Perspective: It is seldom indeed that one parts on good terms, because if one were on good terms one would not part. ~Marcel Proust Perspective: It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem. ~G.K. Chesterton Perspective: It isn't the mountains ahead that wear you out, it's the grain of sand in your shoe. ~Author Unknown Perspective: 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 Perspective: It's a shame that philosophical ideals don't always match up to pragmatic reality. We live in an analog world, not a digital one, so binary black-and-white choices and reflexive adherence to absolutes are rarely useful or applicable. Deal with it. ~David C. Hill Perspective: It's a shame that pragmatic reality doesn't always live up to our philosophical ideals. There is right and wrong, even if we aren't always gifted with the knowledge of which is which. One can too easily get lost in a world of greys, and so guarded commitment to some absolutes (while acknowledging one's own fallibility) can be essential to avoid sliding down that old slippery slope. ~David C. Hill Perspective: Johnsons are rare; yet, Boswells are perhaps still rarer. ~Thomas Carlyle Perspective: Just as important as having a list of priorities is every once in a while starting from the bottom. ~Robert Brault Perspective: Just because a man lacks the use of his eyes doesn't mean he lacks vision. ~Stevie Wonder Perspective: 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 Perspective: Life is a series of tasks that you absolutely must get done before they don't matter any more. ~Robert Brault Perspective: Life is inherently paradoxical: every dream has the potential for nightmare; every nightmare may reveal some truth. ~Dr. Idel Dreimer Perspective: Life is not all Beer and Skittles. The inherent tragedy of things works itself out from white to black and blacker, and the poor things of a day look ruefully on. Does it shake my cast-iron faith? I cannot say it does. I believe in an ultimate decency of things; ay, and if I woke in hell, should still believe it. ~Robert Louis Stevenson, letter to Sidney Colvin Perspective: Look back into folklore and legend, myth and religion, and you will find much of the emphasis is on the shadow. A shadowless man is a monster, a devil, a thing of evil. A man without a shadow is soulless. A shadow without a man is a pitiable shred. Yet together, light and dark, they make a whole. And these light/dark chiaroscuro figures walking about a magical landscape illumine all our lives. ~Jane Yolen Perspective: Man looks earthward with a microscopic eye; heavenward with telescopic lenses. ~James Lendall Basford Perspective: Merited rebuke from an inferior has a double sting. ~James Lendall Basford Perspective: My play was a complete success. The audience was a failure. ~Ashleigh Brilliant Perspective: Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation. ~Friedrich Nietzsche Perspective: No man sees far; the most see no farther than their noses. ~Thomas Carlyle Perspective: No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye. ~Elizabeth Bowen Perspective: No one knows what they'll do in a moment of crisis and hypothetical questions get hypothetical answers. ~Joan Baez Perspective: Not everything that is more difficult is more meritorious. ~Saint Thomas Aquinas Perspective: Nothing in the universe can travel at the speed of light, they say, forgetful of the shadow's speed. ~Howard Nemerov Perspective: Nothing is further than Earth from Heaven: nothing is nearer than Heaven to Earth. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare Perspective: Nothing is less promising than precocity. A young thistle is more like a future tree than is a young oak. ~Marie Dubsky, Freifrau von Ebner-Eschenbach Perspective: 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 Perspective: Nothing's a gift, it's all on loan. ~Wisława Szymborska Perspective: 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 Perspective: One day it's your turn, and all the stumbling words of consolation you ever said are said to you - and they don't seem stumbling at all. ~Robert Brault Perspective: One man's frankness is another man's vulgarity. ~Kevin Smith Perspective: One man's quiet is another man's din. ~Terri Guillemets Perspective: One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries. ~A.A. Milne Perspective: Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds; and until we know what has been or will be the peculiar combination of outward with inward facts, which constitute a man's critical actions, it will be better not to think ourselves wise about his character. There is a terrible coercion in our deeds which may at first turn the honest man into a deceiver, and then reconcile him to the change; for this reason—that the second wrong presents itself to him in the guise of the only practicable right. The action which before commission has been seen with that blended common sense and fresh untarnished feeling which is the healthy eye of the soul is looked at afterward with the lens of apologetic ingenuity, through which all things that men call beautiful and ugly are seen to be made up of textures very much alike. ~George Eliot Perspective: People who look through keyholes are apt to get the idea that most things are keyhole shaped. ~Author Unknown Perspective: Perhaps there should be one day a week when you tackle your "Things I Gotta Undo" list. ~Robert Brault Perspective: Plagiarists, at least, have the merit of preservation. ~Benjamin Disraeli Perspective: Presence is more than just being there. ~Malcolm S. Forbes Perspective: Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers. ~Thomas Pynchon, Jr. Perspective: Retreat, hell! We're just advancing in another direction. ~Oliver Prince Smith Perspective: Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited. ~Ambrose Bierce Perspective: Saints in stone have done more