Quotes About Reality

Dès qu'une image viendra te troubler l'esprit, pense à te dire : « Tu n'es qu'image, et non la réalité dont tu as l'apparence. » Puis, examine-la et soumets-la à l'épreuve des lois qui règlent ta vie : avant tout, vois si cette réalité dépend de nous ou n'en dépend pas ; et si elle ne dépend pas de nous, sois prêt à dire : « Cela ne me regarde pas. »

The object of your love is mortal; it is not one of your possessions; it has been given to you for the present, not inseparably nor forever." (Epictetus, The Discourses)

Don't mistake your assumptions for the truth.

Things and people are not what we wish them to be nor what they seem to be. They are what they are.

Open your eyes: See things for what they really are, thereby sparing yourself the pain of false attachments and avoidable devastation.

practice saying to every harsh appearance,1 You are an appearance, and in no manner what you appear to be.

The origin of sorrow is this: to wish for something that does not come to pass.

Cómo se llama a los que hacen caso de cualquier apariencia? — Locos

Goodness exists independently of our conception of it. The good is out there and it always has been out there, even before we began to exist.

People are not disturbed by things themselves, but by the views they take of those things.

You are but an appearance, and not absolutely the thing you appear to be.

Whenever distress or displeasure arises in your mind, remind yourself, "This is only my interpretation, not reality itself." Then ask whether it falls within or outside your sphere of power. And, if it is beyond your power to control, let it go.

If you want not just peace and contentment, but power and wealth too, you may forfeit the former in seeking the latter, and will lose your freedom and happiness along the way. Whenever distress or displeasure arises in your mind, remind yourself, "This is only my interpretation, not reality itself." Then ask whether it falls within or outside your sphere of power. And, if it is beyond your power to control, let it go.

What is death? A scary mask. Take it off – see, it doesn't bite.

For what else are tragedies but the ordeals of people who have come to value externals, tricked out in tragic verse?

Do you realize that you are awake?' 'No, any more than when I dream and have the impression that I am awake.' 'And is the one impression in no way different from the other?' 'No.

How wonderful to wander among virgin hills! I suppose whiteness is a symbol of purity (skin color being an exception) and how pure I found that world. As you've heard me say many times, the mountains are my life. Without them I am nothing. They are perhaps the only reality I know. They are my guru. If I am to learn anything in life, I will learn it there.

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible. —T. E. Lawrence

the Young Turks with a complex nationalist ideology replete with ideas such as "in reality there cannot be a common home and fatherland for different peoples.… The new civilization will be created by the Turkish race."27

Idealism is guilty middle-class bullshit.

Jeff: Idealism is guilty middle-class bullshit.

We shall lie down," Lincoln warned, "pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free; and we shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State." Lincoln

The common problem, yours, mine, everyone's, Is — not to fancy what were fair in life Provided it could be — but, finding first What may be, then find how to make it fair & the word fair can be taken in both senses — it means both beautiful and just.

The indispensability of play-acting in the grim business of dying and killing is particularly evident in the case of armies. Their uniforms, flags, emblems, parades, music, and elaborate etiquette and ritual are designed to separate the soldier from his flesh-and-blood self and mask the overwhelming reality of life and death.