Quotes & Sayings About Nature Of Reality

Some people never seem to learn from experience. No matter how often they had seen the lion devour the lamb, they continued to cling to the hope that the nature of the beast might change. If only the lion could get to know the lamb better, they argued, or talk matters over ... — Emma Goldman

It has sometimes been said that we find nowhere in nature an analogue of the difference between happens and is, on the one hand, and ought, on the other hand. — Wolfgang Kohler

Steve Grand is the creator of what I think is the nearest approach to artificial life so far, and his first book, Creation: Life and How to Make It, is as interesting as you would expect. But he illuminates more than just the properties of life: his originality extends to matter itself and the very nature of reality. Not since David Deutsch's The Fabric of Reality have I encountered such a compelling invitation to think everything out afresh, from the bottom up. — Richard Dawkins

Philosophy has been described as thinking about thinking, and all Christians should do that. The term comes from two Greek words, philia ("love") and sophia ("wisdom"), thus "loving wisdom." Nothing anti-Christian appears in that definition. Problems arise if we seek wisdom apart from God, or elevate human reason above Him, but according to Proverbs 4:5-7, God's people should love and seek wisdom.
Formal philosophy is divided into three major areas-incidentally, all core Christian issues: (1) Metaphysics,
which asks questions about the nature of reality: "What is real?" "Is the basic essence of the world matter, or spirit, or something else?" (2) Epistemology, which addresses issues concerning truth and knowledge: "What do we know?" "How do we know it?" "Why do we think it's true?" (3) Ethics, which considers moral problems: "What is right and wrong?" "Are moral values absolute or relative?" "What is the good life, and how do we achieve it? — Rick Cornish

There is a Reality which is Indivisible, One, Alone, the Source and Being of all; not a thing, nor even a mind, but pure Spirit or clear Consciousness; and we are That and nothing but That, for That is our true Nature; and the only way to find It is to look steadily within, where are to be found utmost peace, unfading joy, and eternal life itself. — Douglas Harding

There is no objective reality. But there is only an illusion of consciousness, there is only an objectivication of reality, which was created by the spirit. The origin of life is creativity, freedom; and the personality, subject, and spirit are the representatives of that origin, but not the nature, not the object. — Nikolai Berdyaev

The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed - if all records told the same tale - then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control', they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'. — George Orwell

Do I believe a thing has limits!? Of course! Nothing exists that doesn't have limits. Existence means there's always something else, and so everything has limits. Why is it so hard to conceive that a thing is a thing, and that it isn't always being some other thing that's beyond it?"

At that moment I felt in my bones not that I was talking to a man, but to another universe. I tried one last time, from another angle, which I felt compelled to consider legitimate.

"Look, Caeiro... think about numbers... Where do they end? Take any number - say 34. Past it we have 35, 36, 37, 38 - there can be no end to it. There is no number so big that there is no number larger..."

"But that's just numbers," protested my master Caeiro.

And then, looking at me out of his formidable, childlike eyes:

"What is 34 in Reality, anyway? — Alvaro De Campos

In strongly opposing the world of play to that of reality, and in stressing that play is essentially a side activity, the interference is drawn that any contamination by ordinary life runs the risk of corrupting and destroying its very nature. — Roger Caillois

The classic theology of my tradition comes from the French Renaissance. [William] Shakespeare was born in 1564, the year [John] Calvin died, and that theology was very influential in England in his lifetime. I think Shakespeare was attentive to questions raised by it, about human nature, history, reality itself. I find the two literatures to be mutually illuminating. — Marilynne Robinson

For most of us, karma and negative emotions obscure the ability to see our own intrinsic nature, and the nature of reality. As a result we clutch on to happiness and suffering as real, and in our unskillful and ignorant actions go on sowing the seeds of our next birth. Our actions keep us bound to the continuous cycle of worldly existence, to the endless round of birth and death. So everything is at risk in how we live now at this very moment: How we live now can cost us our entire future. — Sogyal Rinpoche

I once believed man was different from other animals, but Yodok showed me that reality doesn't support this opinion. In the camp, there was no difference between man and beast, except maybe that a very hungry human was capable of stealing food from its little ones while an animal, perhaps, was not. — Kang Chol-Hwan

