Perspective Quotes

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When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.

- Alexander Graham Bell

Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them.

- Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

Whether you think you can or think you can't, you are right.

- Henry Ford

Got no check books, got no banks. Still I'd like to express my thanks -- I got the sun in the morning and the moon at night.

- Irving Berlin

Love isn't finding a perfect person. It's seeing an imperfect person perfectly.

- Sam Keen

Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt.

- Laozi (Lao Tzu, Lao Tse, Lao Tsu)

Scared and sacred are spelled with the same letters. Awful proceeds from the same root word as awesome. Terrify and terrific. Every negative experience holds the seed of transformation.

- Alan Cohen

Seek patience and passion in equal amounts. Patience alone will not build the temple. Passion alone will destroy its walls.

- Maya Angelou

Reality is much more complex than any judgment of right and wrong encourages you to believe. When you really understand the ethical, spiritual, social, economic, and psychological forces that shape individuals, you will see that people's choices are not based on a desire to hurt. Instead, they are in accord with what they know and what world views are available to them. Most are doing the best they can, given what information they've received and what problems they are facing.

- Michael Lerner

You must have discipline to have fun.

- Julia Child

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world -- that is the myth of the atomic age -- as in being able to remake ourselves.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi

To be seventy years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be forty years old.

- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Our concern is not how to worship in the catacombs, but how to remain human in the skyscrapers.

- Abraham Joshua Heschel

Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.

- Jonathan Swift

I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.

- Michel de Montaigne

We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are.

- Talmud

Emancipation from the bondage of the soil is no freedom for the tree.

- Rabindranath Tagore

We all know we are unique individuals, but we tend to see others as representatives of groups.

- Deborah Tannen

The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation -- or a relationship.

- Deborah Tannen

From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity.

- Thomas Moore

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

- Mark Twain

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.

- William Butler Yeats

Never look down on anybody unless you're helping him up.

- Jesse Jackson

There are two barriers that often prevent communication between the young and their elders. The first is middle-aged forgetfulness of the fact that they themselves are no longer young. The second is youthful ignorance of the fact that the middle aged are still alive.

- Jessamyn West