Quotes about Perspective

Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.

Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.

A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.

The true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.

As any Brit will understand, things get a little easier when you don't have to be number one any more. Really, the fall of an empire is not as bad as everyone thinks. It's like retirement. People fear retirement, but it can turn out be rather pleasant.

I think growing up in South Africa, and then moving to Canada, I'm just genuinely interested in the difference between the First World and the Third World, immigration, and how the new, globalized world is beginning to operate. All of those things run through my mind a lot.

Most Americans haven't had my happy experience of living for thirteen years in a seventeenth-century house, since most of America lacks seventeenth-century houses.

Forgive me my nonsense, as I also forgive the nonsense of those that think they talk sense.

The mind moves in the direction of our currently dominant thoughts.

The world tells us in a thousand different ways that the bigger we become, the freer we will be. The richer, the more beautiful, and the more powerful we grow, the more security, liberty, and happiness we will experience. And yet, the gospel tells us just the opposite, that the smaller we become, the freer we will be.

In this country, the people who affect things the most—how the rest of us think and feel—are comics. It's true. Because a comic needs to understand the big picture in order to fracture it and present it to people so they can see it more clearly. Comedy is the only hope for humanity.

Don't let your imagination be crushed by life as a whole. Don't try to picture everything bad that could possibly happen. Stick with the situation at hand, and ask, "Why is this so unbearable? Why can't I endure it?" You'll be embarrassed to answer. Then remind yourself that past and future have no power over you. Only the present—and even that can be minimized. Just mark off its limits.