Quotes about Reality

But one's convictions as to the nature of reality must also represent one's limitations as to the perception of it. And then I just stopped worrying about it. I accepted the fact that I would die without really knowing where it was that I had been and that was okay. Well. Almost.

Under the hooves of the horses the alabaster sand shaped itself in whorls strangely symmetric like iron filings in a field and these shapes flared and drew back again, resonating upon that harmonic ground and then turning to swirl away over the playa. As if the very sediment of things contained yet some residue of sentience. As if in the transit of those riders were a thing so profoundly terrible as to register even to the uttermost granulation of reality

When smart people do dumb things it's usually due to one of two things. The two things are greed and fear. They want something they're not supposed to have or they've done something they weren't supposed to do. In either case they've usually fasten on to a set of beliefs that are supportive of their state of mind but at odds with reality. It has become more important for them to believe that to know.

Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one's history, and yet is not real, but leaves oneself as it were slurred over.

The more i live, the more i realize what strange creatures human beings are. some of them might just as well have a hundred legs, like a centipede, or six, like a lobster. the human consistency and dignity one has been led to expect from one's fellow-man seem actually non-existent. one doubts if they exist to any startling degree even in oneself.

She lost her illusions in the collapse of her sympathies.

The optimist builds himself safe inside a cell and paints the inside walls sky-blue and blocks up the door and says he's in heaven.

You've got to lapse out before you can know what sensual reality is, lapse into unkowingness, and give up your volition...You've got to learn not-to-be before you can come into being.

She had to live. It is useless to quarrel with one's bread and butter. And to expect a great deal out of life is puerile.

She was nobody, there was no reality in herself, the reality was all outside of her, and she must apply herself to it.

But beneath the populace of pleasure lay the populace of work, grim, grimy, and rather terrible.

We must start from what seems a be a nullity, the unknowable, the inexpressible, the creative mystery wherein we are established. We cannot become more exact than this without introducing falsehood.