Quotes About Reality

In the blink of an eye, as quickly as he had seen ten thousand previous lifetimes, he saw the human predicament. Everyone was asleep, totally unconscious about their true nature. Some slept fitfully, catching scattered glimpses of the truth. But they quickly fell asleep again. They were the fortunate ones. The bulk of human beings had no glimpse of reality.

He was convinced that Buddha had revealed a truth that every person could recognize: suffering is a fixed part of life. Fleeing from pain and running toward pleasure would never change that fact. Yet most people spent their whole lives avoiding pain and pursuing pleasure. To them, this was only natural, but in reality they were becoming deeply involved in a war they could never win.

The question remains: When did he graduate from person to myth, and from myth to legend? The legends may not be true, but they are definitely real to the world at large.

I realize that a certain school of thought says that who we are is something we construct for ourselves. We build ourselves out of what we think we remember, what we believe to be true about our life; and the possessions we gather around us are supposedly a part of this, that we are, to some extent what we own.

Touching the scar, quickly, so that no one ever realised that she was doing it, restored a sense of reality, a sense of who she was, in a way that looking at her own reflection could not.

But this was the first occasion I had come across someone for whom art was a means of avoiding reality rather than confronting it head on, an idea so strange to me that I didn't fully comprehend it at the time.

I realise that a certain school of thought says that who we are is something we construct for ourselves. We build our self out of what we think we remember.

The believer is neither a pessimist nor an optimist. To be either is illusory. The believer sees reality not in a certain light but as it is, and believes only in God and God's power towards all and over all that is seen. (in No Rusty Swords)

Nothing is inanimate; what is the rest is our interpretation.

Our eternity is not real; it resembles us; it is our own invention; its scent is vanity.

The world cannot be translated; it can only be dreamed of and touched.

To dream on occasion is not dreaming; to love on occasion is not love.

To expect to be kissed having bad breath is the secret of a fool.

Truth is hard-hearted and unrelenting, too clear, precise; a lie is much more imaginative.

What we call life is only talk of nature.

And why do most of us want marriage? Crave it for status or for stability that is an illusion. Marriage can't protect you from heartbreak or the random cruelties and unfairnesses life deals out. It's

He had come looking for a docile, submissive, sweet-natured girl and found instead a Celtic warrior woman, ferocious in her protectiveness of those she loved. Yet he had expected she would become the girl of his dreams simply because he dreamed it.

No one fools anyone much, except himself," said Jacob to himself. "How do I fool myself?

You see, I am good at filling in blanks, at seeing meaning where there may have been none at all. In this way I get very close to the truth. Or closer still to illusion.

In truth we know nothing, for truth lies in the depth.

By convention there is color, by convention sweetness, by convention bitterness, but in reality there are atoms and space.

Nothing exists except atoms and empty space;everything else is opinion.

The easiest thing of all is to deceive one's self for what a man wishes he generally believes to be true.

The fact speak for themselves.