You have not known even a fragment of My reality. The full nature of this reality can never be understood by anyone. — Sathya Sai Baba

Sometimes it happens that the most insane thought, the most impossible conception, will become so fixed in one's head that at length one believes the thought or the conception to be reality. Moreover, if with the thought or the conception there is combined a strong, a passionate, desire, one will come to look upon the said thought or conception as something fated, inevitable, and foreordained - something bound to happen. Whether by this there is connoted something in the nature of a combination of presentiments, or a great effort of will, or a self-annulment of one's true expectations, and so on, I do not know; — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Natural Theology says not only look up and look out-it also says look down and look in, and you will find the proofs of the reality of God in the depth of your own nature. — Christopher Dawson

Nature learns and changes as a result of stimuli, and certain habitats of nature will be formed that weren't there before. That's how I look at reality. — David Wolfe

The extreme proposition on which Giacometti based all his mature work was that no reality ... could ever be shared. This is why he believed it impossible for a work to be finished. This is why the content of any work is not the nature of the figure or head portrayed but the incomplete history of him staring at it. — John Berger

For those to whom a stone reveals itself as sacred, its immediate reality is transmuted into supernatural reality. In other words, for those who have a religious experience all nature is capable of revealing itself as cosmic sacrality. — Mircea Eliade

Liberation from prevailing conventions of thought, feeling and behaviour is accomplished most effectively by the practice of disinterested virtues and through direct insight into the real nature of ultimate reality. (Such insight is a gift, inherent in the individual; but, though inherent, it can not manifest itself completely except where certain conditions are fulfilled. The principle pre-condition of insight is, precisely, the practice of disinterested virtues.) — Aldous Huxley

Experimental work provides the strongest evidence for scientific realism. This is not because we test hypotheses about entities. It is because entities that in principle cannot be 'observed' are manipulated to produce a new phenomena
[sic] and to investigate other aspects of nature. — Ian Hacking

The cult of individuals is always, in my view, unjustified. To be sure, nature distributes her gifts unevenly among her children. But there are plenty of the well-endowed, thank God, and I am firmly convinced that most of them live quiet, unobtrusive lives. It strikes me as unfair, and even in bad taste, to select a few of them for boundless admiration, attributing superhuman powers of mind and character to them. This has been my fate, and the contrast between the popular estimate of my powers and achievements and the reality is simply grotesque. — Albert Einstein

Well, people are like that too. THey create a false door - to deceive. If they are conscious of weakness, of inefficiency, they make an imposing door of self-assertion, of bluster, of overwhelming authority - and, after a time, they get to believe in it themselves. They think, and everybody thinks, that they are like that. But behind that door, Renisenb, is bare rock... And so when reality comes and touches them with the feather of truth - their true self reasserts itself. — Agatha Christie

Photography does deal with 'truth' or a kind of superficial reality better than any of the other arts, but it never questions the nature of reality - it simply reproduces reality. And what good is that when the things of real value in life are invisible? — Duane Michals

As for my own religious practice, I try to live my life pursuing what I call the Bodhisattva ideal. According to Buddhist thought, a Bodhisattva is someone on the path to Buddhahood wo dedicates themselves entirely to helping all other sentient beings towards release from suffering. The word Bodhisattva can best be understood by translating the Bodhi and Sattva separately: Bodhi means the understanding or wisdom of the ultimate nature of reality, and a Sattva is someone who is motivated by universal compassion. The Bodhissatva ideal is thus the aspiration to practise infinite compassion with infinite wisdom. releasing sentient beings from suffering. — Dalai Lama XIV

I didn't like what that word-'childhood'-conjured up, or rather, I didn't like the way most people use it: that presumption of innocence and starry-eyed wonder. The only good thing about childhood is that no one really remembers it, or rather, that's the only thing about it to like: this forgetting. What else could possibly lie beneath that blissful oblivion but shame: a dark knowledge of that terrible badge of weakness, that inescapable servitude (bearable only thanks to the slow revelation that we could inflict cruelty and evil on the weaker kids), a sickening awareness that just about everything there is to understand was beyond us, made even worse by the lies and inaccuracies that adults feel entitled to spread around, deliberately, or because they don't know any better, about themselves or about the nature of reality? — Jean-Christophe Valtat

