Seeing The Best In Life Quotes & Sayings

Living well has something to do with the spirituality of wholeheartedness, of seeing life more as a grace than as a penance, as time to be lived with eager expectation of its goodness, not in dread of its challenges. — Joan D. Chittister

You are fighting against nothingness all the time by creating a series of shields that you call personality, life history, feelings, ideas, and ways of seeing. — Frederick Lenz

My chest tightens: seeing him so upset breaks my own heart. 'Don't you ever wish you could make that bit go away?" I say, feeling angry at the past. 'That you could erase those painful memories, forget they every happened, just remember the happy times you had together?'
'You must never say that,' he reprimands sternly.
'But why not?' I look at him in surprise.
'Because it's the bad memories that makes you appreciate the good ones. Don't ever wish them away. it's like your nan always used to say, "You need both the sun and the rain to make a rainbow". — Alexandra Potter

I LOST MY OWN BOY, Treelore, right before I started waiting on Miss Leefolt. He was twenty-four years old. The best part of a person's life. It just wasn't enough time living in this world. He had him a little apartment over on Foley Street. Seeing a real nice girl name Frances and I spec they was gone get married, but he was slow bout things like that. Not cause he looking for something better, just cause he the thinking kind. Wore big glasses and reading all the time. He even start writing his own book, bout being a colored man living and working in Mississippi. — Kathryn Stockett

And under all this vast illusion of the cosmopolitan planet, with its empires and its Reuter's agency, the real life of man goes on concerned with this tree or that temple, with this harvest or that drinking-song, totally uncomprehended, totally untouched. And it watches from its splendid parochialism, possibly with a smile of amusement, motor-car civilization going its triumphant way, outstripping time, consuming space, seeing all and seeing nothing, roaring on at last to the capture of the solar system, only to find the sun cockney and the stars suburban. — G.K. Chesterton

He shook his head in disbelief. He would cook and take her to his place. He was about to break two of his own rules. Number one was to never create the intimacy of cooking for a woman he was seeing, and the other one, to never take her to his place. They had the nasty habit of leaving personal things behind and making his house an extension of their own. He had no other alternative - she shared her place with her brother - but somehow he was enjoying doing it for Mary.
Perfect Match — Marcia Weber Martins

As children become increasingly less connected to adults, they rely more and more on each other; the whole natural order of things change. In the natural order of all mammalian cultures, animals or humans, the young stay under the wings of adults until they themselves reach adulthood. Immature creatures were never meant to bring one another to maturity. They were never meant to look to one another for primary nurturing, modelling, cue giving or mentoring. They are not equipped to give one another a sense of direction or values. As a result of today's shift to this peer orientation, we are seeing the increasing immaturity, alienation, violence and precocious sexualization of North American Youth. The disruption of family life, rapid economic and social changes to human culture and relationships, and the erosion of stable communities are at the core of this shift. — Gabor Mate

A Prayer Found in Chester Cathedral Give me good digestion, Lord, And also something to digest; Give me a healthy body, Lord, With sense to keep it at its best. Give me a healthy mind, good Lord, To keep the good and pure in sight; Which, seeing sin, is not appalled, But finds a way to set it right. Give me a mind that is not bored, That does not whimper, whine or sigh; Don't let me worry overmuch About the fussy thing called 'I'. Give me a sense of humour, Lord, Give me the grace to see a joke; To get some happiness from life, And pass it on to other folk. - Anonymous — John Boyes

So how do you fall in love with life? The same way you fall in love with another person
you adore everything about them! You fall in love with another person by seeing only love, hearing only love, speaking only love, and by feeling love with all your heart! And that is exactly how you use the ultimate power of love in love with life. — Rhonda Byrne

We watch Paracelsus in Basle as though seeing a man run headlong toward a precipice. Like an indestructible lunatic, he will do so again and again throughout his life. — Philip Ball

By seeing life's experiences through to the end, on our small scale, we can finally say, as Jesus did on the cross, "It is finished." We, too, can then have "finished our preparations," having done the particular work God has given each of us to do. However, our tiny cup cannot be taken from us either. For this reason have we come unto the world. — Neal A. Maxwell

