Quotes About Reality

The second reason was to make public and visible an invisible spiritual reality. This is the purpose of all the sacraments. Indeed, it is the fundamental purpose of matter itself.

Many people disbelieve in angels because they disbelieve in spirit. They believe only matter exists.

All that exists is metaphysically true and metaphysically good.

Pure truth is possible, but pure falsehood is not.

In art, the world conforms to the creative idea; in science, the idea conforms to the world.

For the wise men of old, the cardinal problem of human life was how to conform the soul to objective reality, and the solution was wisdom, self-discipline, and virtue. For the modern mind, the cardinal problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of man, and the solution is a technique.

wisdom, which is the habit of distinguishing appearance from reality.)

The cross is the crux, the crossroads, the twisted knot at the center of reality, to which all previous history leads and from which all subsequent history flows. By it we know all reality is cruciform—the love of God, the shape of creation, the labyrinth of human history.

Byron had to blink a dozen times, each time hoping the dream would end. But the unreal was real.

Fantasies hurt. They hurt hard and deep. They lifted you up to places that you could never reach, then they let you down with a crash.

I DON'T THINK so." I blinked upward into Cass's face. His hair was haloed by a fluorescent ceiling light. I was in a glaringly bright room with puke-green walls and a tiled floor. My arm was attached to an IV stand, and by the wall was a wheeled table with beeping medical machines. "Huh?" I said. "You called me Mom. I said, 'I don't think so.'" "Sorry," I said. "The Dream.

Actually Wall Street thinks just as the Greeks did. The early Greeks used to sit around for days and debate how many teeth a horse has. They thought they could figure it out by just sitting there, instead of checking the horse. A lot of investors sit around and debate whether a stock is going up, as if the financial muse will give them the answer, instead of checking the company.

Personal mastery is the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively. As such, it is an essential cornerstone of the learning organization—the learning organization's spiritual foundation.

In Chapter 8, I argued that personal vision, by itself, is not the key to releasing the energy of the creative process. The key is "creative tension," the tension between vision and reality. The most effective people are those who can "hold" their vision while remaining committed to seeing current reality clearly.

Mastery of creative tension transforms the way one views "failure." Failure is, simply, a shortfall, evidence of the gap between vision and current reality. Failure is an opportunity for learning—about inaccurate pictures of current reality, about strategies that didn't work as expected, about the clarity of the vision. Failures are not about our unworthiness or powerlessness.

Failure is, simply, a shortfall, evidence of the gap between vision and current reality. Failure is an opportunity for learning—about inaccurate pictures of current reality, about strategies that didn't work as expected, about the clarity of the vision. Failures are not about our unworthiness or powerlessness.

Thought denies that it is participative." Thought stops tracking reality and "just goes, like a program." And thought establishes its own standard of reference for fixing problems, problems which it contributed to creating in the first place.

Thought presents itself (stands in front) of us and pretends that it does not represent.

Personal mastery is the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively.

Huntin too hard for the truth ain't a good idea, y'know," he added. "By the time you stumble over it, it ain't the truth no more. Unless there's death in it. I reckon death is about as close to truth as a man can come.

Course truth don't count for much after all these years cause folks hangs on to what it suits 'em to believe and won't let go of it.

Man wants the truth about Ed Watson," Daniels jeered. "Where you aim to find it? Smallwoods'll tell you their truth, Hardens'll tell you theirs. Fat-ass guard out there, he'll tell you his and I'll give you another. Which one you aim to settle for and make your peace with?

Out here in the country there was no avoiding the direct link between death and dinner

We might treat a rabbit as a pet or become emotionally attached to a goose, but we had come from cities and supermarkets, where flesh was hygienically distanced from any resemblance to living creatures. A shrink-wrapped pork chop has a sanitized, abstract appearance that has nothing whatever to do with the warm, mucky bulk of a pig. Out here in the country there was no avoiding the direct link between death and dinner.