Men and women alike possess the qualities which make a guardian; they differ only in their comparative strength or weakness. Obviously. And those women who have such qualities are to be selected as the companions and colleagues of men who have similar qualities and whom they resemble in capacity and in character? Very true. And ought not the same natures to have the same pursuits? They ought. Then, as we were saying before, there is nothing unnatural in assigning music and gymnastic to the wives of the guardians - to that point we come round again. Certainly not. The law which we then enacted was agreeable to nature, and therefore not an impossibility or mere aspiration; and the contrary practice, which prevails at present, is in reality a violation of nature. That appears to be true. We — Plato

Most people that work in [show] business, if they're not gypsies by nature, become gypsies, just because of the reality of this business. — Charlie Hunnam

It is in the light of our beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality that we formulate our conceptions of right and wrong that we frame our conduct, not only in the relations of private life, but also in the sphere of politics and economics. So far from being irrelevant, our metaphysical beliefs are the finally determining factor in all our actions. — Aldous Huxley

Our present picture of physical reality, particularly in relation to the nature of time, is due for a grand shake up — Roger Penrose

The very nature of the quantum theory ... forces us to regard the space-time coordination and the claim of causality, the union of which characterizes the classical theories, as complementary but exclusive features of the description, symbolizing the idealization of observation and description, respectively. — Niels Bohr

Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. — Robert M. Pirsig

Human beings have fabricated the illusion that in the 21st century they have the technological prowess to be independent of nature. Bees underline the reality that we are more, not less, dependent on nature's services in a world of close to 7 billion people — Achim Steiner

In this oasis of quiet, before the wonderful spectacle of nature, one easily experiences how profitable silence is, a good that today is ever more rare ... In reality, only in silence does man succeed in hearing in the depth of his conscience the voice of God, which really makes him free. And vacations can help to rediscover and cultivate this indispensable interior dimension of human life. — Pope John Paul II

Despite the earnest belief of most of his fans, Einstein did not win his Nobel Prize for the theory of relativity, special or general. He won for explaining a strange effect in quantum mechanics, the photoelectric effect. His solution provided the first real evidence that quantum mechanics wasn't a crude stopgap for justifying anomalous experiments, but actually corresponds to reality. And the fact that Einstein came up with it is ironic for two reasons. One, as he got older and crustier, Einstein came to distrust quantum mechanics. Its statistical and deeply probabilistic nature sounded too much like gambling to him, and it prompted him to object that "God does not play dice with the universe." He was wrong, and it's too bad that most people have never heard the rejoinder by Niels Bohr: "Einstein! Stop telling God what to do. — Sam Kean

Our inner self is part of the cosmic reality, hence it's in our nature to rise above the darkness and merge into the lightness of 'being'. (Page 92 - Songs of the Mist) — Shashi

The problem with trying to find your happiness through avoidance is the nature of reality. Reality simply does not allow us to evade unwanted experiences. Sure, we might be able to escape a few {...] but the evasive life often comes at a cost, like having to live your life in terror. Even if we can successfully ward off some terrifying experiences, we can not advert them all. Particularly, the most unpleasant ones: sickness, old age and death. If our strategy has been to flea unpleasant circumstances, when they come to meet us - as they surely will - our suffering will be great indeed. — Mark W. Muesse

The question from agnosticism is, 'who turned on the lights?' The question from faith is 'whatever for?' Thoreau climbed Mount Katahdin and gives vent to an almost outraged sense of the reality of the things of this world: "I fear bodies, I tremble to meet them. What is this Titan that has possession of me? Talk of mysteries- think of our life in nature-daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it,- rocks, trees, wind! — Annie Dillard

The reality of your own nature should determine your speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become tense and high-strung, slow down. — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

For centuries the word 'nature' has been used to bolster prejudices or to express, not reality, but a state of affairs that the user would wish to see. — Eva Figes

