Yann Martel Quotes

We all live with blinders on. They come with having a personal vantage point.

Remember that my view, the only true view I can see with, is through the black eyes that I have.

Sometimes I think a man could wander across the disc all his life and not see everything there is to see,' said Twoflower. 'And now it seems there are lots of other worlds as well. When I think I might die without seeing a hundredth of all there is to see it makes me feel,' he paused, then added, 'well, humble, I suppose. And very angry, of course.

Continuously thou wilt look at human things as smoke and nothing at all; especially if thou reflectest at the same time, that what has once changed will never exist again in the infinite duration of time. But thou, in what a brief space of time is thy existence? And why art thou not content to pass through this short time in an orderly way?

We know so little. Our judgment is so limited. We judge the Lord's ways from our own narrow view.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

Believe me, if a man doesn't know death, he doesn't know life.

A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.

There's something about knowing life is finite that makes it so precious.

If you stay in one place, you can only rap about one thing because that's all you know.

All our pursuits, from childhood to manhood, are only trifles of different sorts and sizes, proportioned to our years and views.

The more opinions you have, the less you see.

Denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.

He who sees only what is before his eyes sees the worst part of every view.

If the study of history teaches anything, it teaches us the limitations of life.

We can do all we wish while we live; afterward, we are less than the meanest.

Death is always a reality, and life is incredibly short.

I could put my thumb up to a window and completely hide the Earth. I thought, 'Everything I've ever known is behind my thumb.'

I've been privy to certain experiences which have allowed me to realize how fleeting time is, in any case, and how ultimately not important this is. 'This' being the things perhaps we trip on in life.

I remind myself that the universe is 15 billion years old, and I'm only 46 years old, so my perspective is sort of limited and fear-based and skewed.

We each exist for but a short time, and in that time explore but a small part of the whole universe

Already, it is later than you think for your earthly life at best, is only a blink of an eye between two eternities.

A way of seeing is also a way of not seeing.

When you're in the desert, you look into infinity.... It makes you feel terribly small, and also in a strange way, quite big.

One life is an absurdly small allowance.