Look At Life Differently Quotes

“Of course, we often think we have to get sick literally in order to get the rest or pleasure we need in our lives. Bobbie and I therefore taught our children when they were younger that if they needed a day off from school, they should just say that and take a health day, not a sick day. That made them look at life differently. I think all of us need to rethink our attitudes toward health and sickness.”

— Bernie S. Siegel

“If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you've done and whoever you were and throw them away. The more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you, the harder it is to continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times, artists have to say, "Bye. I have to go. I'm going crazy and I'm getting out of here." And they go and hibernate somewhere. Maybe later they re-emerge a little differently. (Steve Jobs)”

— Walter Isaacson

“For I had reached a point in my life when I came to view words differently. A closer look at language could reveal the secret of life.”

— NgÅ©gÄ© Wa Thiong’o

“New places always help us look at life differently”

— Joan Bauer

“If it is written and read with serious attention, a novel, like a myth or any great work of art, can become an initiation that helps us to make a painful rite of passage from one phase of life, one state of mind, to another. A novel, like a myth, teaches us to see the world differently; it shows us how to look into our own hearts and to see our world from a perspective that goes beyond our own self-interest.”

— Karen Armstrong

“I've started to look at life differently. When you're thanking God for every little you - every meal, every time you wake up, every time you take a sip of water - you can't help but be more thankful for life itself, for the unlikely and miraculous fact that you exist at all.”

— A.J. Jacobs

“Think about how impossible it is to explain to the young what happens when you know you're not immune from death. Everything changes. You look at the world differently. When you're young, you have no perspective. You think life lasts forever-days and months and years stretching out to infinity. You think you don't have to choose. You think you can waste time doing drugs and alcohol. You think time will always be on your side. But time, once your friend, becomes your enemy. It gallops by as you get older. Holidays come faster and faster. Years fly off the calendar as in old movies. All you long for is to go back and do it all over, correct the mistakes,”

— Erica Jong

“As seemingly impossible as it may seem of having zero regrets, when I look at my life now and all the mistakes I've made, all the bad decisions I've made, all the things I could have done differently or done more in, I don't think I would have changed anything.”

— Apolo Ohno

“You will walk differently alone, dear, through a thicker atmosphere, forcing your way through the shadows of chairs, through the dripping smoke of the funnels. You will feel your own reflection sliding along the eyes of those who look at you. You are no longer insulated; but I suppose you must touch life in order to spring from it.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Once you have a disease like cancer, you look at life a bit differently. Some things that were important no longer seem as important as they were.”

— Linton Kwesi Johnson

“Do you want to look back and wish you'd handled this differently? Most of us go through life feeling invincible, but none of us know what day will be our last. Is holding on to your anger truly worth it?”

— Michelle Madow

“There are moments in one's life where you look back and you say, 'Well, I wish I had done this differently.'”

— Nicholas Meyer

“[ ... ] but just as formerly these pursuits and ideas had seemed petty and insignificant in comparison with the darkness that overshadowed all existence, so now they seemed as petty and insignificant in comparison with the brilliant sunshine in which the future was bathed. He went on with his work but now he felt that the centre of gravity of his attention had shifted, making him look at his work quite differently and with greater clarity. Formerly this work had been an escape from life: he used to feel that without it life would be too gloomy. Now he needed it so that life might not be too uniformly bright.”

— Leo Tolstoy

“Can you imagine how incredibly quiet it was everywhere, when the gentlemen from this world" - he made a vague circular gesture towards the battalions of meditating Asians behind him - "were hatching and proclaiming their ideas? Anyone who now tries to follow these ideas in order to find the road back to what they were talking about, is faced with obstacles that would have driven an entire tribe of oriental ascetics into the ravine. The world from which they felt it so necessary to retreat would have seemed idyllic to us. We live in a vision of hell, and we have actually got used to it." He looked at his statues and continued, "We have become different people. We still look the same, but we have nothing in common with them any more. We are differently programmed. Anyone who now wants to become like them must acquire a big dose of madness first; otherwise he will no longer be able to bear the life of our world. We are not designed for their kind of life.”

— Cees Nooteboom

“Being involved in NASCAR, I've learned a lot. I've met a lot of people. I've met a lot of special people. I've met some of our leaders. I've met some of the smartest people out there. I've met a lot of average folks. But they've all touched my life and made me look at things differently. I thank the Lord for my good days.”

— Joe Nemechek

“When we want a book exactly like the one we just finished reading, what we really want is to recreate that pleasurable experience
the headlong rush to the last page, the falling into a character's life, the deeper understanding we've gotten of a place or a time, or the feeling of reading words that are put together in a way that causes us to look at the world differently. We need to start thinking about what it is about a book that draws us in, rather than what the book is about.”

— Nancy Pearl

“I feel like I see life differently. I see it as this amazing challenge that I look forward to every day. I never used to see life as that. It used to be just this thing you went through and had a good time. Now I have responsibilities to myself, my family, my fans that I have to uphold. It's more exciting this way and way more rewarding.”

— Kris Allen

“When something enters your life that is so big and so non-negotiable as catastrophic illness, you either go in denial for a while or ultimately you accept it and you make space for it. And in making space for it, you illuminate a lot of things that you normally don't have room for you simply just look at the world differently.”

— Michael J. Fox

“When I made Illmatic, I was trying to make the perfect album. It comes from the days of Wild Style. I was trying to make you experience my life. I wanted you to look at hip-hop differently. I wanted you to feel that hip-hop was changing and becoming something more real.”

— Nas

“We humans look rather different from a tree. Without a doubt we perceive the world differently than a tree does. But down deep, at the molecular heart of life, the trees and we are essentially identical.”

— Carl Sagan

“People look at things differently. Imagine going to a village in Southern Sudan and try to explain to someone there the concept of life insurance or retirement. Go to Vietnam and say retirement. Retirement in another country is your body is too racked with pain and your hands are too arthritic from the life in the rice patty fields, so you can't work anymore. So you move in with your son and his new wife takes care of you because that's how families work there.”

— Henry Rollins