Quotes About Reality

Then I glanced at the ring on my finger. The Snake That Eats Its Own Tail, Forever and Ever. I know where I came from—but where did all you zombies come from? I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once—and you all went away. So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light. You aren't really there at all. There isn't anybody but me—Jane—here alone in the dark. I miss you dreadfully!

Correct morality can only be derived from what man is — not from what do-gooders and well-meaning aunt Nellies would like him to be.

Is this Paradise?' 'I can guarantee you that it isn't,' Jubal assured him. 'My taxes are due this week.

Jill, of all the nonsense that twists the world, the concept of 'altruism' is the worst. People do what they want to do, every time.

Simply because an evil was inescapable was no reason to term it a 'good.

I know where I came from—but where did all you zombies come from? I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once—and you all went away. So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light. You aren't really there at all. There isn't anybody but me—Jane—here alone in the dark. I miss you dreadfully!

A great artist can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is . . . and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be . . . more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo see that this lovely young girl is still alive, prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart . . . no matter what the merciless hours have done.

A paradox may be paradoctored.

I had the unsettling feeling that I had been completely mistaken as to the very nature of the world I was in, as if every part was something wildly different from what it appeared to be...

A thing can be fine on paper but utterly crummy in the field.

Eh? I don't grok your answer." Mike hesitated. "I will try. But words are . . . are not . . . rightly. Not 'putting.' Not 'mading.' A nowing, World is. World was. World shall be. Now." " 'As it was in the beginning, so it is now and ever shall be, World without end—

Correct morals arise from knowing what Man is—not what do-gooders and well-meaning old Aunt Nellies would like him to be.

Maybe the whole world held together only when you kept your attention centered on it and believed in it. If you let discrepancies creep in, you began to doubt and it began to go to pieces.

He could not afford to believe anything that he was told, or that he read, or that was implicitly assumed to be true about the world around him. No, he could not believe any of it, for the sum total of what be had been told and read and been taught in school was so contradictory, so senseless, so wildly insane that none of it could be believed unless he personally confirmed it.

All symbols were in Smith's vocabulary but he had trouble believing that he had heard rightly. He knew that he was food, but he did not "feel like" food. Nor had he any warning that he might be selected for such honor

A great artist can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is . . . and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be . . . more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo see that this lovely young girl is still alive, prisoned inside her ruined body.

Ironia suprem? a vie?ii este c? nimeni nu scap? de ea cu via??

To be "matter of fact" about the world is to blunder into fantasy--and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful.

Boss, there ain't no such animal as a well-documented conspiracy.

He knew that he did not invent the information brought to him by his senses. There had to be something else out there, some otherness that produced the things his senses recorded. All philosophies that claimed that the physical world around him did not exist except in his imagination were sheer nonsense. But

One might define adulthood as the age at which a person learns that he must die … and accepts his sentence undismayed.

Strangely, the best can come from this neglected quarter. We will go to almost any length to avoid this painful paradox; but in that refusal we only confine ourselves to the useless experience of contradiction. Contradiction brings the crushing burden of meaninglessness. One can endure any suffering if it has meaning; but meaninglessness is unbearable. Contradiction is barren and destructive, yet paradox is creative. It is a powerful embracing of reality.

Heaven and skid row are separated only by an act of consciousness.

There are periods of history when the visions of madmen and dope fiends are a better guide to reality than the common-sense interpretation of data available to the so-called normal mind. This is one such period, if you haven't noticed already.