Shadows Of Reality Quotes & Sayings

Awakened by a thousand dogs, a passing truck, the tailspin of a poisoned mosquito (or, perhaps, merely the silence of my dreams), I had, before remembering who and where I was, seen only that green sun suspended in the firmament of my room (her uterus bottled in preserving fluids) and, through seconds that became millennia, millennia aeons, felt the steadfastness of my orbit around that cold glow of love, a marvelous fatal steadfastness, before my pupils dilated and shadows and unease once more defined reality, the steel box naked but for a mattress and insomnious bugs where I had lived, in a coma of heartbreak and drunkenness, the six months since Primavera's death. — Richard Calder

Adam delayed only a second longer before traversing into the uncertain future, crossing the hidden divide; the fabric separating worlds. He moved from the shadows that paralleled the town, where unseen lives existed alongside of unsuspecting, oblivious people. With his seemingly mundane act of taking one step forward, he effectively walked from myth to reality. — J.M. Northup

The touch of reality is salvation for the man who smothers amid forms and shadows. A blind man would rejoice in sight though his eyes opened on the carnage of a battlefield. — Oscar W. Firkins

I got to a state where phrases like "the Good, the True, and the Beautiful" filled me with a kind of suppressed indignation, because they stood for the big sin of Platonism: the reduction of all reality to the level of pure abstraction, as if concrete, individual substances had no essential reality of their own, but were only shadows of some remote, universal, ideal essence filed away in a big card-index somewhere in heaven, while the demi-urges milled around the Logos piping their excitement in high, fluted, English intellectual tones. — Thomas Merton

I mean, that which appears to our senses is not the fundamental truth. Things that are seen and heard and done by the flesh are mere shadows of a deeper reality. — Terry Pratchett

It made a romantic tale. The young rouge, cheating death, returning to his grieving lover. But in reality? Ashyn had always known life did not resemble one of her book stories or Moria's bard tales, and yet there was a part of her that hoped it did. The more she saw, the more she realized she was wrong. People made up stories because that is what they wanted from their world. A place where goodness, kindness, and honor were rewarded. They were not rewarded. The people of Edgewood could attest to that. - Sea Of Shadows — Kelly Armstrong

Besides our eyes, skin and the other senses through which we receive the shadows of the exterior reality, we have a 'mental eye' (intelligence) with which we can perceive reality as it is. — Jesus Zamora Bonilla

When we think of friends, and call their faces out of the shadows, and their voices out of the echoes that faint along the corridors of memory, and do it without knowing why save that we love to do it, we content ourselves that that friendship is a Reality, and not a Fancy
that it is builded upon a rock, and not upon the sands that dissolve away with the ebbing tides and carry their monuments with them. — Mark Twain

What is real? Is there more to reality than meets the eye? Yes! was Plato's answer over two millennia ago. In his famous cave analogy, he likened us to people who'd lived their entire lives shackled in a cave, facing a blank wall, watching the shadows cast by things passing behind them, and eventually coming to mistakenly believe that these shadows were the full reality. Plato argued that what we humans call our everyday reality is similarly just a limited and distorted representation of the true reality, and that we must free ourselves from our mental shackles to begin comprehending it. — Max Tegmark

The radiance of that which wants to be born illuminates the shadows, bringing them into the light of awareness that they may be healed. — Charles Eisenstein

Caves have carried strong symbolic resonance for as long as there has been sacred legend. It might be tempting to say that it began with Plato's "allegory of the cave" in The Republic, which explores the interplay between shadows and reality (or in contemporary terms, perhaps, between virtual and actual reality). — Lesley Hazleton

Where I am today is my starting point. Who I am today is my starting point. My failures and successes of the past, my fears and hopes of the future are all shadows. Today is my reality, and I'll use it to create my world. — Taylor Stevens

There are shadows for the shadows of things, as a reflection seen in a mirror of a mirror. We know there are circles within circles and dimensions beyond dimension. Reality is itself a shadow, only an appearance accepted by those whose eyes shun what might lie beyond. — Louis L'Amour