The bone's 6 inches out of his leg and all he's yelling is, 'Win the game, win the game.' I've not seen that in my life. Pretty special young man. I don't think we could have gathered ourselves - I know I couldn't have - if Kevin didn't say over and over again, 'Just go win the game,' I don't think we could have gone in the locker room with a loss after seeing that. We had to gather ourselves. We couldn't lose this game for him. We just couldn't. — Rick Pitino

My own study of the networked life has left me thinking about intimacy - about being with people in person, hearing their voices and seeing their faces, trying to know their hearts. And it has left me thinking about solitude-the kind that refreshes and restores. Loneliness is failed solitude. To experience solitude you must be able to summon yourself by yourself; otherwise you will only know how to be lonely — Sherry Turkle

I knew long ago and rediscovered that the best way to attract attention,help,and conversation is to be lost.A man who seeing his mother starving to death on a path kicks her in the stomach to clear the way, will cheerfully devote several hours of his time giving wrong directions to a total stranger who claims to be lost — John Steinbeck

You once asked me if I wanted a home and a family. I didn't think that I'd ever want one without Yesubai, but seeing you like that in my dream, with that little baby ... yeah. I want it. I want him. I want ... you. I saw him, and I felt ... possessive and proud. I want the life that I saw in my dream more than just a little, Kells. I thought you should know that. — Colleen Houck

The central attitudes driving the Terrorist are:
You have no right to defy me or leave me. Your life is in my hands.
Women are evil and have to be kept terrorized to prevent that evil from coming forth.
I would rather die than accept your right to independence.
The children are one of the best tools I can use to make you fearful.
Seeing you terrified is exciting and satisfying. — Lundy Bancroft

No one rises above who he or she has been without first having fallen down. The best time - in fact, the only time - to make a real change in your life is in the moment of seeing the need for it. He who hesitates always gets lost in the hundred reasons why tomorrow is a better day to get started. — Guy Finley

[...]perhaps the secret of leading a life in which you would not always be worrying about things, or complaining about them, was to accept that there were people who just saw things differently from you and always would. Once you understood that, then you could accept the people themselves as they were and not try to change them. What was even more important, perhaps, was that you could love those people who looked at things so differently, because you realised that they were not trying to make life hard for you by being what they were, but were simply doing their best. Then, when you started to love them, love would do the work that it always did and it would begin to transform them and then they would end up seeing things in the same way that you did. — Alexander McCall Smith

Oh, the world needs those standing on the Bridge, For they know how Eternity reaches to earth In the wind that brings music to the leaves Of the forest: in the drops of rain that caress The sleeping life of the desert: in the sunbeams Of the first spring day in an alpine meadow. Only they can blow the dust from the seeing eyes Of those who are blind. — Jane Goodall

Inner freedom is not guided by our efforts; it comes from seeing what is true. — Gautama Buddha

I think what drives scientists is this tremendous intellectual adventure - pushing the boundaries of knowledge, walking down a track that nobody has walked down before, not knowing what's around the corner and then seeing a landscape that is so extraordinarily beautiful and complex, being part of the community that is driving the boundaries of knowledge and giving us insight into the amazing process of life. — Suzanne Cory

There's no denying you'll find yourself in places you won't want to be, seeing things you wish you weren't seeing, but resistance to now is resistance to the very life you're living. — Jared T.L.C.

By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show. — Samuel Johnson

I am seeing life in two dimensions; human and divine. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Also in America, the Redemptorist priest and founder of the Paulist order, Fr. Isaac Hecker, was a great admirer of St. Catherine, seeing in her the perfect foil to those who claimed that Catholicism promotes a mechanical piety or fosters a sanctity unconcerned with the real needs of suffering humanity in society. To the latter charge he replied forcefully:
"Read the life of St. Catherine, and in imagination fancy her in the city hospital of Genoa, charged not only with the supervision and responsibility of its finances, but also overseeing the care of its sick inmates, taking an active, personal part in its duties as one of its nurses, and conducting the whole establishment with strict economy, perfect order, and the tenderest care and love! — Catherine Of Siena

After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness. — Baruch Spinoza

They have trapped Blue into doing nothing, into being so inactive as to reduce his life to almost no life at all. Yes, says Blue to himself, that's what it feels like: like nothing at all. He feels like a man who has been condemned to sit in a room and go on reading a book for the rest of his life. This is strange enough - to be only half alive at best, seeing the world only through words, living only through the lives of others. — Paul Auster

