Friday, September 7, 2007

Quotes: Perspective.

A collection of quotes on various topics. The sentence in bold face is a plain statement of the quote that follows.

Perspective
This creature had never seen a man; what am I destined not to see?
Perspective 3 The creature [fossil] had never lived to see a man, and I, what was I never going to see? Eiseley, The Immense Journey

Millions of people were dying across the world, but to them the most important event was that the team had been undefeated.
Perspective 139 People were dying by the hundreds of thousands from Manchuria to Shanghai, by the millions across the plains of Russia, but for Howard and Nancy and their friends the autumn of 1941 meant only that the team had gone undefeated…. Childers, Wings of Morning

When I came back, Turtle Creek was the same, but I had changed.
Perspective 120 When I had come back nothing much was different at Turtle Creek but I had changed. Browning, Notes from Turtle Creek.

You see others with your own personality; if you have grandeur within, you see grandeur in those outside of you.
Perspective 1070 That only which we have within, can we see without…if there is grandeur in you, you will find grandeur in porters and sweeps. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Worship.

If the stars only appeared once in a thousand years, how would we look at them?
Perspective 9 If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance…. Emerson, Nature.

The minute shows us the whole.
Perspective 69 The near explains the far; the drop is a small ocean. Emerson, The American Scholar.

An atom represents the universe; a moment of time explains eternity.
Perspective 400 ...the universe is represented in an atom, eternity in a moment of time. Emerson, The Over-Soul.

One man’s justice, beauty and wisdom is another man’s injustice, ugliness and folly.
Perspective 410 One man’s justice is another man’s injustice; one man’s beauty, another’s ugliness; one man’s wisdom, another’s folly.... Emerson, Circles.

Our moods paint the outside world.
Perspective 473 Life is a train of moods…and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus. Emerson, Experience.

Just as a complex mechanism slowly moves the hands of time on a clock, so the complex mass of humanity resulted in the loss of the Battle of Austerlitz in the slow movement of time in history.
Perspective 298 Just as in the clock the result of the complex action of innumerable wheels and pulleys is merely the slow and regular movement of the hand marking the time, so the result of all the complex human activities of these 160,000 Russians and French—of all their passions, hopes, regrets, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride, fear, and enthusiasm—was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz…; that is to say a slow movement of the hand on the dial of human history. Tolstoi, War and Peace.

Castro is a thorn, but he is not a dagger.
Perspective, Metaphor 236 Fulbright: The Castro regime is a thorn in the flesh; but it is not a dagger in the heart. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days

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