Perspective Quotes - Page 5

Poets are damned… but see with the eyes of angels.

...we think so much about the present and so little about eternity that we turn eternity into nothing and nothing into eternity.

There is nothing that strengthens the ego more than being right. Being right is identification with a mental position - a perspective, an opinion, a judgement, a story. For you to be right, of course, you need someone else to be wrong, as so the ego loves to make wrong in order to be right.

Consistency is the difference between game excellence and an excellent game. Successful people do consistently what the others do occasionally.

Lifting your eyes from the things of this world is an activity that must begin WHERE YOU ARE.

If we are always arriving and departing, it is alsotrue that we are eternally anchored. One's destinationis never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.

Dare to be different.

The only real certainty is that if you get to live, you gotta die. Live life now.

What we do see depends mainly on what we look for. ... In the same field the farmer will notice the crop, the geologists the fossils, botanists the flowers, artists the colouring, sportmen the cover for the game. Though we may all look at the same things, it does not all follow that we should see them.

How do you give something away with the knowledge that you will get it back in three days, and then claim it to be the 'Ultimate Sacrifice'?

In everything you encounter in life you have a choice. Even if that choice is just in how you will react and move forward. The moment you become cognizant of your choices is the moment in which you also realize your own power. Choices equal power. You have the power to make things better for yourself. Even if it is just your mindset, which is actually a lot. Your perspective, your take on things, dictates your experience. Your quality of life is contingent on how you see things. Realizing that, is where the real power lies. You can make something from anything.

Scatter the names of all those who have ever lived over the surface of the knowable cosmos, and it would remain, for all purposes, as unnamed as it was before the small, anomalous flicker of human life appeared on this small, wildly atypical planet.

Undergoing personal change is a difficult but necessary process of maturing into the ultimate manifestation of a desirable self. True personal transformation requires a person honestly to assess their inner spirituality and adopt a clear vision of who they want to be. An earnest person experiencing inner transformation of their values and belief system is apt to feel conflicted, confused, and disorientated. Change of self is displacement, disarticulation, and loss of self. Alteration of our self-image results in disrupting, dislocating, and modifying a person’s perspective of what is significant.

People only see what they want to see

I know that the molecules in my body are traceable to phenomena in the cosmos. That makes me want to grab people on the street and say: ‘Have you HEARD THIS?

The highway of grace will get you somewhere a whole lot faster then the freeway of spite.

By focusing on her career and taking a calculated approach to amassing power, Heidi violated our stereotypical expectations of women. Yet by behaving in the same manner, Howard lived up to our stereotypical expectations of men. The end result? Liked him, disliked her.

There isn’t a single definition of happiness to suit everyone’s requirements, but you know it when you feel it

Perspective was my secret weapon, and books gave me plenty of ammunition.

Theodore Roosevelt came to Dekota to experience the dying of one age with the slaying of a rare buffalo and the dawning of the West's industrial age.

Sometimes the most scenic roads in life are the detours you didn't mean to take.

WHO AM I?I have seven heavenly panelsLeading up to a pointed sphereI’m multidimensional like a crystalAnd my center is never clear.I’m an inventor and pioneer.A mentor to my peers.But I'm not as sound as my shell reveals,Because I’m tormented by my fears -That may appear to be groundedBut my insides are filled with tears.And the sadness is well-founded,From years and yearsOf traumatic experiencesCompoundedIn the most dementedAtmospheres.I talk but feel like nobody hears.Has reason disappeared?And, God, are you near?This is Giza’s 7th light forceAnd I'm asking you to interfere.I can no longer walk amongst the blind and deadWith open eyes and ears.I’m trying to maintain my sanityAnd to straighten up my veneerAs I roll amongst the growing calamitiesFlowing on Earth’s severely trashedFrontier.Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun (2010)

We see only a part of the surface of things. The rest will be forever hidden from us, to be appreciated for its felt but unfathomed presence.

If I'd defined success very narrowly, limiting it to peak, high-visibility experiences, I would have felt very unsuccessful and unhappy during those years. Life is just a lot better if you feel you're having 10 wins a day rather than a win every 10 years or so.

I've taped a list to my bathroom mirror. It's my Most Violated List. . . Anger. I gave the finger to an ATM. You see, the ATM charged me a $1.75 fee for withdrawl. A dollar seventy-five? That's bananas. So I flipped off the screen. As Julie tells me, when you start making rude gestures to inanimate objects, it's time to work on your anger issues. Mine is not the shouting, pulsing-vein-in-the forehead rage. Like my dad, I rarely raise my voice. My anger problem is more one of long-lasting resentment. It's a heap of real or perceived slights that eventually build up into a mountain of bitterness. . . get some perspective. . . I ask myself the question God asked Jonah. 'Do you do well to be angry?'. . .The world will not end. . . Mute your petty resentment.