And what was the point of an easy answer like that. Where did it lead. Nowhere good, in his experience. Easy answers got to be an addiction; Terrible had spent his whole life seeing people reach for easy but find they really grabbed hard without realizing it. — Stacia Kane

Living a connected life ultimately is about setting boundaries, spending less time and energy hustling and winning over people who don't matter, and seeing the value of working on cultivating connection with family and close friends. — Brene Brown

The very problem of mind and body suggests division; I do not know of anything so disastrously affected by the habit of division as this particular theme. In its discussion are reflected the splitting off from each other of religion, morals and science; the divorce of philosophy from science and of both from the arts of conduct. The evils which we suffer in education, in religion, in the materialism of business and the aloofness of "intellectuals" from life, in the whole separation of knowledge and practice
all testify to the necessity of seeing mind-body as an integral whole. — John Dewey

In every area of life everyone is capable of seeing from a higher perspective than they do now.
You are never stuck. You're simply limited by the level you are seeing from.

Limitation is always illustion. Just wait. Relax. Stay still. Wait until the wisdom talks to you, as it will. - Syd Banks — Sydney Banks

Clear Your Mind Clearing your mind is the same as clearing your environment. Seeing a lot of stuff cluttered on the floor or disorganized in your cabinets can make you crazy. Your mind becomes confused with a lot of things that you see and this might cause you headaches. Try to organize your things in boxes, clean your room, fix your bed, sweep your floor, open your curtains to let the sunshine in and arrange things according to size or color. If you work on your desk, this is the best time to organize documents into folders, arrange them properly in drawers and throw out those that are not needed anymore. Making a habit of cleaning your environment can clear your mind and can make your life easier. — Kerry Elise

I'm sorry. I don't know how many times to tell you this for you to know it," I continued. "Francesca ... the night you stayed with me was the best night of my life. I've never felt more alive, more loved, happier, than when I hold you in my arms. Seeing your face makes my heart beat faster, in a good way, and I feel this calmness come over me. I don't know why, but it's always been this way with you. I understand if you can't forgive me, and I know you could do better, but I'm going to try my damnedest to make it up to you when I get out of here. I don't care if it takes a year, or ten, or even twenty. I will make you see how much I care. — Felicia Tatum

You haven't done your best yet because you haven't seen the best you can do yet. You are where you are now because you haven't seen where you can be yet. If you see, your attitude, thought and tactics towards life will definitely change — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

We urgently need a debate about the best ways of supporting families in modern America, without blinders that prevent us from seeing the full extent of dependence and interdependence in American life. As long as we pretend that only poor or abnormal families need outside assistance, we will shortchange poor families, overcompensate rich ones, and fail to come up with effective policies for helping families in the middle. — Stephanie Coontz

I don't think the media circus has ever been a shock to my life seeing as I was with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor when I was 17. — Francesca Annis

It was funny, she thought, how often we stuck to the safe path in life, pulling on blinders and keeping our eyes to the ground, doing our best not to look at the fantastic view. Without seeing the heights we had reached, the opportunities actually awaiting us out there; without realizing we should just jump and fly, at least for a moment. — Katarina Bivald

Bryce Colton is telling everyone you hooked up after the bonfire Friday night."
"What?" Everyone in the parking lot turned and stared. Okay, maybe I said that a little loud. I hooked my arm through Jane's and steered her toward the sidewalk.
"I went to the bonfire with you. Do you remember seeing me naked with Bryce Colton?"
She pouted and kicked a rock off the sidewalk. "I thought maybe you went back after you dropped me off."
"Why do you sound disappointed?"
"It would be nice if one of us had a sex life."
I laughed so hard I snorted. That's one of the reasons I'm best friends with Jane. I never know what she's going to say. — Chris Cannon

Reframing your past painful experiences and seeing them in a humorous light takes away the power and emotional charge attached to the memory of the hurtful event. — Miya Yamanouchi

FRIAR LAURENCE: ... Your part in her you could not keep from death,
But heaven keeps his part in eternal life.
The most you sought was her promotion;
For 'twas your heaven she should be advanced:
And weep ye now, seeing she is advanced
Above the clouds, as high as heaven itself?
O, in this love, you love your child so ill,
That you run mad, seeing that she is well:
She's not well married that lives married long;
But she's best married that dies married young. — William Shakespeare

