quotes, quotations and passages on perspective

perspective 2 - perspective 3 - perspective 4
perspective 5 - perspective 6

When they tell you to grow up,
they mean stop growing.

Tom Robbins

It is the mind which creates the world around us, and even though we stand side by side in the same meadow, my eyes will never see what is beheld by yours, my heart will never stir to the emotions with which yours is touched. George Gissing

We think too small, like the frog at the bottom of the well. It thinks the sky is only as big as the top of the well. If it surfaced, it would have an entirely different view. Mao Tse-Tung

The unhappiness we experience is not so much a result of the difficulties encountered along our journey as it is of our misperception of how life instructs us. We may see a failed relationship as an indictment of our self-worth when it is really a lesson in using better judgment, in valuing ourselves more, in expressing greater appreciation for our partner--lessons to prepare us for a more loving and fulfilling union. If we are passed over for a much-anticipated promotion, it may be just the push we need to get more training or to venture out on our own as an entrepreneur. As we rise to meet the challenges that are a natural part of living, we awaken to our many undiscovered gifts, to our inner power and our purpose. Susan L. Taylor

A child on a farm sees a plane fly overhead and dreams of a faraway place. A traveler on the plane sees the farmhouse and dreams of home. Carl Burns Inside yourself or outside, you never have to change what you see, only the way you see it. Thaddeus Golas

Two Tough Questions: A Lesson in Perspective

Question 1: If you knew a woman who was pregnant, who had 8 kids already (three deaf, two blind, one mentally retarded) and she had syphilis, would you recommend that she have an abortion?

Read the next question before moving down to the answer of this one.

Question 2: It is time to elect a new world leader, and your vote counts. Here are the facts about the three leading candidates:

Candidate A: Associates with crooked politicians, and consults with astrologists. He's had two mistresses. He also chain smokes and drinks 8 to 10 martinis a day.

Candidate B: He was kicked out of office twice, sleeps until noon, used opium in college and drinks a quart of whisky every evening.

Candidate C: He is a decorated war hero. He's a vegetarian, doesn't smoke, drinks an occasional beer and hasn't had any extramarital affairs.

Which of these candidates would be your choice?

Decide first--no peeking--then click here for the answer.

quotations - contents - welcome page - obstacles
the people behind the words - our current e-zine - articles and excerpts
Daily Meditations, Year One - Year Two - Year Three - Year Four

Sign up for your free daily spiritual or general quotation ~ ~ Sign up for your free daily meditation

Every person takes the limits of his or her own
field of vision for the limits of the world.

Arthur Schopenhauer

The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass,
it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.

Henry Miller

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
what is essential is invisible to the eye.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

One reason I can be more tolerant than most is that as a therapist
I have the advantage of information about my patients that most
people are not privy to. And I discover that we rarely if ever see
the totality of another in ordinary social intercourse. When an
individual appears mean and lazy, we are only seeing one part of
the person, elicited by a particular set of circumstances on a
particular day, and we do well to wait a while before
concluding that what we see is the whole person.

Alan Loy McGinnis
Bringing Out the Best in People

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower:
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

William Blake

Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe
to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions,
and spoke not what others but what they thought. People should learn to
detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across their minds from
within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet they
dismiss without notice their thought, because it is theirs.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our environment, the world in which we live and work, is a mirror of
our attitude and expectations. If we feel that our environment could
stand some improvement, we can bring about that change for the
better by improving our attitude. The world plays no favorites. It's
impersonal. It doesn't care who succeeds and who fails. Nor does
it care if we change. Our attitude toward life doesn't affect the
world and the people in it nearly as much as it affects us.

Earl Nightingale

A flower unblown; a book unread;
A tree with fruit unharvested;
A path untrod; a house whose rooms
Lack yet the heart's divine perfumes;
A landscape whose wide border lies
In silent shade beneath the skies;
A wondrous fountain yet unsealed;
A casket with its gifts concealed--
This is the Year that for you waits
Beyond tomorrow's mystic gates.

Horatio Nelson Powers

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune.

William Wordsworth

Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest creative thinkers of all time,
strongly recommended the habit of meditation in the dark. He wrote:
"For I have found in my own experience that it is of no small benefit,
when you lie in bed in the dark, to recall in imagination, one after another,
the outlines of the form you have been studying." He often awoke to find
his problems solved. Da Vinci would often stand silent and motionless
before a painting for hours, without using his brush,
as though waiting for spiritual guidance.

Wilferd A. Peterson

perspective 2 - perspective 3 - perspective 4
perspective 5 - perspective 6

If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people,
with all the existing human ratios remaining the same,
it would look something like the following:

There would be:

57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere,
both north and south
8 Africans

52 would be female
48 would be male

70 would be non-white
30 would be white

70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian

89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual

6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth
and all 6 would be from the United States.

80 would live in substandard housing

70 would be unable to read

50 would suffer from malnutrition

1 would be near death
1 would be near birth

1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education

1 would own a computer

When one considers our world from such a
compressed perspective, the need for acceptance, understanding
and education becomes glaringly apparent.

thanks, noelle!

It amazes me, and I know the wind will surely someday blow it all away
It amazes me, and I'm so very grateful that You made the world this way

John Denver

We believe we can change things according to our wishes because
that's the only happy solution we can see. We don't think
of what usually happens and what is also a happy solution;
things don't change, but by and by our wishes change.

Marcel Proust

Before we set our hearts too much upon
anything, let us examine how happy
they are who already possess it.

Francois de la Rochefoucauld

The world is round and the place which may
seem like the end, may also be only the beginning.