When reality is perceived in its nature of ultimate perfection, the practitioner has reached a level of wisdom called non-discrimination mind - a wondrous communion in which there is no longer any distinction made between subject and object. — Nhat Hanh

Philosophic questions are attempts to understand the root nature of reality, existence, and knowledge. — Kilroy J. Oldster

First, we think all truth is beautiful, no matter how hideous its face may seem. We accept all of nature, without any repudiation. We believe there is more beauty in a harsh truth than in a pretty lie, more poetry in earthiness than in all the salons of Paris. We think pain is good because it is the most profound of all human feelings. We think sex is beautiful even when portrayed by a harlot and a pimp. We put character above ugliness, pain above prettiness and hard, crude reality above all the wealth in France. We accept life in its entirety without making moral judgments. We think the prostitute is as good as the countess, the concierge as good as the general, the peasant as good as the cabinet minister, for they all fit into the pattern of nature and are woven into the design of life! — Irving Stone

The Divine realm extends to the earthly; but the later, illusory in nature, does not contain the essence of Reality. — Mahavatar Babaji

The only distinguishing characteristic of a literature professor at the millennium was that he or she wrote about other people's writing. Apart from that, the writing he wrote about didn't even need to be literature, or writing about literature, or even writing about writing about literature. He needed theory...In the unflickering glare, at the center of a severe perspective, Nelson suddenly felt the visceral truth of the world as text; he apperceived the fundamentally linguistic nature of reality. Everything was text, at every level of existence, all the way up from quarks to queer theory. Words arranged in lines; lines arrayed on pages; pages pressed together, bound, and trimmed in books; books arranged cover to cover along a shelf like the words in a line of text; shelves stacked one atop the other like lines of text on a page; rows of shelves pressed together, with just the barest passage for the reader, like the pages of a book. — James Hynes

Alek didn't move, unsure what he could say or do to erase her pain. Like the rest of the Draig, he was a warrior, a fighter, used to the action of doing what needed to be done. But in this situation there was no giant fanged yorkin to hunt, no Var army to battle. There was only reality and the flawed nature of imperfect men. - Dragon Lords 6: The Stubborn Lord by Michelle M. Pillow - Coming 2013 — Michelle M. Pillow

The ultimate Mystery of being, the ultimate Truth, is Love. This is the essential structure of reality. When Dante spoke of the 'love which moves the sun and the other stars', he was not using a metaphor, but was describing the nature of reality. There is in Being an infinite desire to give itself in love and this gift of Self in love is for ever answered by a return of love ... and so the rhythm of the universe is created. — Venerable Bede

Returning to nature has been a dream present in the minds of every generation since mankind first left nature. — Daniel J. Rice

It's not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, for reality is more important than the feeling for pictures. — Vincent Van Gogh

The nature of everything is illusory and ephemeral, Those with dualistic perception regard suffering as happiness, Like they who lick the honey from a razor's edge. How pitiful they who cling strongly to concrete reality: Turn your attention within, my heart friends.5 — Sogyal Rinpoche

When you enter deeply into this moment, you see the nature of reality, and this insight liberates you from suffering and confusion. Peace is already there to some extent: the problem is whether we know how to touch it. — Nhat Hanh

Nothing which is at all times and in every way agreeable to us can have objective reality. It is of the very nature of the real that it should have sharp corners and rough edges, that it should be resistant, should be itself. Dream-furniture is the only kind on which you never stub your toes or bang your knee. — C.S. Lewis

The answer to the nature of our existence is somewhere in the middle, and that, of course, is what we're looking for: how to see ourselves in a new picture of ourselves and understand the questions that humans have asked forever, "Who are we, how did we get here, where are we going, and what's the nature of this reality that we're in?" — Edgar Mitchell

I do think that the instant nature of the reaction now, I do think it has an effect, that people's instant reactions to things are valid and valuable. But they're not always right, and they're not always capturing the full reality. — Donald Verrilli Jr.