in the world than living ones. ~Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Perspective: Set out from any point. They are all alike. They all lead to a point of departure. ~Antonio Porchia Perspective: Sin is geographical. ~Bertrand Russell Perspective: So much unmerited honour has been paid me in my lifetime that I may upon occasion well put up with a little unmerited censure. ~Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Perspective: So often in life a new chapter awaits. You ride off into the sunset and discover it's the sunrise. ~Robert Brault Perspective: Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not. ~George Bernard Shaw Perspective: Someone said, "The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did." Precisely, and they are that which we know. ~T.S. Eliot Perspective: Sometimes the faces of the wicked are turned towards heaven for the first time when they are laid in the grave. ~James Lendall Basford Perspective: Sometimes the littlest inquiries produce the biggest results. ~Terri Guillemets Perspective: Sometimes we don't look up unless we have a reason to. And then it all becomes clear. ~Terri Guillemets Perspective: Sometimes we must unfocus our way to clarity. ~Terri Guillemets Perspective: 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 Perspective: The activities you spent your time on yesterday were the things that were important to you. Calendars don't lie. ~Scott Ginsberg Perspective: The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress. ~Joseph Joubert Perspective: The answer to poverty is not charity, the solution to abortion is not laws, the key to saving the environment is not recycling. As Thoreau so wisely noted, we must strike at the root, not hack at the branches. ~Terri Guillemets Perspective: The average man will bristle if you say his father was dishonest, but he will brag a little if he discovers that his great-grandfather was a pirate. ~Bern Williams Perspective: The bat hanging upside down laughs at the topsy-turvy world. ~Japanese proverb Perspective: The best rose-bush, after all, is not that which has the fewest thorns, but that which bears the finest roses. ~Henry Van Dyke Perspective: The bluebird carries the sky on his back. ~Henry David Thoreau Perspective: The chains that bind us most closely are the ones we have broken. ~Antonio Porchia Perspective: The commonest opinions and the things that everybody takes for granted often most deserve examination. ~Georg Christoph Lichtenberg Perspective: The crash of the whole solar and stellar systems could only kill you once. ~Thomas Carlyle Perspective: The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. ~William Shakespeare Perspective: The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on. ~Joseph Heller Perspective: The enemy of your enemy is your friend. ~Proverb Perspective: The grass may be greener on the other side of the fence, but you still have to mow it. ~Author Unknown Perspective: The guy who invented the first wheel was an idiot. The guy who invented the other three, he was a genius. ~Sid Caesar Perspective: The highest virtue here may be least in another world. ~Khalil Gibran Perspective: The judicial mind is too commonly characterized by a regard for a fourth decimal as the equal of a whole number. ~Martin H. Fischer Perspective: The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. ~Douglas Adams Perspective: The least unkindness from a friend is of greater smart than the hardest usage from an enemy. ~Greek proverb Perspective: The long way around is the shortcut when everybody knows the shortcut. ~Robert Brault Perspective: The minute atom has as many degrees of latitude and longitude as the mighty Jupiter. ~James Lendall Basford Perspective: The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. ~Henry Miller Perspective: The most amazing things that can happen to a human being will happen to you, if you just lower your expectations. ~Phil Dunphy Perspective: The most rapid motions are those which are not perceived; and the greatest changes, both in nature and life, are brought about by invisible causes. ~William Benton Clulow Perspective: The one true measure of the things that matter in life is that they can't be insured against loss. ~Robert Brault Perspective: The poor never estimate as a virtue the generosity of the rich. ~Marie Dubsky, Freifrau von Ebner-Eschenbach Perspective: The pyramids will not last a moment compared with the daisy. ~D.H. Lawrence Perspective: The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. ~Marcel Proust Perspective: The reverse side also has a reverse side. ~Japanese Proverb Perspective: The rich would have to eat money if the poor did not provide food. ~Russian proverb Perspective: The same fence that shuts others out shuts you in. ~Bill Copeland Perspective: The shadows: some hide, others reveal. ~Antonio Porchia Perspective: The things which are most important don't always scream the loudest. ~Bob Hawke Perspective: The tyrant dies and his rule ends, the martyr dies and his rule begins. ~Søren Kierkegaard Perspective: The tyrant is nothing but a slave turned inside out. ~Herbert Spencer Perspective: The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. ~H.L. Mencken Perspective: The violence we do to ourselves in order to remain faithful to the one we love is hardly better than an act of infidelity. ~François VI de la Rochefoucault Perspective: The wings of angels and devils are in all of us. ~Jakarat Chotdamorng Perspective: The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning. ~Ivy Baker Priest Perspective: There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root... ~Henry David Thoreau Perspective: There are always three sides to every story: your side, the other side, and the truth. ~Author Unknown Perspective: There are those whose sole claim to profundity is the discovery of exceptions to the