Quotes About Reality

Man's best-directed effort accomplishes a kind of dream, while God is the sole worker of realities.

What wonder, then, should we be frightened by the aspect of a monster, which, after all,—though we can point to every feature of his deformity in the real personage,—may be said to have been created mainly by ourselves. Thus

They are unavoidable at this moment, standing, as you do, on the outer verge of your long seclusion, and peopling the world with ugly shapes, which you will soon find to be as unreal as the giants and ogres of a child's story-book. I find nothing so singular in life, as that everything appears to lose its substance the instant one actually grapples with it. So it will be with what you think so terrible.

Ninety-nine people out of a hundred, I suppose, would have been frightened out of their wits by the very first of his ugly shapes, and would have taken to their heels at once. For, one of the hardest things in this world is, to see the difference between real dangers and imaginary ones.

How often is it the case that, when impossibilities have come to pass and dreams have condensed their misty substance into tangible realities, we find ourselves calm, and even coldly self-possessed, amid circumstances which it would have been a delirium of joy or agony to anticipate! Fate delights to thwart us thus. Passion will choose his own time to rush upon the scene, and lingers sluggishly behind when an appropriate adjustment of events would seem to summon his appearance.

The young deemed themselves happy. The elder spirits, if they knew that mirth was but the counterfeit of happiness, yet followed the false shadow willfully, because at least her garments glittered brightest. Sworn triflers of a lifetime, they would not venture among the sober truths of life not even to be truly blest.

Could it be true? She clutched the child so fiercely to her breast, that it sent forth a cry; she turned her eyes downward at the scarlet letter, and even touched it with her finger, to assure herself that the infant and the shame were real. Yes! — these were her realities, — all else had vanished!

To the untrue man, the whole universe is false

Había dicho la pura verdad y, sin embargo, la había transformado en la peor de las falsedades.

They looked neither older nor younger now; the beards of the aged were no whiter, nor could the creeping babe of yesterday walk on his feet today...

When the artist rose high enough to achieve the beautiful, the symbol by which he made it perceptible to mortal senses became of little value in his eyes while his spirit possessed itself in the enjoyment of the reality.

No encuentro nada tan singular en la vida como el hecho de que todo parece perder su substancia en el instante en que uno va a tocarlo.

My father and mother fed my sister and me on a diet of romantic dreams just as though they were giving us candy. Gradually the dreams wore thin, until in the end they wasted away to nothing.

It gave me a great deal of pleasure, as I have already said, to indulge in these fantasies. I would join clubs, make friends, and live an ordinary life like any other ordinary person. But reality tore these dreams to shreds.

Most of the kids I know read only manga, but I prefer novels. Novels are closer to real life than manga, it's like they show you the real world with one layer peeled away, a reality you can't see otherwise.

In the end, his trials with Masako had been the hardest ones...but they weren't really trials or tasks or tests at all: they were just facts that he could do nothing about. And that in itself was probably the real test: his ability to accept something that was completely beyond his control. It made him want to cry.

But I feel that you, in particular, are a person who cannot live without love. Yet I am living without love. Then you are either living a lie or not living at all.

Mysticism is the function of a mind looking for alternatives to reality.

We are actually fourth dimensional beings in a third dimensional body inhabiting a second dimensional world!

because television had become the primary means through which people appropriated the world, it promulgated an epistemology in which all information, whatever the source, was forced to become entertainment.

If your heart tells you something but your mind tells you something else, which do you believe? Both are just as apt to lie. In fact, they play at deceit all the time. Mostly they balance each other, giving us that crucial reality check. But what happens on the rare occasions when they conspire together?

The only thing you have for measuring what's real is your mind . . . so what happens when your mind becomes a pathological liar?

They all think medicine should be magic, and they become mad at me when it's not.

Who says I'm insane? Oh you're sane alright. You're so sane, you scare me. You're so sane, it's insane.