How do you perceive the world?

“Well I’m beginning to see the light.” ~ Lou Reed

“There are as many styles of beauty as there are visions of happiness.”  ~ Stendhal

“What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb – but the darkness of the womb?” –Valarie Kaur

“Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream…. this is not dying.” – John Lennon

“Let me know that into the knot of self comes the thread called time, and that what I am, disgraced or blessed, came from what I was, goes to what I yet may be.” ~ from Ahabs Wife or, The Star Gazer by Sena Jeter Naslund

“We are not in the business of fighting darkness, we are farmers of light.” – Jewel

“[Writing is] like driving a car at night: you never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”  ~ E.L. Doctorow

“When I look into the future, it’s so bright it burns my eyes.” — Oprah Winfrey

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.”  ~ Isaac Asimov

“The trouble is, you think you have time” — Buddha

“The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways.” ― Robert Greene, Mastery

“As a child I assumed that when I reached adulthood, I would have grown-up thoughts.” ~ David Sedaris

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” – Max Planck

“The whole point of Jesus’s life was not that we should become exactly
like him, but that we should become ourselves in the same way he
became himself. Jesus was not the great exception but the great
example.” – Carl Jung

“You see things less clearly when you open your eyes too wide.” ~ Italo Svevo

“I had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one. I imagined that I felt the calling and prayed that it be so.” ―from JUST KIDS by Patti Smith

“None of us knows where to look, but all of us know not to look down . . . Our question is: what would happen if we looked down? Would it be as bad as we imagine? What might we see? Could it even be good for us?”  – Paul Kingsnorth, The Dark Mountain Project

“Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” – Leonard Cohen

“We tend to judge others by their behavior, and ourselves by our intentions.” – Unknown

“Permit your dreams to see the daylight.” ~ Bernard Kelvin Clive

“What you seek is seeking you.” ~ Rumi

“The eyes of compassion see the many beings
The ocean of happiness and endless life is boundless”
—Hakuin (1685-1768)
from the Lotus Sutra, calligraphed on self-portrait as Kuan-yin

“A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people.” ~ Annie Leibovitz

“Yes, I see your net, but we are here.” – Ram Dass

“Perspective is everything . . . It’s everything.” ~ Brian Glazer

“To give your positive or negative attention to something is a way of giving energy. The most damaging form of behavior is withholding your attention.”  ~ Masaru Emoto

“We live in the Time of Capital; in Machine Time. We are refugees from a war on a Time we cannot remember; a war nearly erased from our collective memories. The Time of Nature is hidden from view, and we are crippled by our loss of Time.” ~ Rhyd Wildermuth, The Time of Your Life

“We are made of stardust; why not take a few moments to look up at the family album?” ~Natalie Angier

“I’m smart enough to know that I’m dumb . . . The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.” – Richard P. Feynman

“Please believe that one single positive dream is more important than a thousand negative realities.”  ~ Adeline Yen Mah