These 44 Quotes Will Crack Open a Perspective You Never Considered
You know that feeling when you’re looking at a familiar object,
and someone turns it just a fraction of an inch,
and suddenly you see a shape, a shadow,
a possibility you never noticed was there?
It’s the same object, but your perception of it is forever changed.
That’s the power of a shifted perspective.
It doesn’t always require a grand, life-altering event.
Sometimes, all it takes is a single sentence,
a perfectly arranged collection of words that slips past
your usual defenses and quietly reconfigures a piece of your reality.
Quotes
We’ve gathered these quotes for exactly that purpose. Don’t just read them; let them linger. See which ones crack open a perspective you never considered.
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” — Marcel Proust
“What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” — Confucius
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” — Anaïs Nin
“The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.” — Ryan Holiday
“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” — Rumi
“The function of freedom is to free someone else.” — Toni Morrison
“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” — Elie Wiesel
“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.” — Kahlil Gibran
“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” — Søren Kierkegaard
“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.” — Carl Jung
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.” — Rainer Maria Rilke
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” — Alice Walker
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” — Socrates
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” — Desmond Tutu
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” — Carl Rogers
“Everything you can imagine is real.” — Pablo Picasso
“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.” — Henry David Thoreau
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Will Durant (often misattributed to Aristotle)
“Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” — John D. Rockefeller
“The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried.” — Stephen McCranie
“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” — Lao Tzu
“One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.” — Sigmund Freud
“The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.” — Marcus Aurelius
“What is to give light must endure burning.” — Viktor Frankl
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” — Viktor Frankl
“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” — Albert Einstein
“Not all those who wander are lost.” — J.R.R. Tolkien
“The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person who is doing it.” — Chinese Proverb
“To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.” — Robert Louis Stevenson
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” — Rumi
“The greatest wealth is to live content with little.” — Plato
“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.” — Bernard M. Baruch
“Comparison is the thief of joy.” — Theodore Roosevelt
“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Even the finest sword plunged into salt water will eventually rust.” — Japanese Proverb
“Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.” — Anne Lamott
“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” — Joseph Campbell
“History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history.” — James Baldwin
“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.” — William James
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” — Viktor E. Frankl
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” — Oscar Wilde
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” — Rumi
“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.” — John Steinbeck
