Reality Quotes

Between the approximation of the idea and the precision of reality there was a small gap of the unimaginable, and it was this hiatus that gave him no rest.

~ Milan Kundera

But that is what life is all about, he said. It is about dreaming and making those dreams come true with effort and determination - and love.

~ Mary Balogh

The one thing is fiction in a novel and the other thing is reality. With fiction you don't make a fuss - you can 'beat it' and there's never enough. At least in my opinion - cause there are people, who complain about style intensity in literature: they prefer cereals with milk than abyssinian bitches roasted alive on bringhausers and watered with ya-yoo juice.

~ Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz

My space chums think reality was once a primitive method of crowd control that got out of hand. In my view, it’s absurdity dressed up in a three-piece business suit.

~ Jane Wagner

George, it's impossible to correct a defective reality-orientation overnight.

~ Ursula K. Le Guin

And it's his illusions about whatconstitutes the real world which are inhibiting him...His reality, his reason, his society ... These are what must be destroyed

~ Luke Rhinehart

The change of language is a change in reality.

~ Stephen Mitchell

As soon as I sat down across from her, she ordered me to put the entire contents of my pants pockets on the table. I did as I was told, saying nothing. My reality seemed to have left me and was now wandering around nearby. I hope it can find me, I thought.

~ Haruki Murakami

It had been a slow and painful business, discovering that the theory of love did not match the reality of life. It was like expecting to be able to write a symphony because you had once read a handbook of composition.

~ Julian Barnes

A utopian system, when established by men, is likely to be synonymous with a dystopian depression. The only way for perfect peace by man is absolute control of all wrongs. Bully-cultures find this: with each and every mistake, another village idiot is shamed into nothingness and mindlessly shut down by the herd. This is a superficial peace made by force and by fear, one in which there is no freedom to breathe; and the reason it is impossible for man to maintain freedom and peace for everyone at the same time. Christ, on the other hand, transforms, instead of controls, by instilling his certain inner peace. This is the place where one realizes that only his holiness is and feels like true freedom, rather than like imprisonment, and, too, why Hell, I imagine, a magnified version of man's never-ending conflict between freedom and peace, would be the flesh's ultimate utopia - yet its ultimate regret.

~ Criss Jami

The clarity of perception makes reality look as it is.

~ Toba Beta

Surrealism also refuses the representation of reality: reality can only be; its existence proves its reality. Fiction thereby becomes impossible or is, by definition, false.

~ Michael Richardson

The natural world is the only reality, thus the only valid base for spirituality there is.

~ David Petersen

In the twentieth century nothing can better cure the anthropocentrism that is the author of all our ills than to cast ourselves into the physics of the infinitely large (or the infinitely small).

~ Julio Cortázar

Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little; it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover.

~ Bertrand Russell

The gap in the fire which had opened up before him, so that the twisted grimace on the face of existence had become visible through the play of the flames, narrowed to disappear completely. His back hurt and he could hear darkness breathing audibly.

~ Paul Leppin

To say all that which does not exist is to introduce, effectively, a new concept, but it does not bring into existence anything more than that very concept which it introduces. That is, a certain entity about which we know nothing except that it bears the name of all that which does not exist.

~ Pablo Tusset

Virtual reality is a self-created form of chosen reality. Therefore it exists.

~ Joan Lowery Nixon

The primary cause of disorder in ourselves is the seeking of reality promised by another.

~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Aloneeverything changes.Some might call it distorted realitybut it's exactly the place I need to be.

~ Ellen Hopkins

Common sense tells us that the things of the earth exist only a little, and that true reality is only in dreams.

~ Charles Baudelaire

Reality is inside the skull.

~ George Orwell

I'm sorry if this sounds harsh or surprises anyone, but this is where we are. If you want the outcome to be different, you will have to do something about it.

~ Sheryl Sandberg

The first stage of ignorance is illusion, due to lack of exposure to reality. The second stage of ignorance is delusion, or the refusal to acknowledge reality. The third stage of ignorance is the rejection of altruism.

