Quotes About Reality

He had been out among the dragons, he said, and he assured himself that they were not so hideous as he had imagined them. Also

A man saw a ball of gold in the sky; He climbed for it, And eventually he achieved it -- It was clay. Now this is the strange part: When the man went to the earth And looked again, Lo, there was the ball of gold. Now this is the strange part: It was a ball of gold. Aye, by the heavens, it was a ball of gold.

IF LOVE LOVES, THERE IS NO WORLD

He was, then, a hero. He suffered that disappointment which we would all have if we discovered that we were ourselves capable of those deeds which we most admire in history and legend. This, then, was a hero. After all, heroes were not much.

Am I telling the truth? I think I am a truthful man. From moment to moment I believe myself sincere, but sometimes looking back I can see I've been mistaken, even that I've lied.

so many people walk up to me and tell me they're dead, though they're just describing their afternoons.

the reality of geography could not be wished away.

Paul Fussell has described the two stages of rationalization a combat soldier goes through—it can't happen to me, then it can happen to me, unless I'm more careful—followed by a stage of "accurate perception: it is going to happen to me, and only my not being there [on the front lines] is going to prevent it.

They were learning about others. A common experience: the guy who talked toughest, bragged most, excelled in maneuvers, everyone's pick to be the top soldier in the company, was the first to break, while the soft-talking kid who was hardly noticed in camp was the standout in combat. These are the clichés of war novels precisely because they are true. They

Life is sometimes novel-shaped, mocking the efforts of those authors who, in an effort to make their novels life-shaped, spurn the easy symmetry and cheap resonance of reality.

The Greek word for 'everything that is the case', what we could call 'the universe', is COSMOS. And at the moment - although 'moment' is a time word and makes no sense just now (neither does the phrase 'just now') - at the moment, Cosmos is Chaos and only Chaos because Chaos is the only thing that is the case.

But an Adrian also knew that an Adrian's lies were real: they were lived and felt and acted out as thoroughly as another man's truths - if other men had truths - and he believed it possible that this last lie might see him through to the grave.

It is a cliché that most clichés are true, but then like most clichés, that cliché is untrue

The action is played out on the golden horizon between reality and legend, the beguiling penumbra where fable and fact coexist.

The puzzle that besets me is best expressed by the following statements. a: None of what follows ever happened b: All of what follows is entirely true

I suppose people were trying to be kind and protect me from the humiliation of discovering that, even after an operation to straighten my ridiculous nose, I would still look a mess. The trauma of finding out that a straight-nosed Stephen looked every bit as unappetising as a bent-nosed Stephen might have tipped me completely over the edge.

You should have said where fact ends and fantasy begins. If that's what you wanted to know." "Isn't it the same thing?" "No, it's not. Mother's like a spring flower. That's not strictly a fact. But it is true.

Albert Hofmann once put it . . . All attempts today to make amends for the damage through environmentally protective measures must remain only hopeless, superficial patchwork, if no curing of the "Western entelechy neurosis" ensues. . . . Healing would mean existential experience of a deeper, self-encompassing reality.

In other words, what you believe—that is, the descriptions of the world around you that you received in childhood—act much like software; they program what is perceivable by your conscious mind.

only in the few universes that are like ours would intelligent beings develop and ask the question: "Why is the universe the way we see it?" The answer is then simple: If it had been any different, we would not be here!

We create history by our observation, rather than history creating us.

Both observer and observed are parts of the world that has an objective existence, and any distinction between them has no meaningful significance. In other words, if you see a herd of zebras fighting for a spot in the parking garage, it is because there really is a herd of zebras fighting for a spot in the parking garage.

do we really have reason to believe that an objective reality exists?

A scientific law is not a scientific law, if it holds only when some supernatural being decides not to intervene