Perspective Quotes

“Be merry; you have cause, so have we all, of joy; for our escape is much beyond our loss . . . . then wisely weigh our sorrow with our comfort.”

“No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison: We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage: When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down, And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too, Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out; And take upon's the mystery of things, As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out, In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones, That ebb and flow by the moon.”

“Well, every one can master a grief but he that has it.”

“Thou seest we are not all alone unhappy: This wide and universal theatre Presents more woeful pageants than the scene Wherein we play in.”

“Then with the losers let it sympathize,For nothing can seem foul to those that win.”

“Life... is a paradise to what we know of death.”

“Poor and content is rich, and rich enough.”

“I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano!”

“There is nothing serious in Mortality”

“Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown, Of thee, from the hill-top looking down; And the heifer, that lows in the upland farm, Far-heard, lows not thine ear to charm; The sexton tolling the bell at noon, Dreams not that great Napoleon Sto”

“Keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years hence.”

“Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.”

“Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.”

“The True Artist has the planet for his pedestal; the adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his shoes.”

“Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in.”

“Look what thy soul holds dear, imagine itTo lie that way thou goest, not whence thou com'st.Suppose the singing birds musicians,The grass whereon thou tread'st the presence strewed,The flowers fair ladies, and thy steps no moreThan a delight measure or a dance;For gnarling sorrow hath less power to biteThe man that mocks at it and sets it light.”

“One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty another's ugliness; one man's wisdom anpther's folly.”

“If a man fasten his attention on a single aspect of truth and apply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted and not itself but falsehood.”

“Life is comic or pitiful as soon as the high ends of being fade out of sight, and man becomes near-sighted, and can only attend towhat addresses the senses.”

“We are all wise for other people, none for himself.”

“Life too near paralyses art.”

“When we our betters see bearing our woes, We scarcely think our miseries our foes.”

“Where the greater malady is fixed,The lesser is scarce felt.”

“No, Cassius; for the eye sees not itself, But by reflection, by some other things.”

“The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough.”