Fancy has an extensive influence in morals. Some of the most powerful and dangerous feelings in nature, as those of ambition and envy, derive their principal nourishment from a cause apparently so trivial. Its effect on the common affairs of life is greater than might be supposed. Naked reality would scarcely keep the world in motion. — William Benton Clulow

The whole purpose of scientific method is to make valid distinctions between the false and the true in nature, to eliminate the subjective, unreal, imaginary elements from one's work so as to obtain an objective, true picture of reality. — Robert M. Pirsig

Projection is necessary and desirable for self-fulfillment. Otherwise man is overwhelmed by his loneliness and separation and negated by the very burden of his own life. As Rank so wisely saw, projection is a necessary unburdening of the individual; man cannot live closed upon himself and for himself. he must project the meaning of his life outward, the reason for it, even the blame for it. We did not create ourselves, but we are stuck with ourselves. Technically we say that transference is a distortion of reality. But now we see that this distortion has two dimensions: distortion due to to the fear of life and death and distortion due to the heroic attempt to assure self-expansion and the intimate connection of one's inner self to surrounding nature. In other words, transference reflects the whole of the human condition and raises the largest philosophical question about that condition. — Ernest Becker

Ethics is not a mystic fantasy
nor a social convention
nor a dispensable, subjective luxury ... Ethics is an objective necessity of man's survival
not by the grace of the supernatural nor of your neighbors nor of your whims, but the grace of reality and the nature of life. — Ayn Rand

Truth is that which affirms propositionally the nature of reality as it is. — Ravi Zacharias

I can understand your aversion to the use of the term 'religion' to describe an emotional and psychological attitude which shows itself most clearly in Spinoza ... I have not found a better expression than 'religious' for the trust in the rational nature of reality that is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to human reason. — Albert Einstein

What the History is really about lies behind this: man, giant-sized, seen against the background of the entire world, universalized in his conflict with destiny, the gods, and the cosmic order. The medium that is most fertile in showing the true nature of reality is the human mind, remembering, reflective, and fertile most of all when its memory and reflection are put at the service of its dreaming and fantastic side. — Herodotus

A loner by nature and an introvert ... i am a twinkling star, burning bright amidst a cloudless night. As such, i tend to fade in and out of people's lives. This aspect of me is often misunderstood as rejection or a lack of love and caring. In reality, the only way i can survive as an introvert, is to drop from the sky, from time-to-time, recharging within the energizing landscape of my inner-universe. To love me, is to let me me have the space i need to illuminate the sky. I can't be taken hostage or held captive. Inner-light is what gives my star its twinkle. — Jaeda DeWalt

We are animals and as animals we kill to survive. Unfortunately some of us are monsters and kill just because they can. — Richard Myerscough

We are humanity, the banner read. Wrong. We're pale reflections of it, weak shadows, distant echoes. — Rick Yancey

To me, the grotesque is like a sonic manifestation of reality. I don't know how you could look out onto our world and see only beauty. And I like beautiful things. I like the aesthetically harmonious. But I am much more attracted to something that is off-kilter. It is a truer reflection of not only nature, but the human spirit - the state of the world. I just think everything feels a little off. — Carrie Brownstein

Among all the many great transitions that have marked the evolution of Western civilisation ... there has been only one - the triumph of Christianity - that can be called in the fullest sense a "revolution": a truly massive and epochal revision of humanity's prevailing vision of reality, so pervasive in its influence and so vast in its consequences as to actually have created a new conception of the world, of history, of human nature, of time, and of the moral good. — David Bentley Hart

Let man reawake and consider what he is compared with the reality of things; regard himself lost in this remote corner of Nature; and from the tiny cell where he lodges, to wit the Universe, weigh at their true worth earth, kingdoms, towns, himself. What is a man face to face with infinity? — Blaise Pascal

Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through the dim stir, through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land went home to one's very heart - its mystery, its greatness, the amazing reality of its concealed life. — Joseph Conrad

To experience poetry is to see over and above reality. It is to discover that which is beyond the physical, to experience another life and another level of feeling. It is to wonder about the world, to understand the nature of people and, most importantly, to be shared with another, old or young, known or unknown. — Ai Weiwei

