Quotes About Reality

A correspondent, Jean-Louis Rheault, wrote, "I have noticed that the more people glorify the entrepreneur as an abstraction, the more they will scorn an actual one they meet.

the distance between opinions is remarkably narrower than the distance between the average of opinions and truth.

The floor of the Parthenon is curved in reality so we can see it as straight.

Someone who has seen a house collapse knows only too clearly what frail things little vases of flowers and pictures and white walls are. He knows only too well what a house is made of.

And Ippolito too, in his own way, had been a real person, even though he had come to that insect-like end.

Il signor Paolo Ferrari era in sala da pranzo che beve-va il tè. Nel vederlo io riconobbi Turati, che era venuto in via Pastrengo una volta. Ma siccome m'avevan detto che si chiamava Paolo Ferrari, credetti, per ubbidienza, che fosse insieme Turati e Ferrari; e di nuovo verità e menzogna si mescolarono in me.

Facts are the barren branches on which we hang the dear, obscuring foliage of our dreams.

Winnie did not believe in fairy tales. She had never longed for a magic wand, did not expect to marry a prince, and was scornful—most of the time—of her grandmother's elves. So now she sat, mouth open, wide-eyed, not knowing what to make of this extraordinary story. It couldn't—not a bit of it—be true. And yet:

Pretty' doesn't mean 'good,' you know, Geneva. Real life isn't like fairy tales. 'Pretty' simply means that by accident you've got things arranged on your outside in an extra-pleasing manner. It doesn't tell a thing about your inside.

Still—there's no use trying to figure why things fall the way they do. Things just are, and fussing don't bring changes.

Why not make a fiction of the mind's fictions?

There is only one reality - the reality knowable to reason. And if man does not choose to perceive it, there is nothing else for him to perceive; if it is not of this world that he is conscious, then he is not conscious at all

For the optimal realization of our possibilities, we need to trust ourselves and we need to admire ourselves, and the trust and admiration need to be grounded in reality, not generated out of fantasy and self-delusion.

Consciousness that is not translated into appropriate action is a betrayal of consciousness . . . Living consciously is living responsibly toward reality. We do not necessarily have to like what we see but we recognize that wishes or fears or denials do not alter facts.

No solo hay que estar dispuesto a soportar el dolor y el sufrimiento sino que tambièn hay que asumir la soledad, la cruda realidad de que la niña pequeña que una vez fue, no tuvo -y no tendrà jamàs- los padres que necesitaba y hubiera deseado.

We are not moved to change those things whose reality we deny.

Productiveness is the act of supporting our existence by translating our thought into reality, of setting our goals and working for their achievement, of bringing knowledge, goods, or services into existence.

In attempting to counterfeit a self-esteem he does not possess, he makes his perception of reality conditional; he establishes, as a principle of his mind's functioning, that certain considerations supersede reality, facts, and truth in their importance to him.

Para el hombre racional, psicológicamente sano, el deseo de obtener placer es el deseo de celebrar su control sobre la realidad. Para el neurótico, el deseo de placer es el deseo de huir de la realidad".

We recognize that families in which reality is often denied and consciousness often punished place devastating obstacles to self-esteem; they create a nightmare world in which the child may feel that thinking is not only futile but dangerous.

If self-esteem is the conviction that one's mind is competent to grasp and judge the facts of reality, and that one's person is worthy of happiness—pathological anxiety is the torment of a person who is crippled or devastated in this realm, who feels cut off from reality, alienated, powerless.

Able to manage change. Self-esteem does not find change frightening, for the reasons stated in the preceding paragraph. Self-esteem flows with reality; self-doubt fights it. Self-esteem speeds up reaction time; self-doubt retards it.

I cannot overcome a fear whose reality I deny. I cannot correct a problem in the way I deal with my associates if I will not admit it exists. I cannot change traits I insist I do not have. I cannot forgive myself for an action I will not acknowledge having taken.

But remember: "Accepting" does not necessarily mean "liking." "Accepting" does not mean we cannot imagine or wish for changes or improvements. It means experiencing, without denial or avoidance, that a fact is a fact.