Ivy Baker Priest

What makes us discontented with our condition is the
absurdly exaggerated idea we have of the happiness of others.

unattributed

™

All contents © Living Life Fully™, all rights reserved.
Please feel free to re-use material from this site other than copyrighted articles--
contact each author for permission to use those. If you use material, it would be
greatly appreciated if you would provide credit and a link back to the original
source, and let us know where the material is published. Thank you.

There are defeats more triumphant than victories.

Michel de Montaigne

The wealth of the soul is the only true wealth.

Lucian

One is never as fortunate or as unfortunate as one imagines.

Francois la Rochefoucauld

perspective 2 - perspective 3 - perspective 4
perspective 5 - perspective 6

Answers:

Candidate A is Franklin D. Roosevelt
Candidate B is Winston Churchill
Candidate C is Adolph Hitler

And the answer to the abortion question: If you said yes, you just killed Ludwig von Beethoven.

Never be afraid to try something new. Remember: amateurs built the ark; professionals built the Titanic.

You may think that the routine of your life is extremely common, insipid,
flavorless, but right alongside of you there may be others who lead the
same kind of a life, who are getting happiness out of it; who think that
life is a glory instead of a grind. They may make play of their work while
you make it a drudgery. They may find joy in it while you find nothing
interesting in it.
You may never have learned to see the uncommon in the common.
Others may see more glory in the grass you tread under your feet and in
the small flowers you never look at, than you could find in the garden of
a king. There may be people living near you who get more out of a home
with carpetless floors and pictureless walls than you could get out of a
palace, for with them love and contentment and sweet sympathy dwell,
while perhaps in your home there is only selfishness, greed, and discontent.

Orison Swett Marden
The Joys of Living

I am not a victim of the world I see around me. Above all else,
what I see around me reflects what I am. I project the thoughts,
feelings, and attitudes that are important to me in the world.
So I can see the world differently by changing my eyes
and deciding to see what I want to see.

Gerald Jampolsky

The brighter you are the more you have to learn.

Don Herold

I learned about attitudes. In Bangkok they say mah-pen-lai. I heard people
say, "mah-pen-lai" all over the place. I wondered, "What's this mah-pen-lai
stuff?" Finally, when I got acquainted with some Thai people, I said, "There's
a phrase I keep hearing in the marketplace, in the airport, in the museums, on
the canals, on the rivers, mah-pen-lai--what does it mean? They sort of smiled,
and said, "It means 'it's all right, it doesn't matter.'" All in a sudden it dawned
on me. My goodness! No wonder they're called the land of smiles, if so many
people can say, "It's all right, it doesn't matter." And then I thought about our
culture where everything matters. "What do you mean, it doesn't matter?! If
you think it doesn't matter, it's because you're frivolous!" It doesn't matter. The
world will go on without you. Ninety percent of what we worry about doesn't
happen anyway. And we worry and we worry and we worry.
And then we worry about worrying!

Leo Buscaglia
Living, Loving, and Learning

I went to see my father in the hospital about a week before he died. He had
suffered for years with emphysema, hooked up to an oxygen tank, barely able
to move around, and was failing fast. Bedridden, he was on constant oxygen
and medication; his six-foot-two frame weighed only 130 pounds because
eating anything but ice cream was too difficult. Every breath was a labored
struggle. I asked him whether the quality of his life was worth all the effort.
"I still enjoy being alive," he responded. "Sometimes it's easier to breathe and
then I really enjoy just quietly taking a breath. I still enjoy reading the comics
in the newspaper and watching the ball games on TV. My life is good." He
said not a word about all that he had lost, all that he would never do again.

M.J. Ryan
Attitudes of Gratitude

To follow your life's guidance, you may have to reassign some seemingly
important things to "unimportant." If you believe that pleasing your horrible
boss or having a spotless house is a higher priority than playing with your
children or sleeping off the flu, be prepared for a long and strenuous battle
against destiny. Also, be prepared to lose.

Martha Beck

We have some inspiring and motivational books that may interest you. Our main way of supporting this site is through the sale of books, either physical copies or digital copies for your Amazon Kindle (including the online reader). All of the money that we earn through them comes back to the site in one way or another. Just click on the picture to the left to visit our page of books, both fiction and non-fiction!

From the spiritual side:

Whether it's a pebble in a riverbed or a soaring mountain peak, I see everything
in the world as the handiwork of the Lord. When I paint, I try to represent the
beauty of God's creation in my art. Many modern painters see the world
as a jumble of random lines and shapes with no divine beauty or order, and their
works reflect their viewpoint. Because I see God's peacefulness, serenity,
and contentment, I work to capture those feelings on the canvas.
My vision of God defines my vision of the world.

Thomas Kinkade

Imagine seeing God in your boss. In the woman in the next cubicle.
In the driver in front of you on the freeway. In the neighbor who
doesn't mow his lawn. In the loud guy on the subway selling candy bars.
   Imagine seeing only the good in your spouse. In the husband who
snores too loudly and doesn't put down the toilet seat. In the wife who
nags too often and never stops talking long enough to listen.
   Imagine seeing only the good in your children. In the toddler who
throws a tantrum in the cookie aisle. In the ten-year-old who refuses
to clean her room. In the teenager who wrecks the car he never
asked to borrow.
   Imagine seeing God in the cancer verdict you just got. Or in the layoff
notice. Or in the pregnancy test that came back positive. . . or negative.
   What if you focused your magnifying glass on the good in everything
that looks and feels dead in your life, in the marriage you want to give up
on, in the job that bores you, in the person in the mirror?
   Whatever I see through that magnifying glass grows bigger.
   It's up to me to decide where to aim the lens.

Regina Brett
Be the Miracle