Quotes About Reality

Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that we live, if we do.

Henrietta knew of the heart as an organ; she privately saw it covered in red plush and believed that it could not break, though it might tear.

They had sat round a painted, not a burning, fire, at which you tried in vain to warm your hands.....

There was the dream of happiness and then there was what was real.

By the way, I've decided there's no such thing as a simple life. It's futile to even pursue one.

It was terrible if you looked at things the way they could have been, but if you concentrated on what there was, it didn't look too bad.

I know the difference between the confection of live as sung in a minstrel's tale and the sustaining bread of love in reality, he defended himself. Both are to be savoured in their own way.

And what is truth, since it changes according to each individual's perception?

It was the truth, but that made it no more palatable.

Everyone knew that; everyone was prepared until it happened to them

Those who walk with their heads in the air usually don't see the shit on the ground until they tread in it.

All that remained were poignant memories, and she must face reality, not live on dreams.

If you ask me, people out of touch with reality aren't nearly as dangerous as lawyers like him who manipulate it.

It seems to me that really crazy people don't think they're crazy. Why would you?

Percival Everett by Virgil Russell

How things appear is only the thin, papery outer skin of the onion. Of course, when you cut open the onion, your eyes will sting and water, and then you can't see at all. You're lucky if you don't slice your finger.

I could imagine it, I thought, but all I could ever do was imagine. I couldn't know. I couldn't feel that.

I don't exactly know who I thought I'd be by now, but I know I'm not that person.

A lot of people have great hope, and a lot of people who have great hope live. And, some of them who have great hope die. So it's not that hope is going to save you.

In 1942, somebody came back to our village from Treblinka. His name was Spivak, he escaped by hiding in a wagon full of clothing. He described what was going on there, and said he got crazy from what he had seen. We didn't believe him, we didn't believe in the crematoria. We thought he was a madman telling an unbelievable tale. How could such a thing be happening in our world, our modern world?

Grownups! Everyone remembers them. How strange and even sad it is that we never became what they were: beings noble, infallible, and free. We never became them . One of the things we discover as we live is that we never become anything different from what we are. We are no less ourselves at forty than we were at four, and because of this we know grownups as Grownups only once in life: during our own childhood. We never meet them in our lives again, and we will miss them always.

People may flatter themselves just as much by thinking that their faults are always present to other people's minds, as if they believe that the world is always contemplating their individual charms and virtues.

Work on what is real rather than worry about what is unreal.

In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place.