective.
— Katja Michael
Sometimes you don't need to change what you're looking at only get a better view.
— Christopher Hawke
Man usually sees what he is looking for
—  seldom what he is looking at.
Beauty comes to us more readily on a full belly.
— Regina O'Melveny, The Book of Madness and Cures
One of the chief values reading history, this is the author, is its capacity to "provoke renegade thoughts".
— Andrew Roberts
It is impossible to describe a landscape so validly as to exclude all other descriptions, for no one can see the landscape in all its aspects at the same time, and no single view can prevent the existence and validity of other equally possible views.
— Frithjof Schuon, In the Face of the Absolute
To become richer, earn more. To appear richer, move into a poorer neighborhood.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Altering your perspective can provide you the luxury of seeing things for what they are, not what you wish them to be.
— Truth Devour, Wantin
Political judgment is the ability to hear the distant hoofbeats of the horse of history.
— Otto von Bismarck
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.
— Ed Mitchell
The trouble with you people is that you've been here for thirty million years and your perspectives are all wrong. You miss so much of the transitory beauty of life.
— J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World
Nothing can be appreciated in a vacuum.
— Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
Am I corrupted if I believe that the people who think alike are more admirable and estimable than those who think for themselves? If no one thought differently, then where would our innovations come from? How would we ever advance beyond the status quo? Corruption isn't just moral or ethical in nature--rust is a form of corruption, one that eats away at its host like a parasite, constantly making it less than it was the day before. The belief that they should hold in greater esteem those who think alike is a form of rust, something that doesn't allow our young people to grow beyond the limitations already established by those who do think alike.
— Tom Walsh
I would wonder if you could be a hero or heroine if you did not live in deep time, that is, Past, present, and future all at once.
— Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
There is wonder in everything, the only thing you need to change to see it is your perspective.
— Taylor Schake
Perspective: it is the creativity we possess, the beliefs we follow and the lessons we learn.
— Alexis Hurley
There are moments in life, and they happen so infrequently that they tend to really stand out, when life hands you the gift of perspective. Sometimes, we forget to show our appreciation. Sometimes, we get our priorities mixed up. And, sometimes, we forget how far we’ve come. But life always has a way of nudging you to remind you about these important things.
— Cassia Leo, Bring Me Home
Five truly effective prescriptions to remedy a bad day. (You can't overdose.)—Pray; discuss your troubles with God.—List your blessings. (The blue sky, soft cookies, warm socks, etc.)—Call your mom.—Visit an animal shelter and hug a lonely cat.—Visit a nursing home and hug a lonely grandparent.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
Outside has everything. Whenever I think of a thing now like skis or fireworks or islands or elevators or yo-yos, I have to remember they're real, they're actually happening in Outside all together. It makes my head tired. And people too, firefighters teachers burglars babies saints soccer players and all sorts, they're all really in Outside. I'm not there, though, me and Ma, we're the only ones not there. Are we still real?
— Emma Donoghue, Room
If you were upset about an ugly pimple on the end of your nose, you might try to feel better by keeping your pimple in perspective. You might compare your pimple situation to that of someone who was being eaten by a bear, and when you looked in the mirror at your ugly pimple, you could say to yourself, 'Well, at least I'm not being eaten by a bear.
— Lemony Snicket, The Wide Window
Haven't you ever noticed that life is like a series of movies?
— Matthew Quick, The Silver Linings Playbook