Quotes about Perspective

Factions are blind men who aim correctly.

Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two possesses the larger field of vision? Choose. A bit of mould is a pleiad of flowers; a nebula is an ant-hill of stars.

When something goes 'wrong,' it is not the outer event that ought to be changed, but our inner state which responds to it. If we can build inner balance, we will no longer be blown over by the slightest gust, whether 'good' or 'bad'.

All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.

You know—we've had to imagine the war here, and we have imagined that it was being fought by aging men like ourselves. We had forgotten that wars were fought by babies. When I saw those freshly shaved faces, it was a shock. "My God, my God—" I said to myself, "it's the Children's Crusade."

Sister Hinckley and I are learning that the so-called golden years are laced with lead.

I have no mission. No one has.

Jealousy isn't a pleasant quality, but if it isn't overdone (and if it's combined with modesty), apart from its inconvenience there's even something touching about it.

Ah, ladies and gentlemen, a man lives a sad life when he cannot take anything or anyone seriously.

Only after a while did it occur to me (in spite of the chilly silence which surrounded me) that my story was not of the tragic sort, but rather of the comic variety. At any rate that afforded me some comfort.

Man proceeds in the fog. But when he looks back to judge people of the past, he sees no fog on their path. From his present, which was their faraway future, their path looks perfectly clear to him, good visibility all the way. Looking back, he sees the path, he sees the people proceeding, he sees their mistakes, but not the fog.

The very beginning of Genesis tells us that God created man in order to give him dominion over fish and fowl and all creatures. Of course, Genesis was written by a man, not a horse.