If you're not seeing God move in your life right now, one of two possibilities must be considered. Either your requests are not God's best and will probably not be answered the way you'd like or it must not be the right time. If God were to answer that prayer the way you are hoping, it could interfere with his ideal plan for you. — Joel Osteen

This body is the boat which will carry us to the other shore of the ocean of life. It must be taken care of. Unhealthy persons cannot be Yogis. Mental laziness makes us lose all lively interest in the subject, without which there will neither be the will nor the energy to practise. Doubts will arise in the mind about the truth of the science, however strong one's intellectual conviction may be, until certain peculiar psychic experiences come, as hearing or seeing at a distance, etc. These glimpses strengthen the mind and make the student persevere. Falling away ... when obtained. Some days or weeks when you are practicing, the mind will be calm and easily concentrated, and you will find yourself progressing fast. All of a sudden the progress will stop one day, and you will find yourself, as it were, stranded. Persevere. All progress proceeds by such rise and fall. — Swami Vivekananda

I love London because of the history. The times I've been there have been some of the best memories in my life. Singing there, seeing great theater - and the people like a Southern accent. — Kristin Chenoweth

We have a right to expect that the best trained, the best educated men on the Pacific slope, the Rocky Mountains, and great plains States will take the lead in the preservation and right use of forests, in securing the right use of waters, and in seeing that our land policy is not twisted from its original purpose, but is perpetuated by amendment, by change when such change is necessary in the life of that purpose, the purpose being to turn the public domain into farms each to be the property of the man who actually tills it and makes his home in it. — Theodore Roosevelt

We welcome into our homes the machines that vacuum the thoughts out of our heads and pump in someone else's. John Berger in Ways of Seeing said that television advertisers succeeded by persuading viewers to envy themselves as they would be if they bought the product. These programmes do something similar, by persuading the viewer to envy himself as he would be if his life were that little bit more exciting and melodramatic than it actually is. They can make things seem normal that are not. — Peter Hitchens

I remember seeing the full Daft Punk pyramid show in 2007. I went alone, drove up in my Honda Fit, bought a ticket off a scalper for $150, got on the floor, and had the best time of my life. I didn't have a drink, no drugs. But I was high out of my mind. It changed my life. — Skrillex

So many times in my life I've felt as though looking at Em is like seeing another variation of myself, but I don't feel that way now. Too much has changed recently. Still, Em is my best girl friend. Growing apart doesn't change the fact that for a long time we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled. I'm glad for that.
-Cassia, from the novel Matched. — Ally Condie

Concentrate on the wonders and joys of this life, and accept the very best which is your true heritage. It is not being an ostrich, afraid of life and not facing it. It is seeing the reality of this glorious life which is yours, and in doing so, helping to bring it about. The more clearly you can see it, the more quickly will it come about. — Eileen Caddy

It seems that a profound, impartial, and absolutely just opinion of our fellow-creatures is utterly unknown. Either we are men, or we are women. Either we are cold, or we are sentimental. Either we are young, or growing old. In any case life is but a procession of shadows, and God knows why it is that we embrace them so eagerly, and see them depart with such anguish, being shadows. And why, if this
and much more than this is true
why are we yet surprised in the window corner by a sudden vision that the young man in the chair is of all things in the world the most real, the most solid, the best known to us
why indeed? For the moment after we know nothing about him.
Such is the manner of our seeing. Such the conditions of our love. — Virginia Woolf

For those of you who are seeing the spiritual life, I recommend these four daily practices: Spend time alone each day in receptive silence. When angry, or afflicted with any negative emotion, take time to be alone with God. (Do not talk with people who are angry; they are irrational and cannot be reasoned with. If you or they are angry, it is best to leave and pray.) Visualize God's light each day and send it to someone who needs help. Exercise the body, it is the temple of the soul. — Peace Pilgrim

Using your imagination to create mental images stimulates your mind, helps organize your life and keeps your focus in a particular direction. It allows your unconscious mind to work toward the image you have created, the goal. It's about understand the life you want to live, and seeing it unfold before you. — Georges St-Pierre