One way to see the constructed nature of reality is to notice how the definitions of different "races" change historically, by including groups at one time that were excluded in another. The Irish, for example, were long considered by the dominant white Anglo-Saxon Protestants of England and the United States to be members of a nonwhite "race", as were Italians, Jews, and people from a number of Eastern European countries. As such, immigrants from these groups to England and the United States were excluded and subjugated and exploited in much the same way that blacks were. — Allan G. Johnson

Normally, when you challenge the conventional wisdom - that the current economic and political system is the only possible one - the first reaction you are likely to get is a demand for a detailed architectural blueprint of how an alternative system would work, down to the nature of its financial instruments, energy supplies, and policies of sewer maintenance. Next, you are likely to be asked for a detailed program of how this system will be brought into existence. Historically, this is ridiculous. When has social change ever happened according to someone's blueprint? It's not as if a small circle of visionaries in Renaissance Florence conceived of something they called "capitalism," figured out the details of how the stock exchange and factories would someday work, and then put in place a program to bring their visions into reality. In fact, the idea is so absurd we might well ask ourselves how it ever occurred to us to imagine this is how change happens to begin. — David Graeber

The thing I understood least of all was that knowledge led to despair and damnation. Our spiritual mentor had not said that those bad books had given a false picture of life: if that had been the case, he could easily have exposed their falsehood; the tragedy of the little girl whom he had failed to bring to salvation was that she had made a premature discovery of the true nature of reality. Well, anyhow, I thought, I shall discover it myself one day, and it isn't going to kill me: the idea that there was a certain age when knowledge of the truth could prove fatal I found offensive to common sense. — Simone De Beauvoir

Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control', — George Orwell

We have learnt that the exploration of the external world by the methods of physical science leads not to a concrete reality but to a shadow world of symbols, beneath which those methods are unadapted for penetrating. Feeling that there must be more behind, we return to our starting point in human consciousness - the one centre where more might become known. There we find other stirrings, other revelations than those conditioned by the world of symbols ... Physics most strongly insists that its methods do not penetrate behind the symbolism. Surely then that mental and spiritual nature of ourselves, known in our minds by an intimate contact transcending the methods of physics, supplies just that ... which science is admittedly unable to give. — Arthur Stanley Eddington

To the scientist, nature is always and merely a 'phenomenon,' not in the sense of being defective in reality, but in the sense of being a spectacle presented to his intelligent observation; whereas the events of history are never mere phenomena, never mere spectacles for contemplation, but things which the historian looks, not at, but through, to discern the thought within them. — Robin G. Collingwood

The object of a dialogical-liberterian action is not to 'dislodge' the oppressed from a mythological reality in order to 'bind' them to another reality. On the contrary, the object of dialogical action is to make it possible for the oppressed, by perceiving their adhesion, to opt to transform an unjust reality." "In order for the oppressed to unite they must first cut the umbilical cord of magic and myth which binds them to the world of oppression; the unity which links them to each other must be of a different nature. — Paulo Freire

It is immediately apparent, however, that this sense-world, this seemingly real external universe - though it may be useful and valid in other respects - cannot be the external world, but only the Self's projected picture of it ... The evidence of the senses, then, cannot be accepted as evidence of the nature of ultimate reality; useful servants, they are dangerous guides. — Evelyn Underhill

We need to return from the self-centred concept of sincerity to the other-centred concept of truth. We are not isolated free choosers, monarchs of all we survey, but benighted creatures sunk in a reality whose nature we are constantly and overwhelmingly tempted to deform by fantasy. Our current picture of freedom encourages a dream-like facility; whereas what we require is a renewed sense of the difficulty and complexity of the moral life and the opacity of persons. We need more concepts in terms of which to picture the substance of our being; it is through an enriching and deepening of concepts that moral progress takes place. Simone Weil said that morality was a matter of attention not of will. We need a new vocabulary of attention. — Iris Murdoch

The more formidable the contradiction between inexhaustible life-joy and inevitable fate, the greater the longing which reveals itself in the kingdom of poetry and in the self-created world of dreams hopes to banish the dark power of reality. The gods enjoy eternal youth, and the search for the means of securing it was one of the occupations of the heroes of mythology and the sages, as it was of real adventurers in the middle ages and more recent times ... But the fountain of youth has not been found, and can not be found if it is sought in any particular spot on the earth. Yet it is no fable, no dream-picture; it requires no adept to find it: it streams forth inexhaustible in all living nature. — Ferdinand Cohn

