Quotations of Perspective 2

What is true by lamplight is not always true by sunlight.  ~Joseph Joubert


With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.  ~Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, "Notebook L," Aphorisms


If my ship sails from sight, it doesn't mean my journey ends, it simply means the river bends.  ~John Enoch Powell


A light supper, a good night's sleep, and a fine morning have often made a hero of the same man who by indigestion, a restless night, and a rainy morning, would have proved a coward.  ~Earl of Chesterfield


I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my eyes and all is born again.
~Sylvia Plath, "Mad Girl's Love Song"


I went to a cafe that advertised breakfast anytime, so I ordered French Toast during the Rennaisance.  ~Steven Wright


Why assume so glibly that the God who presumably created the universe is still running it?  It is certainly conceivable that He may have finished it and then turned it over to lesser gods to operate.  ~H.L. Mencken


There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.  ~Walt Whitman


I can't say as ever I was lost, but I was bewildered once for three days.  ~Daniel Boone


But such a tiny and trivial thing as an umbrella can deprive you of the sight of such a stupendous fact as the sun. ~Meher Baba


The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.  ~William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice


Saint, n.  A dead sinner revised and edited.  ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1911


Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is the lightning that does the work.  ~Mark Twain


I have scarcely touched the sky and I am made of it.  ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


It isn't that they can't see the solution.  It is that they can't see the problem.  ~G.K. Chesterton


There is no possible line of conduct which has at some time and place been condemned, and which has not at some other time and place been enjoined as a duty.  ~William Lecky


What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that men set foot on the moon but that they set eye on the earth.  ~Norman Cousins


I'm right-handed, whereas the fellow in my mirror is left-handed.  I start shaving from the left; he starts from the right.  Differences only in perception, but religious wars have been fought over such.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


The things which are most important don't always scream the loudest.  ~Bob Hawke


While his eyes saw the sky, his soul saw Heaven.  ~K. Smith


If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful.  Planets, lives...  But up close a world's all dirt and rocks.  And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.  ~Ursula K. Le Guin


The tyrant dies and his rule ends, the martyr dies and his rule begins.  ~Soren Kierkegaard


If all the year were playing holidays,
To sport would be as tedious as to work.
~William Shakespeare, Henry IV


A gifted small girl has explained that pins are a great means of saving life, "by not swallowing them."  ~Charles Edward Montague, Dramatic Values


[E]very saint has a past and every sinner has a future.  ~Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance, 1893


Addictions do come in handy sometimes:  at least you have to get out of bed for them.  ~Martin Amis


If a fanatic is willing to give his life for a cause, he's probably willing to give yours as well.  ~David Gerrold


I'm afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning.  ~Andy Warhol


The activities you spent your time on yesterday were the things that were important to you.  Calendars don't lie.  ~Scott Ginsberg, hellomynameisscott.com


The highest virtue here may be least in another world. ~Kahlil Gibran


Sometimes we must unfocus our way to clarity. ~Terri Guillemets


Don't confuse fun with fulfillment, or pleasure with happiness. ~Michael Josephson, whatwillmatter.com


Education is indoctrination if you're white - subjugation if you're black.  ~James Baldwin


I never ask God to give me anything; I only ask him to put me where things are.  ~Mexican Proverb


Distance is inspiration's best hearting.  ~E. Marshall


If you cry "Forward," you must make plain in what direction to go.  ~Anton Chekhov


A full heart has room for everything and an empty heart has room for nothing.  ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


The best rose-bush, after all, is not that which has the fewest thorns, but that which bears the finest roses.  ~Henry Van Dyke


All men have a reason, but not all men can give a reason.  ~John Henry Cardinal Newman


Presence is more than just being there.  ~Malcolm S. Forbes, The Further Sayings of Chairman Malcolm


Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation.  ~Benjamin Disraeli


Injury, when it is slight, upsets me; when it is strong it calms me.  ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


A child on a farm sees a plane fly overhead and dreams of a faraway place.  A traveler on the plane sees the farmhouse below and dreams of home.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


Complete possession is proved only by giving.  All you are unable to give possesses you.  ~Andre Gide


An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it.  ~William Bernbach


'Tis not the meat, but 'tis the appetite makes eating a delight.  ~John Suckling, Sonnet, c.1638



