Quotes about Perspective

Archer looked down with wonder at the familiar spectacle. It surprised him that life should be going on in the old way when his own reactions to it had so completely changed.

What is truth? Where a woman is concerned, it's the story that's easiest to believe.

But is has happened, you know. Bear that in mind. Nothing you can do will change it. Time and again, I've found that a good thing to remember.

You might as well say that the only way not to think about air is to have enough to breathe. That is true enough in a sense, but your lungs are thinking about the air if you are not. And so it is with your rich people: they may not be thinking of money, but they're breathing it all the while; take them into another element and see how they squirm and gasp!

Don't judge us too harshly—or not, at least, till you have taken the trouble to learn our point of view. You consider the individual—we think only of the family.

The wild gas, the fixed air is plainly broke loose: but we ought to suspend our judgments until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we see something deeper than the agitation of the troubled and frothy surface. [Alluding to Joseph Priestley's Observations on Air]

Joy is not the opposite of suffering. If it were, a person practiced in joy could crowd out pain because one couldn't exist with the other. Instead, joy can actually be a companion to suffering.

No one cares about their reputation or their bank account when they find themselves in the shadow of death.

Beneath our questions about God's generosity and his care for our needs is something darker. What we really care about is our wants.

Love is able to see past the clutter of a disorganized life.

Anger looks down from the judge's perch; wisdom comes down from those heights and looks up from below. Humility captures it.

But the point is that we live in a culture that idolizes happiness, and if we idolize happiness, it will always elude us.