Mignon McLaughlin Quotes

We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.

The world isn't what you think it is.

I love to think that the day you're born, you're given the world as a birthday present.

I think we all see the world from our own little unique bubble.

How you imagine the world determines how you live in it.

Some people think of the glass as half full. Some people think of the glass as half empty. I think of the glass as too big.

While it may be difficult to change the world, it is always possible to change the way we look at it.

Imagine a set of people all living in the same building. Half of them think it is a hotel, the other half think it is a prison. Those who think it a hotel might regard it as quite intolerable, and those who thought it was a prison might decide that it was really surprisingly comfortable. So that what seems the ugly doctrine is one that comforts and strengthens you in the end. The people who try to hold an optimistic view of this world would become pessimists: the people who hold a pretty stern view of it become optimistic.

We have been so blinded by thinking and feeling that we have never seen the World.

I've also learned from [Dalai Lama] that we make the world by how we choose to look at it. In any situation you can make it constructive or dismaying, depending on that powerful computer we call the mind.

Repeat, over and over again, in case anyone forgets it or believes the contrary, that we do not live in the best of all possible worlds.

I don't think you can develop or learn a way of seeing or a point of view. A way of seeing is who you are, how you think and how you create images. It is something that is inside of you. It's how you look at the world.

There is only one heroism in the world: to see the world as it is, and to love it.

You can only live in the world you ken. The rest is just wishful thinking or paranoia.

I have often said, and oftener think, that this world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel - a solution of why Democritus laughed and Heraclitus wept.

It is greatest to believe and to hope well of the world, because he who does so, quits the world of experience, and makes the world he lives in.

I think when you’re young you should be a lot with yourself and your sufferings. Then one day you get out where the sun shines and the rain rains and the snow snows and it all comes together.

Reaction is what changes your understanding of the world.

Don't tell me what I'm not doing when I'm doing what you don't think I'm doing!

Besides being asked why I write about young characters, I am often asked how I write about young characters. How do I throw myself across the chasm of full adulthood to relive that period? I guess I don’t, really. Age is not so much a feature of your character, as the spot where you stand for a pretty fleeting time on the arc of your life.

What you have carried in your mind about the world is what you will see around the world. What you carry in your mind about your life is what you will see in your life.

A good story should change the way you see the world.

We see the world, not as it is, but as we are -- or, as we are conditioned to see it. When we open our mouths to describe what we see, we in effect describe ourselves, our perceptions, our paradigms.

I grew up with sentiments such as, "Do what will make you happy, troubles are God's redirections that something good will come from, and that material things are to make the world a better place" and the latter came from my father because his father died of tuberculosis when he was twelve. They had no insurance, six kids and a hell of a time surviving.

I perceive the world through the wide range of emotions that whirl all around in it.