When you look
into a mirror
it is not
yourself you see,
but a kind
of apish error
posed in fearful
symmetry
      kool uoy nehW
rorrim a otni
ton si ti
˛ees uoy flesruoy
dnik a tub
rorre hsipa fo
lufraef ni desop
yrtemmys

~John Updike, "Mirror,"
Telephone Poles and Other Poems

[A] grass-blade's no easier to make than an oak.  ~James Russell Lowell, A Fable for Critics, 1848


I know what I have given you.  I do not know what you have received.  ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


If a dream is realistic, it's not really a dream. It's a to-do. ~Kim & Jason Kotecki, kimandjason.com


How long has it been since someone touched part of you other than your body? ~Terri Guillemets


The judicial mind is too commonly characterized by a regard for a fourth decimal as the equal of a whole number. ~Martin H. Fischer


Eventually you realize that not all opposing viewpoints come from people who oppose you.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


The enemy of your enemy is your friend.  ~Proverb


The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe.  ~Philip W. Anderson, "More Is Different," Science Magazine


It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how things are in themselves.  The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.  ~Carl Jung


If a man could have half his wishes, he would double his troubles.  ~Benjamin Franklin


For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.  ~Seneca


What's frustrating about being disliked is that it's invariably for the wrong reason.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


An exhibitionist is nothing without a voyeur.  ~S.A. Sachs


The same fence that shuts others out shuts you in.  ~Bill Copeland


The pyramids will not last a moment compared with the daisy.  ~D.H. Lawrence


The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.  ~Marcel Proust


What we see depends mainly on what we look for.  ~John Lubbock


An unattempted woman cannot boast of her chastity.  ~Michel de Montaigne


How, child, do I know where you're headed?  Because I'm there, and I can see you coming.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


The crash of the whole solar and stellar systems could only kill you once.  ~Thomas Carlyle


When a dog runs at you, whistle for him.  ~Henry David Thoreau


Conscience gets a lot of credit that belongs to cold feet.  ~Author Unknown


The grass may be greener on the other side of the fence, but you still have to mow it.  ~Author Unknown


And see, no longer blinded by our eyes.  ~Rupert Brooke


For a nation which has an almost evil reputation for bustle, bustle, bustle, and rush, rush, rush, we spend an enormous amount of time standing around in line in front of windows, just waiting.  ~Robert Benchley, Benchley - or Else!


Just remember that if you had the most winning personality on earth, you'd always wonder if people liked you only for your personality. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.  ~William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1600


Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength.  ~Charles Lamb, Essays of Elia, Witches and other Night Fears, 1823


Destiny has two ways of crushing us - by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them.  ~Henri Frederic Amiel


The reverse side also has a reverse side.  ~Japanese Proverb


'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue.
~Thomas Campbell, Pleasures of Hope


At high tide the fish eat ants; at low tide the ants eat fish.  ~Thai Proverb


It takes a while, but eventually we appreciate that the people who were always there for the special occasions of our youth had other things to do.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.  ~Anatole France


Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room.  ~William Hazlitt, Sketches and Essays, 1839


The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.  ~Douglas Adams, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy


Each moment is a place you've never been.  ~Mark Strand


There is but an inch of difference between the cushioned chamber and the padded cell.  ~Gilbert Keith Chesterton


Now, what is it which makes a scene interesting?  If you see a man coming through a doorway, it means nothing.  If you see him coming through a window - that is at once interesting.  ~Billy Wilder


Finish last in your league and they call you idiot.  Finish last in medical school and they call you doctor.  ~Abe Lemons


A hole is nothing at all, but you can still break your neck in it.  ~Author Unknown


Everything's got a moral if only you can find it.  ~Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland


To really enjoy the better things in life, one must first have experienced the things they are better than.  ~Oscar Holmolka


Perhaps there should be one day a week when you tackle your "Things I Gotta Undo" list.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


When those waiters ask me if I want some fresh ground pepper, I ask if they have any aged pepper.  ~Andy Rooney


If we escape punishment for our vices, why should we complain if we are not rewarded for our virtues?  ~John Churton Collins, Aphorisms in the English Review, 1914