The best gift you can ever give your mentor is to grow. They feed off your growth. I believe that everyone has the seed of success inside, but too many people can't find it in themselves and as a result do not reach their potential. But there are those whose purpose in life is to fertilize the seed of potential in another, who are rewarded by seeing that person grow and blossom before their eyes. Raising up others to a higher level is a mentor's joy and sustenance. — John C. Maxwell

She cannot help but see a lifespan as a journey, indeed as a pilgrimage. This isn't fashionable these days, but it's her way of seeing. A life has a destination, an ending, a last saying. She is perplexed and exercised by the way that now, in the twenty-first century, we seem to be inventing innumerable ways of postponing the sense of arrival, the sense of arriving at a proper ending. Her inspections of evolving models of residential care and care homes for the elderly have made her aware of the infinitely clever and complex and inhumane delays and devices we create to avoid and deny death, to avoid fulfilling our destiny and arriving at our destination. And the result, in so many cases, has been that we arrive there not in good spirits, as we say our last farewells and greet the afterlife, but senseless, incontinent, demented, medicated into amnesia, aphasia, indignity. — Margaret Drabble

Here are some passing thoughts. Imagine looking up at the moon and seeing it burning.
Imagine seeing the grocery store's checkout girl grow horns.
Imagine growing younger instead of older.
Imagine feeling more powerful and more capable of falling in love with life every new day instead of being scared and sick and not knowing whether to stay under a sheet or venture forth into the cold. — Douglas Coupland

I am wondering if many of the things that we say about ourselves as women, are actually responsible for leading us down detrimental paths in life. For example, usually we like to say that we're crazy, messy and lost. But when I think about it, I want to be of sound mind, with purpose and unlost (if there is such a word as unlost). Really, who wants to be mentally unstable and eternally insecure? I think maybe we need to stop saying these things about ourselves and we need to start seeing ourselves as what and who we really want to be. — C. JoyBell C.

Bodily delight is a sense experience, just like pure seeing or the pure feeling with which a lovely fruit fills the tongue; it is a great boundless experience which is given us, a knowing of the world, the fullness and the splendour of all knowing. Our acceptance of it is not bad; what is bad is that almost all men misuse and squander this experience, and apply it as a stimulus to the weary places of their life, a dissipation instead of a rallying for the heights. Mankind have turned eating, too, into something else: want on the one hand, and superfluity on the other, have dulled the clarity of this need, and all those deep, simple necessities by which life renews itself have become similarly dull. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Thus, on the one hand, Spenser's thought is steeped in sensuous detail, so that for him there is no really abstract thinking; men, he thinks, 'should be satisfied with the use of these days, seeing all things accounted by their showes, and nothing esteemed of, that is not delightfull and pleasing to commune sense' ( Prefatory Letter). But on the other hand the details of the physical universe become translucent from the pulsing light of varied human experience which is seen behind it. His 'haunt and the main region of (his) song' is the inner life of man and it is described in the symbolism of human figures clothed in raiment iridescent with innumerable associations. His art is a development of the mediaeval. — Janet Spens

Love was bearing witness. That it was the act of watching someone's life, of simply being there to say: your life is worth seeing. — Anna Carey

I had once read, in one of those pre-plague books in the library, that love was bearing witness. That it was the act of watching someone's life, of simply being there to say: you're life is worth seeing. — Anna Carey

I suddenly asked my master Caeiro, "Are you at peace with yourself?" and he answered, "No, I'm at peace." It was like the voice of the earth, which is everything and no one. — Alvaro De Campos

That the crowning miracle of all the miracles summed up in the New Testament, after the miracle of the blind seeing, and the lame walking, and the restoration of the dead to life, was the miracle that the poor had the Gospel preached to them. That while the poor were unnaturally and unnecessarily cut off by the thousand, in the prematurity of their age, or in the rottenness of their youth - for of flower or blossom such youth has none - the Gospel was NOT preached to them, saving in hollow and unmeaning voices. That of all wrongs, this was the first mighty wrong the Pestilence warned us to set right. And that no Post- Office Order to any amount, given to a Begging-Letter Writer for the quieting of an uneasy breast, would be presentable on the Last Great Day as anything towards it. — Charles Dickens

Good diet and exercise are key, but abject fear has its own rewards. And arriving on the first day for rehearsals for 'Spamalot' and seeing all these much younger, much fitter people, who I was going to be on stage with, became a catalyst for cutting out the more unhealthy aspects of my life. — Sanjeev Bhaskar