But we shouldn't be concerned about trees purely for material reasons, we should also care about them because of the little puzzles and wonders they present us with. Under the canopy of the trees, daily dramas and moving love stories are played out. Here is the last remaining piece of Nature, right on our doorstep, where adventures are to be experienced and secrets discovered. And who knows, perhaps one day the language of trees will eventually be deciphered, giving us the raw material for further amazing stories. Until then, when you take your next walk in the forest, give free rein to your imagination-in many cases, what you imagine is not so far removed from reality, after all! — Peter Wohlleben

The world suddenly opened up, and she was coming to new realizations and a greater awareness, concerning the nature of reality, and the world, which her mortal mind had previously been unable to conceive. She smiled her radiant goddess smile and began to laugh. Her omnipresent peals of mirth resonated through the forest, seeming to echo to the edges of the universe and back. She was getting her first glimpses of the world, seen through the eyes of a goddess; the first sweet tastes of a consciousness empowered beyond all human levels of comprehension, and her spirit was in exultant bliss. — Alexei Maxim Russell

If we lived close to nature in an agricultural society, the seasons as metaphor and fact would continually frame our lives. But the master metaphor of our era does not come from agriculture - it comes from manufacturing. We do not believe that we 'grow' our lives - we believe that we 'make' them. Just listen to how we use the word in everyday speech: we make time, make friends, make meaning, make money, make a living, make love. — Parker J. Palmer

Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism - it's turning God into a nature god. And science needs religion in order to have a conscience, to know that, just because something is possible, it may not be a good thing to do. — Guy Consolmagno

We are afraid of the known and afraid of the unknown. That is our daily life and in that there is no hope, and therefore every form of philosophy, every form of theological concept, is merely an escape from the actual reality of what is. All outward forms of change brought about by wars, revolutions, reformations, laws and ideologies have failed completely to change the basic nature of man and therefore of society. — Thomas Jefferson

Most of us operate from a narrower frame of reference than that of which we are capable, failing to transcend the influence of our particular culture, our particular set of parents and our particular childhood experience upon our understanding. It is no wonder, then, that the world of humanity is so full of conflict. We have a situation in which human beings, who must deal with each other, have vastly different views as to the nature of reality, yet each one believes his or her own view to be the correct one since it is based on the microcosm of personal experience. And to make matters worse, most of us are not even fully aware of our own world views, much less the uniqueness of the experience from which they are derived. — M. Scott Peck

Nor is it in fact a purely human knowledge bound by the context and categories of the human mind. Rather, metaphysics, which some of his translators render as metaphysic in order to emphasize its non-multiple but unitary nature, is the science of Ultimate Reality, attainable through the intellect and not reason, of an essentially suprahuman character and including in its fullness the whole of man's being. It is a sacred science or scientia sacra, a wisdom which liberates and which requires not only certain mental capacities but also moral and spiritual qualifications. It — Frithjof Schuon

If we constantly apply ourselves to meditation practice during the course of our lives, we may be able, though with some difficulty, to strip away all the supports that maintain the illusion of the ego-self. However, the material fabric of the ego's support-bot the world and the physical body-is destroyed by death and all contact with its "friends" is severed. Now the mind is truly left to its own devices and its experience of reality is much more direct and immediate. The worldly concerns which formerly served as the support of the ego have all been stripped away and the insubstantial nature of its condition has been exposed in all its falsity. It was never really real at all, and the awesome power of this truth may strike the consciousness like a bombshell! — Stephen Hodge

Ultimately, the question was about the nature of the dunya as a place of fleeting moments and temporary attachments. As a place where people are with you today and leave or die tomorrow. But this reality hurts our very being because it goes against our nature. We, as humans, are made to seek, love, and strive for what is perfect and what is permanent. We are made to seek what's eternal. We seek this because we were not made for this life. Our first and true home was Paradise: a land that is both perfect and eternal. So the yearning for that type of life is a part of our being. The problem is that we try to find that here. And so we create ageless creams and cosmetic surgery in a desperate attempt to hold on - in an attempt to mold this world into what it is not, and will never be. — Yasmin Mogahed