Romanticizing comes with colored glasses of the most colored sort.

The struggles we endure today will be the ‘good old days’ we laugh about tomorrow.

Reality is, Hope and Despair lie in the same places. And they're just a matter of perspective.What changed my perspective, was her.

Failure is a pitfall of working without a plan.

I tell you I can't be bothered with things like that. I've got a soul above buttons.

Photography is all about the perspective!

When you choose to notice the little things, the world becomes a much more beautiful place. Find the beauty of the little things and the whole picture becomes a bit more magnificent.

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.

Perspective is so interesting. The smallest thing becomes pleasurable when troubles are monumental.

Life only remains complex with the individual perspective. Individual perspective cannot think beyond itself while life has to consider the perspective of each and every individual.

Circumstances, events or situations do not have inherent meanings except what you give them

With time comes perspective.

If you spend your life over analysing every encounter you will always see the tree, but never the forest.

When surrounded by the ashes of all that I once cherished, despite my best efforts I can find no room to be thankful. But standing there amidst endless ash I must remember that although the ashes surround me, God surrounds the ashes. And once that realization settles upon me, I am what I thought I could never be ... I am thankful for ashes.

The fascination of shooting as a sport depends almost wholly on whether you are at the right or wrong end of the gun.

Enormity of the stakes became the new self-hypnosis.

Your own opinion of your state is not worth much. Ask the Lord to search you.

Perspective, patience, & trust. One derived from the past, one applied now, and one for the future. Powerful allies for your journey in life.

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.

You are on your way to building a significant life when your service to others stops focusing on the now and the immediate future and instead focuses on generations to come and how your actions today will impact them long after you are gone.

Yes, contrast teaches us a great many things and there is purpose for it. Yet it is time to transcend your everyday dramas that are but drops in an ocean. Cease focusing on your droplets of water and look around you. Everything you say and touch and do sets into motion ripples that either heal and create or curse and destroy. Let me repeat: Everything.

I don't believe that. I don't believe that there are bad things about you. Only things that you think are bad.

Vision inspires and clarifies what needs to be done in the present to achieve the promise of the future.

When we know that it's a planet just like this one, only with a better climate and worse people--when we know they're all propertarians, and fight wars, and make laws, and eat while other starve, and anyhow are all getting older and having bad luck and getting rheumatic knees and corns on their toes just like people there...when we know all that, why does it still look so happy--as if life there must be happy?..."... "If you can see the whole thing," he said, "it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets, lives....But close up, a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the art is, is to see it as the moon. They way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.

Although a decision is often viewed as the turning point, it is action that creates tangible results.

You can't know what an experience will mean to future-you until you are future-you. You need millions of seconds of perspective, which ultimately, only time can buy.

Remember, you see in any situation what you expect to see.

You will fall short of achieving your goals if your focus is fragmented and your attention, energy, and concentration diversified.

He wanted the show to be fresh to audiences 50 years down the line.

We gain new perspectives on life after every voyage.

Storytelling is inherently dangerous. Consider a traumatic event in your life. Think about how you experienced it. Now think about how you told it to someone a year later. Now think about how you told it for the hundredth time. It's not the same thing. Most people think perspective is a good thing: you can figure out characters' arcs, you can apply a moral, you can tell it with understanding and context. But this perspective is a misrepresentation: it's a reconstruction with meaning, and as such bears little resemblance to the event.

Exactly. The dots guy. I've always thought getting older was a bit like looking at those paintings. You're born, and that's when you're standing right up next to the canvas. Nothing makes any sense. There's just a lot of light and color. But as you get older, you begin to back away, and that's when the image starts to cohere. All those little spots of color turn into flowers, or people, or dogs. You gain perspective.

We mourn the future because it's easier than admitting that we're miserable in the present.

One of Lincoln's intimates as a presidential candidate urged him to make no promises and not to part with those kind words which could be interpreted as promises.

The consequence model, the logical one, the amoral one, the one which refuses any divine intervention, is a problem really for just the (hypothetical) logician. You see, towards God I would rather be grateful for Heaven (which I do not deserve) than angry about Hell (which I do deserve). By this the logician within must choose either atheism or theism, but he cannot possibly through good reason choose anti-theism. For his friend in this case is not at all mathematical law: the law in that 'this equation, this path will consequently direct me to a specific point'; over the alternative and the one he denies, 'God will send me wherever and do it strictly for his own sovereign amusement.' The consequence model, the former, seeks the absence of God, which orders he cannot save one from one's inevitable consequences; hence the angry anti-theist within, 'the logical one', the one who wants to be master of his own fate, can only contradict himself - I do not think it wise to be angry at math.