Twice in her life she had mistaken something else for it; it was like seeing somebody in the street who you think is a friend, you whistle and wave and run after him, and it is not only not the friend, but not even very like him. A few minutes later the real friend appears in view, and then you can't imagine how you ever mistook that other person for him. Linda was now looking upon the authentic face of love, and she knew it, but it frightened her. That it should come so casually, so much by a series of accidents, was frightening. — Nancy Mitford

As she recited the names and facts, she was recovering not only her memory but also her personality, her desires, her way of seeing life. The idea of suicide, which that morning seemed to be buried beneath several layers of sedatives, resurfaced. — Paulo Coelho

Sometimes books feel like the only thing that keep her sane. Actually, she knows that they're the only reason she's still even vaguely okay right now. That's what she clings to: reading great books and seeing great films and, for as long as she's immersed in them, being able to forget, if only for a short time, about the reality of her life. — Steph Bowe

To the seeing eye life is mostly Sparrows. — Will Cuppy

She gave me a lopsided quirk of a smile. "Joss," her voice hoarse, barely audible.
I wanted to run. I know. That's horrible. But I wanted to run away from this part. People ending up in hospital had never concluded well in my life, and seeing her there, so vulnerable, so exhausted, just reminded me of how close we might have come to losing her.
I felt a hand squeeze mine and I turned my head to see Hannah watching me. She looked as pale as I felt, and her fingers were trembling between mine. She was scared too. I smiled reassuringly at her, hoping I was pulling it off. "Ellie is okay. Come on." I tugged on her hand and pulled her with me to Ellie's bed side.
I reached out for the hand Ellie had held out for her mom, and I slid mine into it, feeling relief and love as she gave me a gentle squeeze. — Samantha Young

The word theatre comes from the Greeks. It means the seeing place. It is the place people come to see the truth about life and the social situation. — Stella Adler

What dreams would he have, not seeing. Life a dream for him. Where is the justice being born that way? — James Joyce

I don't know what being god must feel like, but it can't be much different that being an inventor.
There is power in the idea that a certain product never existed before you thought of it, there is joy in the act of bringing the idea into reality and there is contentment in seeing the product come to life when it is being used. — Soumeet Lanka

Every discovery in science and art, is due to the trained power of seeing things ... Keep your eyes open, your ears open ... Trace difficulties. — Orison Swett Marden

The life of a man consists not in seeing visions and in dreaming dreams, but in active charity and in willing service. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Islam is not a set of rules. It's a way of seeing life and the world. — Nouman Ali Khan

It's said that only gypsies have the true gift of looking at a person and seeing their future, so I was happy as a red hen when she said a man named Doyle would be loving me for the whole of my life and then some. — Bette Lee Crosby

I don't know what I would have done if they had hugged me. I probably would have frozen in place, become stiff. It took most of my life to overcome my distaste for physical contact and not to stiffen when I was touched, or flinch, twitch, fidget, and eventually figure out how to move away. I learned to accept being hugged by my children when they were infants. Their joy at seeing me enter a room was real and filled with true love and affection and it showed in their embraces. Like a convert, when I learned the joy and comfort of being hugged by and hugging those I loved, I became a regular practitioner. — John William Tuohy

Meditation is not the pursuit of an invisible path leading to some imaginal bliss. The meditative mind is seeing, watching, listening, without the word, without comment, without opinion, attentive to the movement of life in all its relationships throughout the day. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

If I survive, I will spend my whole life at the oven door seeing that no one is denied bread and, so as to give a lesson of charity, especially those who did not bring flour. — Jose Marti

If only, I feel now, if only I could be someone able to see all this as if he had no other relation with it than that of seeing it, someone able to observe everything as if he were an adult traveler newly arrived today on the surface of life! If only one had not learned, from birth onwards, to give certain accepted meanings to everything, but instead was able to see the meaning inherent in each thing rather than that imposed on it from without. If only one could know the human reality of the woman selling fish and go beyond just labeling her a fishwife and the known fact that she exists and sells fish. If only one could see the policeman as God sees him. If only one could notice everything for the first time, not apocalyptically, as if they were revelations of the Mystery, but directly as the flowerings of Reality. — Fernando Pessoa