"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be."
— Douglas Adams

"There are no facts, only interpretations."
— Friedrich Nietzsche

"One person's craziness is another person's reality."
— Tim Burton

"The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think."
— Horace Walpole

"I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain. One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself, forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."
— Albert Camus

"Perhaps our eyes need to be washed by our tears once in a while, so that we can see life with a clearer view again."
— Alex Tan

"It’s a secondhand world we’re born into. What is novel to us is only so because we’re newborn, and what we cannot see, that has come before- what our parents have seen and been and done- are the hand-me-downs we begin to wear as swaddling clothes, even as we ourselves are naked. The flaw runs through us, implicating us in its imperfection even as it separates us, delivers us onto opposite sides of a chasm. It is both terribly beautiful and terribly sad, but it is, finally, the fault in the universe that gives birth to us all."
— Katherine Min (Secondhand World)

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

"What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.
"
— Martha Graham

"Would it be possible for me to see something from up there?" asked Milo politely.

"You could," said Alec, "but only if you try very hard to look at things as an adult does."

Milo tried as hard as he could, and, as he did, his feet floated slowly off the ground until he was standing in the air next to Alex Bings. He looked around very quickly and, an instant later, crashed back down to the earth again.

"Interesting, wasn't it?" asked Alex.

"Yes, it was," agreed Milo, rubbing his head and dusting himself off, "but I think I'll continue to see things as a child. It's not so far to fall."
— Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth)

"If we are always arriving and departing, it is also
true that we are eternally anchored. One's destination
is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things."
— Henry Miller

"Distance lends enchantment to the view."
— Mark Twain

"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted."
— Bertrand Russell

"Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech."
— Martin F. Tupper

"Our society tends to regard as a sickness any mode of thought or behavior that is inconvenient for the system and this is plausible because when an individual doesn't fit into the system it causes pain to the individual as well as problems for the system. Thus the manipulation of an individual to adjust him to the system is seen as a cure for a sickness and therefore as good."
— Theodore Kaczynski

"The loveliest faces are to be seen by moonlight, when one sees half with the eye and half with the fancy."
— Persian proverb

"All stories are true. But some of them never happened."
— James A. Owen (The Search for the Red Dragon)

"The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment)

"Although not a very old man, I have yet lived a great deal in my life, and I have known sorrow too bitter and joy too keen to allow me to become either cast down or elated for more than a very brief period over any success or defeat."
— Theodore Roosevelt

"'Oh, why does compassion weaken us?'

'It doesn't, really...Somewhere where it all balances out-don't the philosophers have a name for it, the perfect place, the place where the answers live?-if we could go there, you could see it doesn't.It only looks, a little bit, like it does, from here, like an ant at the foot of an oak tree. He doesn't have a clue that it's a tree; it's the beginning of the wall round the world, to him.'"
— Robin McKinley (Spindle's End)

""A positive attitude is the key to success.""
— Katrina walker

"The city glitters past us with its sharp edges, reminding us of how tiny, how weak, how totally unimportant we are."
— Joe Meno (Demons in the Spring)

"For the Earth itself is a blossom, she says,
on the star tree,
pale with luminous
ocean leaves."
— Rolf Jacobsen

"If the stars should appear but one night every thousand years how man would marvel and adore."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"'A mountain still in the distance can appear as a molehill.'"
— Howard Fast (April Morning)

"Yesterday's story is
Today's truth is
Tomorrow's myth."
— Amanda Yates

"A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth. "
— Richard Avedon

"A loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostile world."
— Ken Keyes Jr. (Handbook to Higher Consciousness)

"There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and forty-eight."
— Ezra Pound

"Earth teach me to forget myself
as melted snow forgets its life.
Earth teach me resignation
as the leaves which die in the fall.
Earth teach me courage
as the tree which stands all alone.
Earth teach me regeneration
as the seed which rises in the spring."
— William Alexander

"Every time I've done something that doesn't feel right, it's ended up not being right."
— Mario Cuomo

"Science is an organized pursuit of triviality.

Art is a casual pursuit of significance.

Let's keep it in perspective."
— Vera Nazarian

"Because neither she nor Port had ever lived a life of any kind of regularity, they had both made the fatal error of coming hazily to regard time as non-existent. One year was like another year. Eventually everything would happen."
— Paul Bowles (The Sheltering Sky)

"Why then should witless man so much misweene
That nothing is but that which he hath seene?"
— Edmund Spenser

"...You don't always get what you expect. I wish someone, sometime when I was growing up, would have told me what expectations would get me. ...
Our parents, schools, everyone tells us things will be a certain way when we're adults and if they're not that way, we should make them be; or at least pretend. But after a certain point that just doesn't work.
(Sandy, in THE CRAZY HORSE ELECTRIC GAME)"
— Chris Crutcher

"...I'd proven to the world that maturity, experience, dedication, and ingenuity can make up for a little senescence. Muscle tightening is not the only thing that happens to our bodies over time. We gain knowledge, focus, and understanding, and those things can help us win."
— Dara Torres (Age is Just a Number: Achieve Your Dreams At Any Stage In Your Life)

"I've wanted to win at everything, every day, since I was a kid. And time doesn't change a person, it just helps you get a handle on who you are. Even at age 41, I still hate losing--I'm just more gracious about it. I'm also aware that setbacks have an upside; they fuel new dreams."
— Dara Torres (Age is Just a Number: Achieve Your Dreams At Any Stage In Your Life)

"Let us preserve our silent sanctuaries for in them we perpetuate the eternal perspectives."
— Greek philosopher

""Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.""
— Goethe/J.W.

"The most fatal illusion is the settled point of view. Since life is growth and motion, a fixed point of view kills anybody who has one."
— Brooks Atkinson