Quotes About Reality

Sometimes I live so much in my mind that I forget what is right before my eyes.

It's only before realities set in that we can treasure our delusions.

Like so many of the other books I read, it never seemed to me like a book, but like a place I had lived in, had visited and would visit again, just as all the people in them, every blessed one – Anne of Green Gables, Heidi, Jay Gatsby, Elizabeth Bennet, Scarlet O'Hara, Dill and Scout, Miss Marple, and Hercule Poirot – were more real than the real people I knew.

I had that feeling you have when you're watching a sad movie, sobbing at the heartbreak you are feeling at the same time that you know the heartbreak isn't exactly real, that it will be gone by the time you get home and make a cup of tea. I found a lot of life like that when I was younger, as though I was practicing for what came later.

I lived within the cover of books and those books were more real to me than any other thing in my life.

Maybe everyone stays the same inside, even when their life looks nothing like what they once had, or even imagined.

Occasionally someone will tell me that they won't have pets because they're messy, and I suppose there's some truth to that, between the fur and the slobber and the occasional puddle on the floor. I have to choke down the temptation to respond that life is messy, and its vagaries go down hardest with those who fool themselves into thinking they can keep it neat.

I thought I had a handle on my future. But the future, it turns out, is not a tote bag.

It's amazing how resilient people are, and how the things that didn't come true become,after a while, simply the way things are.

When I got older I realized that the majority of people in Miller's Valley were the most discontented kind of Americans, working people whose situations hadn't risen or fallen over generations, but who still carried a little bit of those streets-paved-with-gold illusions and so were always annoyed that the streets were paved with tar. If they were paved at all. Maybe

To take what there is, and use it, without waiting forever in vain for the preconceived—to dig deep into the actual and get something out of that—this doubtless is the right way to live. —HENRY JAMES

My home was in that pleasant place outside Philadelphia, but I really lived somewhere else. I lived within the covers of books and those books were more real to me than any other thing in my life.

That's harsh.

I have heard men say that seeing is believing; but I should say that feeling is believing;

People have always had different opinions. Now they have different facts.

When people say they are angry about "immigration," in other words, they are not always talking about something they have lived and experienced. They are talking about something imaginary, something they fear.

there is always a but in this imperfect world!

who had taken a violent fancy to me, mistaking me for something vastly better than I was.

Alas! how far the promise of anticipation exceeds the pleasure of possession!

I longed to seek the retirement of my own room, or some sequestered nook in the grounds, that I might deliver myself up to my feelings—to weep my last farewell, and lament my false hopes and vain delusions. Only this once, and then adieu to fruitless dreaming—thenceforth, only sober, solid, sad reality should occupy my mind.

I am determined not to consent until I know for certain whether my aunt's opinion of him or mine is nearest the truth; for if mine is altogether wrong, it is not he that I love; it is a creature of my own imagination.

Glupo je žudjeti za ljepotom. Razumni ljudi nikada ju ne žele za sebe, niti im je stalo do nje kod drugih ljudi. Samo ako je um dobro prosvije?en, a srce na pravome mjestu, nikome nikada nije važna vanjština. Tako su govorili u?itelji našega djetinjstva; a tako i mi govorimo djeci današnjih vremena. Sve vrlo razumno i umjesno, nema sumnje; ali imaju li takve tvrdnje podršku u stvarnim iskustvima?

Her speculations on the future are full of buoyant hope - so were mine once. I shudder to think of her being awakened like me to a sense of their delusive vanity.

To represent a bad thing in its least offensive light is, doubtless, the most agreeable course for a writer of fiction to pursue; but is it the most honest, or the safest? Is it better to reveal the snares and pitfalls of life to the young and thoughtless traveller, or to cover them with branches and flowers?