rules. ~Paul Eldridge Perspective: There are truths on this side of the Pyrenees, which are falsehoods on the other. ~Blaise Pascal Perspective: There is but an inch of difference between the cushioned chamber and the padded cell. ~Gilbert Keith Chesterton Perspective: There is no burnt rice to a hungry person. ~Philippine Proverb Perspective: 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 Perspective: There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. ~William Shakespeare Perspective: There is only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it. ~Chinese Proverb Perspective: There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius. ~Walt Whitman Perspective: There will be a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning. ~Louis L'Amour Perspective: There's an alternative. There's always a third way, and it's not a combination of the other two ways. It's a different way. ~David Carradine Perspective: There's no such thing as bragging. You're either lying or telling the truth. ~Al Oliver Perspective: There's such a thin line between winning and losing. ~John R. Tunis Perspective: They've got us surrounded again, the poor bastards. ~Creighton W. Abrams Perspective: Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is the lightning that does the work. ~Mark Twain Perspective: To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and, whatever you hit, call it the target. ~Patrick Toche Perspective: To every corner there is always more than one way out. ~James Lendall Basford Perspective: To live in scarcity is to worry about the cost of food; to live in abundance is to worry about who else you can invite for dinner. ~Mike Dolan Perspective: To really enjoy the better things in life, one must first have experienced the things they are better than. ~Oscar Holmolka Perspective: Too much attention to others' business often directs their attention to yours. ~James Lendall Basford Perspective: Travelers never think that are the foreigners. ~Mason Cooley Perspective: Unappreciated Greatness often starves, while appreciated Littleness feeds on the fat of the land. ~James Lendall Basford Perspective: Vision is the art of seeing things invisible. ~Jonathan Swift Perspective: Vision may sometimes sleep in the sun, while it wakens to widest revelation in utter darkness. Thus I am rapt in a trance-like acceptance of opening cavernous depths, crypts of decyphered gloom, yielding hollows of velvet obscurity that go down, down to the roots of things. ~Virginia Garland Perspective: We envy others, for we see their lives in broad outline, while forced to live ours in every detail. ~Robert Brault Perspective: We feed upon the finest of animal flesh, and at last ourselves become food for worms. ~James Lendall Basford Perspective: We have them just where they want us. ~James T. Kirk Perspective: We may build a mountain in a day that a lifetime cannot remove. ~James Lendall Basford Perspective: We resent an injury from a friend more than from an enemy. ~Sophocles Perspective: We're all hookers. What matters is dignity. ~Mike Farren Perspective: What if when you die, they ask How was heaven? ~Author Unknown Perspective: What is a promiscuous person? It is usually someone who is getting more sex than you are. ~Victor Lownes Perspective: What is true by lamplight is not always true by sunlight. ~Joseph Joubert Perspective: 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 Perspective: What we see depends mainly on what we look for. ~John Lubbock Perspective: What's frustrating about being disliked is that it's invariably for the wrong reason. ~Robert Brault Perspective: When a dog runs at you, whistle for him. ~Henry David Thoreau Perspective: When a guy goes to a hooker, he's not paying her for sex, he's paying her to leave. ~Author Unknown Perspective: When the young doctors come to me and complain that the older men don't "throw them anything," I tell them that they don't know how to catch. ~Martin H. Fischer Perspective: When those waiters ask me if I want some fresh ground pepper, I ask if they have any aged pepper. ~Andy Rooney Perspective: When you are one of the pieces, it doesn't seem like a game. ~Robert Brault Perspective: When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. ~Khalil Gibran Perspective: 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 Perspective: While his eyes saw the sky, his soul saw Heaven. ~K. Smith Perspective: While it may not be appropriate in every venue, and on every occasion, mockery is the guardian of reason, the enemy of pretension, and the mirror to folly. No belief, no passion, no commitment should be considered immune from the acerbic test of ridicule. ~Dr. Idel Dreimer Perspective: 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 Perspective: Why should I be ambitious? Shall I write verses? I am not likely to surpass Mr Tennyson or Mr Browning in that walk. Shall I be a musician? The blackbird singing this moment somewhere in my garden-shrubbery puts me to instant shame. Shall I paint? The intensest scarlet on an artist's palette is but ochre to that I saw this morning at sunrise.... I am happier as it is. I do not need to make history-there are plenty of people willing to save me trouble on that score. ~Alexander Smith Perspective: Winning is overrated. The only time it is really important is in surgery and war. ~Al McGuire Perspective: Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room. ~William Hazlitt Perspective: Won't you come into the garden? I would like my roses to see you. ~Richard Brinsley Sheridan Perspective: You taught me all about love, all about faith, and then God turned your lessons inside out, let me see the underside of every good thing you gave me. ~Margaret Blair Young Perspective: Youth is not enough. And love is not enough. And success is not enough. And, if we could achieve it, enough would not be enough. ~Mignon McLaughlin