John Galsworthy Quotes

From a distance it is something; and nearby it is nothing.

I tried to put things in perspective but sometimes you're just too close to it.

I'm a realist.

It's hard to look at things that are too close.

Optimism means better than reality; pessimism means worse than reality. I'm a realist.

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.

The world is a song, but we do not know whether it is a good song because we have nothing to compare it with.

If you are writing something, you automatically create a certain distance. It can be very little. Even within the same city you imaginatively have a certain distance from your subject, and at the same time, you have to have a connection.

Reporters tend to find in others what they are suited to find, so there is a whole school of reporting where they are cynical about the world, and everything reinforces that. Whereas I tend to be optimistic and be amused by people and like them, even rather bad people.

You could say that when you introduce humour to your work, you also step back a little from it. You create a distance.

Problems look mighty small from 150 miles up.

Youth is not a period of time. It is a state of mind, a result of the will, a quality of the imagination, a victory of courage over timidity, and the taste of adventure over the love of comfort. A man doesn't grow old because he's lived a certain number of years, he grows old because he deserts his ideal. The years may wrinkle his skins, but deserting his ideals wrinkles his soul. Preoccupation, fears, doubts, and despair are dust before death. You will remain young as long as you are open to what is beautiful, good, great and receptive to the messages of other men and women and nature and of God. If one day you should become bitter, pessimistic, and gnawed by despair, may God have mercy on your old man's soul.

Americans see the world as they want it to be rather than the way it is.

Objectivity in the end is an unattainable ideal.

There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth.

Do not forget that others won’t see the problems the way you look at or vice versa.

They [philosophers] conceive of men, not as they are, but as they themselves would like them to be

I consider myself a realist.

I like to be an optimist, but I like to be a realist, too.

It's always easy to judge from afar

It is a curious quirk of human nature that some people can see opportunities, while others only see problems.

I had used my sense of humor; I had called it proportion, perspective. But perspective is distance.

Men and things have each their proper perspective; to judge rightly of some it is necessary to see them near, of others we can never judge rightly but at a distance.

As I have discovered again and again, things are never as bad (or as good) as they seem at the time.

Things are never as bad or as good as they seem.