Feeling is never invisible; it takes shape and manifests as form everywhere in nature. Nature can, therefore, be viewed as feeling unfurled, a living reality in front of us and amidst us. — Andreas Weber

All the while that Jean was listening to him, he was vaguely conscious that what gives literature its reality is the result of work accomplished by the human spirit, no matter what the material facts that may have stimulated it (a walk, a night of love, a social drama), of a sort of discovery in the world of the spirit, of the emotions, made by the human intelligence, so that the value of a book is never in the material presented by the writer, but in the nature of the operation he performs upon it. — Marcel Proust

The world' is man's experience as it appears to, and is moulded by, his ego. It is that less abundant life, which is lived according to the dictates of the insulated self. It is nature denatured by the distorting spectacles of our appetites and revulsions. It is the finite divorced from the Eternal. It is multiplicity in isolation from its non-dual Ground. It is time apprehended as one damned thing after another. It is a system of verbal categories taking the place of the fathomlessly beautiful and mysterious particulars which constitute reality. It is a notion labelled 'God'. It is the Universe equated with the words of our utilitarian vocabulary. — Aldous Huxley

Sometimes difficulty clarifies things. And sometimes realizing that the road you've chosen is a demanding one gives you the courage to stay on that road. It reveals the nature of our relationship with God. It sounds cute and comforting to say "God is in control," and people who say that may imagine sitting on their daddy's lap behind the wheel of the family car, going "Vroom vroomy vroom!" while Daddy does the steering. In reality, when God is in control, it feels more like one of those movies where some amateur has to step up and land the airplane or steer the ship to safety through a crashing storm, with an expert giving them instructions remotely through a headset. In theory, following the expert's instructions will help us get in safely; but our fear, panic, self-doubt, and lack of skill are not exactly comforting. Yes, God is in control, but we're the ones who are in for a rough ride. — Simcha Fisher

God has communicated to man, the infinite to the finite. The One who made man capable of language in the first place has communicated to man in language about both spiritual reality and physical reality, about the nature of God and the nature of man. — Francis Schaeffer

Realism to be effective must be a matter of selection.genius chooses its materials with a view to their beauty and effectiveness; mere talent copies what it thinks is nature, only to find it has been deceived by the external grossness of things. — Julia Marlowe

Affectation is fond of making a greater show than reality ... Nature and truth have never learned to blow the trumpet, and never will. — Lydia M. Child

It is the transcendent (or 'abstract' or 'self-contained') nature of music that the new so called concretism
Pop Art, eighteen-hour slices-of-reality films, musique concrete
opposes. But instead of bringing art and reality closer together, the new movement merely thins out the distinction. — Igor Stravinsky

Scientific reality is the modern human condition, and you can see that in the symbolic nature of my work. — Thom Mayne

Dreaming is risky. While only some dreams can put you at physical risk, all dreams require that you take an emotional risk. By their nature, dreams create a gap between your present reality and the reality you want to have, causing you to question whether you can bridge that gap. This risk alone can be so daunting for people that they prefer to leave their dreams in their childhood or buried away beneath layers of fear, doubt, and resignation. That's why dreaming bigger dreams takes courage; it means risking the possibility that your dreams will not come true. — Margie Warrell

Bemused and besotted as we are, we still dimly know at heart that nothing which is at all times and in every way agreeable to us can have objective reality. It is of the very nature of the real that it should have sharp corners and rough edges, that it should be resistant, should be itself. — C.S. Lewis

What the scientists have always found by physical experiment was an a priori orderliness of nature, or Universe always operating at an elegance level that made the discovering scientist's working hypotheses seem crude by comparison. The discovered reality made the scientists exploratory work seem relatively disorderly. — R. Buckminster Fuller

This is the merit and distinction of art: to be more real than reality, to be not nature but nature's essence. — William Ernest Henley