Quotes About Reality

A photograph acquires something of the dignity which it ordinarily lacks when it ceases to be a reproduction of reality and shows us things that no longer exist.

Un être réel, si profondément que nous sympathisions avec lui, pour une grande part est perçu par nos sens, c'est-à-dire nous reste opaque, offre un poids mort que notre sensibilité ne peut soulever.

A imobilidade das coisas que nos cercam talvez lhes seja imposta por nossa certeza de que essas coisas são elas mesmas e não outras, pela imobilidade de nosso pensamento perante elas.

seemed to proclaim the unpeopled vacancy of this estranged forest, and helped me to understand how paradoxical it is to seek in reality for the pictures that are stored in one's memory, which must inevitably lose the charm that comes to them from memory itself and from their not being apprehended by the senses. The reality that I had known no longer existed.

Possibly they knew better than I did that the Duchesse de Guise was Princess of Cleves, of Orléans, of Porcien, and so forth, but long before they knew all these names, they had known the Duchesse de Guise's face, which was subsequently what this name reflected back to them. I had begun with the fairy, even if she was soon fated to perish; they had begun with the woman herself.

My first impression of them had been quite the opposite: I had found them very ordinary, just like anyone else, but this was because, before actually meeting them, I had seen them, as I saw Balbec, Florence, and Parma, as magical names.

it appears that vice is far more common than one has been led to believe.

his imagination and did not feed his jealousy. Swann's mind would become exhausted, until, passing his hand over his eyes, he would exclaim: "We must trust in God," like those who, after having persisted in embracing the problem of the reality of the external world or the immortality of the soul, grant their tired brains the relief of an act of faith.

Là comme partout, je connais tout le monde et je ne connais personne; beaucoup les choses et fort peu les personnes. Mais les choses elles-mêmes y semblent des personnes, des personnes rares, d'une essence délicate et que la vie aurait déçue.

La vraie vie, [...] c'est la littérature.

The sight of Albertine's bare throat, of those too rosy cheeks, had so intoxicated me (that is to say had placed the reality of the world for me no longer in nature, but in the torrent of sensations that I could barely contain) that this sight had destroyed the equilibrium between the immense and indestructible life that circulated in my being and the life of the universe, so puny in comparison.

Assim vai mudando o nosso coração, durante a vida, e esta é a pior das dores; porém só a conhecemos através da leitura, pela imaginação: na realidade o coração se trasnforma da mesma maneiracomo se produzem certos fenômenos da natureza, tão vagarosamente que, embora possamos verificar de modo sucessivo seus estados diferentes, em compensação nos foge a própria sensação de mudança.

Ni siquiera desde el punto de vista de las cosas más insignificantes de la vida somos los hombres un todo materialmente constituido, idéntico para todos, y del que cualquiera puede enterarse como de un pliego de condiciones o de un testamento. Nuestra personalidad social es una creación del pensamiento de los demás.

In actual fact, I had not imagined there to have been anything sensual, or even sentimental, in the Baron's offers. I had said that to my parents out of sheer foolishness. But the future sometimes dwells in us without our knowing it, and the words thought to be untruthful describe an imminent reality.

The valet de chambre had entered. I did not tell him that I had rung several times, for I realized that hitherto all I had done was to dream that I had rung. I was alarmed to think, however, that this dream had had the clarity of a cognition. Could cognition, by the same token, have the unreality of a dream?

It is often only for want of the creative spirit that we do not go far enough in suffering. And the most terrible reality brings us, at the same time as suffering, the joy of a beautiful discovery, for all that it does is to lend a new and explicit form to what we had long been turning over in our minds without suspecting

Reality is formed only by memory.

And grief is as potent in altering reality as is drunkenness

Los hechos no penetran en el mundo donde viven nuestras creencias, y como no les dieron vida no las pueden matar; pueden estar desmintiéndolas constantemente sin debilitarlas, y un alud de desgracia o enfermedades que una tras otra padece una familia, no le hace dudar de la bondad de su Dios ni de la pericia de su médico.

That purpose allows the chain of spent days to slip away, holding on only to the very end of it, often of a quite different metal from the links that have vanished in the night, and in the journey which we make through life, counts as real only in the place in which we at any given moment are.

But sometimes the future is latent in us without our knowledge, and our words which we suppose to be false forecast an imminent reality.

When I talked with any one of my friends I was conscious that the original, the unique portrait of her individuality had been skilfully traced, tyranically imposed on my mind as much by the inflexions of her voice as by those of her face, and that these were two separate spectacles which rendered, each in its own plane, the same single reality.

the fact remains that there is a certain objective reality in each of these people, and consequently a difference among them.

Our love becomes immense; we never dream how small a place in it the real woman occupies. And if suddenly, as at the moment when I had seen Elstir stop to talk to the girls, we cease to be uneasy, to suffer pain, since it is this pain that is the whole of our love, it seems to us as though love had abruptly vanished at the moment when at length we grasp the prey to whose value we had not given enough thought before