Quotes about Reality

Maybe the desert wisdom of the Dakotas can teach us to love anyway, to love what is dying, in the face of death, and not pretend that things are other than they are. The irony and wonder of all of this is that it is the desert's grimness, its stillness and isolation, that brings us back to love.

Any life lived attentively is disillusioning as it forces us to know us as we are.

I often see it in people who have attained what the monastic tradition terms "detachment," an ability to live at peace with the reality of whatever happens. Such people do not have a closed-off air, nor a boastful demeanor. In them, it is clear, their wounds have opened the way to compassion for others. And compassion is the strength and soul of a religion.

It seems that many men, and some women, cannot give up the illusion of possessing another person. The idea of that person—and "idea" is related etymologically to the word "idol"—becomes more important, more potent than the actual living creature. It is much safer to love an idol than a real person who is capable of surprising you, loving you and demanding love in return, and maybe one day leaving you.

To put it bluntly, the churchgoer has been influenced by the secular world that opposes the reality of the biblical Flood. Many in the Church succumb to this secular peer pressure and also deny the global Flood.

Miracles do not, in fact, break the laws of nature.

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.

Mortal lovers must not try to remain at the first step. For lasting passion is the dream of a harlot, and from it we wake in despair.

Consciousness is either inexplicable illusion, or else revelation

We cannot slay our incapacity and rise above it, but that is precisely what we wanted. Incapacity exists. No one should deny it, find fault with it or shout it down.

In this way he slips imperceptibly into a purely conceptual world where the products of his conscious activity progressively take the place of reality.

The image of God has a shadow. The supreme meaning is real and casts a shadow. For what can be actual and corporeal and have no shadows?