~ Justin K. Mcfarlane Beau

Nothing at all reminds us of something else when we pay attention to it.Each thing only reminds us of what it isAnd it’s only what nothing else is.The fact that it’s it separates it from every other thing.(Everything’s nothing without another thing that’s not it).

~ Alberto Caeiro

Only our imagination has the power to create the world you want and whatever gives you true joy. Beware of those who tell you to face reality and let go of your imagination. All they may truly ask for is that you shift your imagination from what you want to what they want.

~ Franco Santoro

I had great pity on Ansje, because she always acted very happy, but I believed that it was really a front. I could see through it. Inside she was crying because she was really very sad. You pity people like that -- the ones who try to lie to themselves -- because they suffer so much and don't face reality.

~ Diet Eman

In itself a wall on which a panoramic view of a non-existent world is drawn does not change. But for a great deal of money you can buy a view from the window with a painted sun, a sky-blue bay and a calm evening. Unfortunately the author of this fragment will again be Ed—but even this is not important, because the very window the view is bought for is also only drawn in. Then perhaps the wall on which it is drawn is a drawing too? But drawn by whom and on what?He raised his eyes to the wall of the toilet as though in hopes of an answer there. Traced on the tiles in red felt-tip pen were the jolly, rounded letters of a brief slogan: Trapped? Masturbate!

~ Victor Pelevin

Reality is a sound, you have to tune in to it not just keep yelling.

~ Anne Carson

Is a mountain only a huge stone? Is a planet an enormous mountain?

~ Stanisław Lem

It is such a terrifying thing to see a man cry.

~ Elizabeth Berg

Life and stories are alike in one way: They are full of hollows. The king and queen have no children: They have a child hollow. The girl has a wicked stepmother: She has a mother hollow. In a story, a baby comes along to fill the child hollow. But in life, the hollows continue empty.

~ Franny Billingsley

Reality is infinitely diverse, compared with even the subtlest conclusions of abstract thought, and does not allow of clear-cut and sweeping distinctions. Reality resists classification.

~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I wanted to write in Kitchenese, the secret language of cooks, instantly recognizable to anyone who has ever dunked french fries for a summer job or suffered under the despotic rule of a tyrannical chef or boobish owner.

~ Anthony Bourdain

The undiscovered is not far away. It’s not something to be found eventually. It is contained within what is right in front of us. The essence of reality is being born right now. It has never existed before. Reality is constant creation and destruction, and in this constant change is something unborn and undying, something that cannot be approached through the known or the past. It isn’t seen through striving to become something based on ideals stemming from former experiences. It comes to that which is being, not striving. In this state of being in the moment, without the known, without knowing at all, with neither past nor future, is a space that is not filled with time. And in this space, the undiscovered and ever-changing moment exists—a moment containing all possibilities, the totality of existence, absolute reality. Reality is now, and in the now, we can experience the true nature of the universe and the universal mind.

~ H.e. Davey

You see? I don’t know what ‘mature’ means, either, and you could talk all night and I still wouldn’t know. It’s all just words to me, Frank. I watch you talking and I think: Isn’t that amazing? He really does think that way; these words really do mean something to him. Sometimes it seems I’ve been watching people talk and thinking that all my life. And maybe it means there’s something awful the matter with me, but it’s true.

~ Richard Yates

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, but some, to dream.

~ Shirley Jackson

Realities disguised as symbols are, for me, new realities that are immeasurably preferable. I make an effort to take them at their word. To grasp, to carry out the diktat of images to the letter.

~ Claude Cahun

Why would our brains have this capacity to sense the oneness of the universe, a sense that can be induced in many ways, even technological, if that capacity did not reflect an external reality?

~ Kara Dalkey

All reality about me now appeared to be in tatters, taken down and reduced to the civil war of its particles. I held on very, very tight indeed.

~ Sebastian Faulks