We have them just where they want us.  ~James T. Kirk


Some men see things as they are and ask why.  Others dream things that never were and ask why not.  ~George Bernard Shaw


I never complained of the vicissitudes of fortune, nor suffered my face to be overcast at the revolution of the heavens, except once, when my feet were bare, and I had not the means of obtaining shoes.  I came to the chief of Kfah in a state of much dejection, and saw there a man who had no feet.  I returned thanks to God and acknowledged his mercies, and endured my want of shoes with patience, and exclaimed,
Roast fowl to him that's sated will seem less
Upon the board than leaves of garden cress.
While, in the sight of helpless poverty,
Boiled turnip will a roasted pullet be.
~Sa'dī, translated


Everybody is a genius.  But, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.  ~Albert Einstein


Chaperons don't enforce morality; they force immorality to be discreet.  ~Judith Martin


Never is a long, long word, but it's less frustrating than "God knows when."  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966


Winning is overrated.  The only time it is really important is in surgery and war.  ~Al McGuire


A woman who sells herself to buy bread for her aged mother or her child, stands upon a higher moral plane than the blushing maiden who marries a money bag, in order to gratify her frivolous appetite for parties and travel.  Of two men, he is the less deceived, the more logical and rational, who pays his companion of an hour in cash, each time, than he who gets a companion for life by the marriage contract, whose society was purchased as much as in the former case.  Every alliance between man and woman in which either one is influenced by the substantial or selfish advantage to be gained by it, is prostitution.  ~Max Nordau, Conventional Lies of Our Civilization


Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.  ~James Baldwin


There's such a thin line between winning and losing.  ~John R. Tunis


There are always three sides to every story:  your side, the other side, and the truth.  ~Author Unknown


In the life we might have lived, the years never pass. On the person we might have been, time never leaves its mark. How different would seem our might-have-beens if we could picture them as would-be-nows.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.  ~Friederich Nietzsche


It isn't the mountains ahead that wear you out, it's the grain of sand in your shoe.  ~Author Unknown


Edible, adj.:  Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.  ~Ambrose Bierce


In the strict scientific sense we all feed on death - even vegetarians.  ~Spock from Star Trek, "Wolf in the Fold"


Emotion has taught mankind to reason.  ~Marquis de Vauvenargues


It is not easy, the choice between God and the devil, for it is presented to us as a choice between forgiveness and understanding.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


One man's frankness is another man's vulgarity.  ~Kevin Smith


I don't see how an article of clothing can be indecent.  A person, yes.  ~Robert A. Heinlein


How many merits one sees in those one likes! how many faults in those one dislikes!  Yet people fancy they see with their eyes.  ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


Travelers never think that they are the foreigners.  ~Mason Cooley


If anyone were to be willing to trace his descent through an ape as his grandfather, would he be willing to trace his descent similarly on the side of his grandmother?  ~Samuel Wilberforce


What is a promiscuous person?  It is usually someone who is getting more sex than you are.  ~Victor Lownes, Playboy, 1985


Every vice is only an exaggeration of a necessary and virtuous function.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 1836


A liberal is a conservative who's been arrested.  A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged.  ~Wendy Kaminer


I always thought a yard was three feet, then I started mowing the lawn.  ~C.E. Cowman


When you are one of the pieces, it doesn't seem like a game.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at the bottom.  Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another; each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his object.  Philosophically considered, therefore, the two passions seem essentially the same, except that one happens to be seen in a celestial radiance and the other in a dusky and lurid glow.  ~Nathaniel Hawthorne


It is not the man who has little, but he who desires more, that is poor.  ~Seneca


Where there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.  ~Dorthea Lange


It is easier for me to see everything as one thing than to see one thing as one thing.  ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


We're all hookers.  What matters is dignity.  ~Mike Farren


A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.  ~Samuel Butler


There is only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it.  ~Chinese Proverb


A sodomite got very excited looking at a zoology text.  Does this make it pornography?  ~Stanislaw J. Lec


When a guy goes to a hooker, he's not paying her for sex, he's paying her to leave.  ~Author Unknown


They've got us surrounded again, the poor bastards.  ~Creighton W. Abrams


Every exit is an entrance somewhere else.  ~Tom Stoppard


A pedestal is as much a prison as any small space.  ~Gloria Steinem
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