Reality quotes
10.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside reality — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"I know not anything more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed."
"Each of us bears his own Hell."
"Now the writer, I think, has the chance to live more than other people in the presence of ... reality. It is his business to find it and collect it and communicate it to the rest of us."
"If the best of one's feelings means nothing to the person most concerned in those feelings, what reality is left us?"
"How far do our feelings take their colour from the dive underground? I mean, what is the reality of any feeling?"
"Boredom is the legitimate kingdom of the philanthropic."
"In every community there are little knots of fantastic extremists who loudly proclaim that they are striving for righteousness, and who, in reality, do their feeble best for unrighteousness. Just as the upright politician should hold in peculiar scorn the man who makes the name of politician a reproach and a shame, so the genuine reformer should realize that the cause he champions is especially jeopardized by the mock reformer who does what he can to make reform a laughingstock among decent men."
"[It is appropriate that the Body and Blood of Christ be truly present in this Sacrament] because of the perfection of the New Covenant. The sacrifices of the Old Covenant contained the true sacrifice of Christ's Passion only in symbol....Therefore it was necessary that the sacrifice of the New Covenant, instituted by Christ, have something more, namely, that it contain Christ Himself who has suffered and contain Him not only in symbol but in reality."
"In order to find God in ourselves, we must stop looking at ourselves, stop checking and verifying ourselves in the mirror of our own futility, and be content to be in Him and to do whatever He wills, according to our limitations, judging our acts not in the light of our own illusions, but in the light of His reality which is all around us in the things and people we live with."
"In the end, it's the reality of personal realtionships that save everything."
"One of the most important-and most neglected-elements in the beginning of the interior life is the ability to respond to reality, to see the value and the beauty in ordinary things, to come alive to the splendour that is all around us."
"The whole aim of Zen is not to make foolproof statements about experience, but to come to direct grips with reality without the mediation of logical verbalizing."
"We thank Him less by words than by the serene happiness of silent acceptance. It is our emptiness in the presence of His reality, our silence in the presence of His infinitely rich silence, our joy in the bosom of the serene darkness in which His light holds us absorbed, it is all this that praises Him."
"We live like caged beasts waiting for the day to let the rage free."
"Q: What’s hard for you? A: Mostly I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane. Math is hard. Reading a map. Following orders. Carpentry. Electronics. Plumbing. Remembering things correctly. Straight lines. Sheet rock. Finding a safety pin. Patience with others. Ordering in Chinese. Stereo instructions in German."
"Mostly I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane."
"As writers and readers, as sinners and citizens, our realism and our aesthetic sense make us wary of crediting the positive note."
"I think the perception of wealth and power is that things just become easier and easier when in reality as you raise the stakes things become more stressful."
"Organize your reality according to your strength; organize your reality according to your playfulness; according to your dreams; according to your joy; according to your hopes - and then you can help those who organize their reality according to their fears."
"Words have to murder reality before they can hold it captive."
