Quotes About Reality

Aún no habías nacido cuando los árboles eran cristal ni has nacido ahora, en esta vigilia dentro de un sueño.

Let be be finale of seem, the only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.

The subject matter. . . is not that collection of solid, static objects extended in space but the life that is lived in the scene that it composes; and so reality is not that external scene but the life that is lived in it. Reality is things as they are.

The man bent over his guitar, A shearsman of sorts. The day was green. They said, "You have a blue guitar, You do not play things as they are." The man replied, "Things as they are Are changed upon the blue guitar." And they said then, "But play, you must, A tune beyond us, yet ourselves, A tune upon the blue guitar Of things exactly as they are.

Reality is the beginning not the end, Naked Alpha, not the hierophant Omega, Of dense investiture, with luminous vassals.

Another Weeping Woman Pour the unhappiness out From your too bitter heart, Which grieving will not sweeten. Poison grows in this dark. It is in the water of tears Its black blooms rise. The magnificent cause of being, The imagination, the one reality In this imagined world Leaves you With him for whom no phantasy moves, And you are pierced by a death.

Dwelling always in an in-between realm, between eras of the imagination, there exists a degree of perception at which what is real and what is imagined are one. — Wallace Stevens, Collected Poetry and Prose (Library of America, October 1, 1997)

To be at the end of fact is not to be at the beginning of the imagination but it is to be at the end of both.

The magnificent cause of being— The imagination, the one reality In this imagined world— Leaves you With him for whom no phantasy moves, And you are pierced by a death.

The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly." ? Wallace Stevens, Opus Posthumous: Poems, Plays, Prose

That strange flower, the sun, Is just what you say. Have it your way. The world is ugly, And the people are sad.

It is not an artifice that the mind has added to human nature. The mind has added nothing to human nature. It is a violence from within that protects us from a violence without It is the imagination pressing back against the pressure of reality. It seems, in the last analysis, to have something to do wIth our self-preservation; and that, no doubt, is why the expression of it, the sound of its words, helps us to live our lives.

The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence.

Reality is a cliché from which we escape by metaphor.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.

The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly.

The imperfect is our paradise.

in the presence of extraordinary actuality, consciousness takes the place of imagination.

I know it's a crock of shit. I ain't offering you happily-ever-after. I'm offering you... happily-maybe-sometimes-ever-after. Sort of. You know, with warts and shit." -Thayer

It was a matter of perspective, I began to see. The whole world was crazy; I'd flattered myself by assuming I was a semifinalist." -- Dolores Price

Whatever is impermanent is dukkha' (Yad anicca? ta? dukkha?).

There is no unmoving mover behind the movement. It is only movement. It is not correct to say that life is moving, but life is movement itself. Life and movement are not two different things. In other words, there is no thinker behind the thought. Thought itself is the thinker. If you remove the thought, there is no thinker to be found.

Real life is the present moment—not the memories of the past which is dead and gone, nor the dreams of the future which is not yet born. One who lives in the present moment lives the real life, and he is happiest.

Human language is too poor to express the real nature of the Absolute Truth or Ultimate Reality which is Nirvana. Language is created and used by masses of human beings to express things and ideas experienced by their sense organs and their mind. A supramundane experience like that of the Absolute Truth is not of such a category. Therefore there cannot be words to express that experience, just as the fish had no words in his vocabulary to express the nature of the solid land.