Quotes About Reality

but she knew also that what the world sees of the life of any human creature is not the real life; that life is lived in secret, a reality that moves behind the facade of appearance, like wind behind a painted curtain; only an occasional ripple of the surface, a smile, a sudden light or shadow passing on a face, surprising by its unexpectedness, gives news of something quite other than what is seen.

We're all too apt to think that things are as we feel them to be, forgetting that they have an objective value apart from what we feel about them. An embittered mind colors the world black for its owner yet that does not alter the fact that the world is a treasure house of beauty and love.

Reality as one knew it was what claimed one's allegiance. Deepening experience might change one's conception of it but until that happened the life one knew was the life one had to live.

Love. The only indestructible thing. The only wealth and the only reality. The only survival. At the end of it all there was nothing else

She never slept very well because old people never do; especially when they have brought six children and eight grandchildren into a world that is not as good to them as they thought it was going to be.

Part of running a good business is not letting anyone know how bad things have really become.

All of her news was bad and so her talk was punctuated with "of course" and "naturally.

Alas, the heart is not a metaphor, or at least not always a metaphor.

When you travel your first discovery is that you do not exist.

I don't say it was likely -- I only say it is true.

It was foolish to indulge in elaborate preconceptions: anticipation was a featherweight, doomed to compete with the inevitable, convincing bulk of reality. The trouble was that one had to face reality without knowing beforehand precisely what it was to be. One had somehow to discover and tread the hard, between the sloughs of fearing the worst and hoping for the best.

Ich weiß es nicht genau. Umwerfend - aber auch etwas unwirklich. Als wäre ich gleichzeitig zwei Personen: Eine, der es passiert, und eine, der es unmöglich passieren kann.

Isn't that odd?' she continued as they wandered back from the front towards the shops again, 'When you see people in the shops choosing their clothes and shoes and stuff, they take ages - as though each thing they choose will be amazing and perfect. And then, look at them. They mostly look simply terrible - or just ordinary They might just as well have chosen their clothes out of a bran tub.

The woman whose behavior indicates that she will make a scene if she is told the truth asks to be deceived.

How could the people around me not see that I'd been spending my day in nineteenth-century Kansas, or in the pit of a giant peach? It was like I was the only one living in the real world, and they were skating blindly over an opaque surface above me.

I want true love in this life, and true contentment and peace. But maybe the only way I can find those things is to let go of the belief that this life is my reality.

Pissing in your pants will only keep you warm for so long.

Though it might be nice to imagine there once was a time when man lived in harmony with nature, it's not clear that he ever really did.

might be nice to imagine there once was a time when man lived in harmony with nature, it's not clear that he ever really did.

Though it might be nice to imagine there once was a time when man lived in harmony with nature, it's not clear that he ever really did.

The thing that most haunted me that day, however...was the fact that these things had - apparently - actually occurred...For all his attention to my historical education, my father had neglected to tell me this: history's terrible moments were real. I understand now, decades later, that he could never have told me. Only history itself can convince you of such a truth. And once you've seen that truth - really seen it - you can't look away.

Too bad, how sad, life's a bitch and then you die.

Single people eat sadly--they cobble together things left from shopping trips based on dreams of all the meals they'd fix for themselves, all the ways they'd treat themselves to something grand; those dreams, for me, died by the next day and, despite my best hopes, I wanted only canned hash and apples.

Do you think wishful thinking is a psychiatric condition?