Quotes About Reality

Miss Zarves taught the class on the nineteenth story. There was no Miss Zarves.

A lot of people don't believe in curses. A lot of people don't believe in yellow-spotted lizards either. But if one bites you, it doesn't make a difference whether you believe in it or not.

She preferred imaginary heroes to real ones, because when tired of them, the former could be shut up in the tin kitchen till called for, and the latter were less manageable.

what splendid dreams young people build upon a word, and how bitter is the pain when the bright bubbles burst.

They were very happy, even after they discovered that they couldn't live on love alone.

This suited the young lady better than twilight confidences, tender pressures of the hand, and eloquent glances of the eye; for with Jo, brain developed earlier than heart, and she preferred imaginary heroes to real ones, because, when tired of them, the former could be shut up in the tin kitchen till called for, and the latter were less manageable.

as one might shut the covers of a lovely romance, which holds the reader fast till the end comes, and he finds himself alone in the workaday world again.

You are a hero-worshipper, my dear; and if people don't come up to the mark you are so disappointed that you fail to see the fine reality which remains when the pretty romance ends.

But if there was embellishment, it only had to do with the facts.

I knew each person's delusion, the places their records had scratched, where the sounds repeated.

This statement tallied with Washington's often expressed view that citizens had to feel before they saw—that is, they couldn't react to abstract problems, only to tangible ones.

truth is so enveloped in mist and false representations that it is extremely difficult to know through what channel to seek it.

What mattered was that people trusted the government to make good on repayment: "In nothing are appearances of greater moment than in whatever regards credit. Opinion is the soul of it and this is affected by appearances as well as realities.

John D. Rockefeller drew strength by simplifying reality and strongly believed that excessive reflection upon unpleasant but unalterable events only weakened one's resolve in the face of enemies.

It was testimony to the political genius of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison that they diverted attention from the grisly realities of southern slavery by casting a lurid spotlight on Hamilton's system as the paramount embodiment of evil. They inveighed against the concentrated wealth of northern merchants when southern slave plantations clearly represented the most heinous form of concentrated wealth.

I listened to time clicking like hooves on pavement. But time isn't something you can rein in. It moves on without pause, taking us with it no matter how much we wish it otherwise.

Something would happen or it wouldn't happen, and that was the way of it.

how does this outer life, apocalypse reported, penetrate my dreams

lo que está oculto es para nosotros los occidentales lo más verdadero que lo que es visible

If history teaches anything, it teaches that self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.

Facts are stupid things.

A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions tell me that's true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not.

I picture is worth 1000 denials.

Quién no ha deseado alguna vez escapar del encierro de la propia vida? Y no porque esa vida no nos guste, sino porque una sola existencia, por muy grande y muy buena que sea, siempre será una especie de cárcel, una mutilación de las otras posibles realidades, de los otros individuos que pudimos ser.