Quotes about Perception

We are not troubled by things, but by the opinion which we have of things.

Things are in their essence what we choose to make them. A thing is, according to the mode in which one looks at it.

Little things affect little minds.

AH I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

We keep on deceiving ourselves in regard to our faults, until we at last come to look upon them as virtues.

Nothing is more like a wise man than a fool who holds his tongue.

We are fonder of visiting our friends in health than in sickness. We judge less favorably of their characters when any misfortune happens to them; and a lucky hit, either in business or reputation, improves even their personal appearance in our eyes.

I observed once to Goethe ... that when a friend is with us we do not think the same of him as when he is away. He replied, "Yes! because the absent friend is yourself, and he exists only in your head; whereas the friend who is present has an individuality of his own, and moves according to laws of his own, which cannot always be in accordance with those which you form for yourself."

The nearer the church, the further from God.

No man ever saw a government. I live in the midst of the Government of the United States, but I never saw the Government of the United States.

Hatred seems to operate on the same glands as love; it even produces the same actions. If we had not been taught how to interpret the story of the Passion, would we have been able to say from their actions alone whether it was the jealous Judas or the cowardly Peter who loved Christ?

A man is a kind of inverted thermometer, the bulb uppermost, and the column of self-valuation is all the time going up and down.