Left alone, I am overtaken by the northern void-no wind, no cloud, no track, no bird, only the crystal crescents between peaks, the ringing monuments of rock that, freed from the talons of ice and snow, thrust an implacable being into the blue. In the early light, the rock shadows on the snow are sharp; in the tension between light and dark is the power of the universe. This stillness to which all returns, this is reality, and soul and sanity have no more meaning than a gust of snow; such transience and insignificance are exalting, terrifying, all at once ... Snow mountains, more than sea or sky, serve as a mirror to one's own true being, utterly still, utterly clear, a void, an Emptiness without life or sound that carries in Itself all life, all sound. — Peter Matthiessen

You do believe it,' he said. 'You do believe everything. We all believe everything, even when we deny everything. The denyers believe. The unbelievers believe. Don't you feel in your heart that these contradictions do not really contradict: that there is a cosmos that contains them all? The soul goes round upon a wheel of stars and all things return; perhaps Strake and I have striven in many shapes, beast against beast and bird against bird, and perhaps we shall strive for ever. But since we seek and need each other, even that eternal hatred is an eternal love. Good and evil go round in a wheel that is one thing and not many. Do you not realize in your heart, do you not believe behind all your beliefs, that there is but one reality and we are its shadows; and that all things are but aspects of one thing: a centre where men melt into Man and Man into God?'
'No,' said Father Brown. — G.K. Chesterton

...thus our State, which is also yours, will be a reality, and not a dream only, and will be administered in a spirit unlike that of other States, in which men fight with one another about shadows only and are distracted in the struggle for power, which in their eyes is a great good. — Plato

At the opposite pole to this nature of shadows, madness fascinates because it is knowledge. It is knowledge, first, because all these absurd figures are in reality elements of a difficult, hermetic, esoteric learning. These strange forms are situated, from the first, in the space of the Great Secret, and the Saint Anthony who is tempted by them is not a victim of the violence of desire but of the much more insidious lure of curiosity; he is tempted by that distant and intimate knowledge which is offered, and at the same time evaded, by the smile of the gryllos; his backward movement is nothing but that step by which he keeps from crossing the forbidden limits of knowledge; he knows already - and — Michel Foucault

If you've just left a place of difficulty, don't then move into the shadows, alone with your thoughts. Spend your time with friends, or even just people who care about you. It might feel more self-protective to isolate yourself, but the reality is that you need to let the light in. — Sally Hanan

Whatever plane our consciousness may be acting in, both we and the things belonging to that plane are, for the time being, our only realities. As we rise in the scale of development we perceive that during the stages through which we have passed we mistook shadows for realities, and the upward progress of the Ego is a series of progressive awakenings, each advance bringing with it the idea that now, at last, we have reached "reality"; but only when we shall have reached the absolute Consciousness, and blended our own with it, shall we be free from the delusions produced by Maya [illusion]. — Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

There's the concept that dreams are as important - if not more important - than reality. The attention that one pays to those things in the shadows is very much a part of the Indian experience. — Joseph Boyden

We believe that it is the job of each of us to step outside of ourselves, look beyond the shadows, and seek reality. If we hope to present an authentic self to the world, it is critical that we understand what is real and true about ourselves. So how do we begin to see our companies, our brands, our products, or ourselves as we really are ? For us, the best way to start is to stop watching shadows and start facing reality. — Tom Hayes

The love of God is not only the highest form of love, but also in reality the only love of which all other loves are but shadows — Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Our love of each other was like two long shadows kissing without hope of reality. — Anais Nin

The painter tries to catch the magic of the lights and shadows and passing graces of the human face he paints, but he never wholly succeeds in overtaking the reality. — John Edgar Park

When Leonardo da Vinci wanted to create a whole new style of painting, one that was more lifelike and emotional, he engaged in an obsessive study of details. He spent endless hours experimenting with forms of light hitting various geometrical solids, to test how light could alter the appearance of objects. He devoted hundreds of pages in his notebooks to exploring the various gradations of shadows in every possible combination. He gave this same attention to the folds of a gown, the patterns in hair, the various minute changes in the expression of a human face. When we look at his work we are not consciously aware of these efforts on his part, but we feel how much more alive and realistic his paintings are, as if he had captured reality. — Robert Greene

Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known — Oscar Wilde

Now, back in the reality that always lies in wait among the shadows of the Ensanche quarter, the enchantment was lifting, and all I had was painful desire and an indescribable restlessness. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Both the old and new physics were dealing with shadow-symbols, but the new physics was forced to be aware of that fact - forced to be aware that it was dealing with shadows and illusions, not reality. — Ken Wilber

In my photographic work I was always especially entranced, said Austerlitz, by the moment when the shadows of reality, so to speak, emerge out of nothing on the exposed paper, as memories do in the middle of the night, darkening again if you try to cling to them, just like a photographic print left in the developing bath too long. — W.G. Sebald

Have you also learned that secret for the river; that there is no such thing as time?" A bright smile spread over Vasudeva's face. "Yes, Siddhartha. Is this what you mean? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere, and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past, nor the shadow of the future?" "That is it," said Siddhartha, "and when I learned that, I reviewed my life and it was also a river, and Siddhartha the boy, Siddhartha the mature man and Siddhartha the old man, were only separated by shadows, not through reality." He spoke with delight, but Vasudeva just smiled radiantly at him and nodded his agreement. — Deepak Chopra

I stare out at the real world projected on the windows — Johnny Rich

There is indeed a fundamental beauty in mathematical abstractions. They so attracted the Greek philosopher Plato that he declared that all those things that we can see and touch are, in fact, mere shadows of the true reality and that the real things of this universe can be found only through the use of pure reason. Plato's knowledge of mathematics was relatively naive, and many of the cherished purities of Greek mathematics have been shown to be flawed. — David Salsburg

She thought of herself as his strength; in a world of shadows, the indisputable reality to which he could always repair. And, again, for all that had come, she could not regret this. She had tried, but she had never been and was not now, even tonight, truly sorry. Where, then, was her repentance? And how could God hear her cry? — James Baldwin

I couldn't see Pritkin's face very well, just a pale blur against the shadows, but he didn't sound happy. Some people thought he had only one mode ... pissed off. In reality, he had plenty of them. Over the past few weeks, I'd learned to tell the difference between real pissed off, impatient pissed off and scared pissed off. I suspected that this was the last kind. If so, that made two of us. — Karen Chance

Am I dreaming? The nightmares don't stop anymore, so it's hard to tell. They quite down now and then, but they're always here. Screeching in my head, the constant din echoes through my skull like the deafening clamour of giant invisible machines. Makes it difficult to tell where the world of shadows end and reality begins. — Greg F. Gifune

A common refrain among theoretical physicists is that the fields of quantum field theory are the "real" entities while the particles they represent are images like the shadows in Plato's cave. As one who did experimental particle physics for forty years before retiring in 2000, I say, "Wait a minute!" No one has ever measured a quantum field, or even a classical electric, magnetic, or gravitational field. No one has ever measured a wavicle, the term used to describe the so-called wavelike properties of a particle. You always measure localized particles. The interference patterns you observe in sending light through slits are not seen in the measurements of individual photons, just in the statistical distributions of an ensemble of many photons. To me, it is the particle that comes closest to reality. But then, I cannot prove it is real either. — Victor J. Stenger

Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality. — Hermann Minkowski

Christianity, contrasted with the Jewish system of emblems, is truth in the sense of reality, as substance is opposed to shadows, and, contrasted with heathen mythology, is truth as opposed to falsehood. — Richard Whately

Connie went for walks in the park, and in the woods that joined the park, and enjoyed the solitude and the mystery, kicked the brown leaves of autumn, and picked the primroses of spring. But it was all a dream; or rather it was like the simulacrum of reality. The oak leaves were to her like oak-leaves seen ruffling in a mirror, she herself was a figure somebody had read about, picking primroses that were only shadows or memories, or words. No substance to her or anything ... no touch, no contact! — D.H. Lawrence

A photograph is a universe of dots. The grain, the halide, the little silver things clumped in the emulsion. Once you get inside a dot, you gain access to hidden information, you slide into the smallest event. This is what technology does. It peels back the shadows and redeems the dazed and rumbling past. It makes reality come true. — Don DeLillo

Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows. But will you come? — C.S. Lewis

There are so many things Blair doesn't get about me, so many things she ultimately overlooked, and things that she would never know, and there would always be a distance between us because there were too many shadows everywhere. Had she ever made promises to a faithless reflection in the mirror? Had she ever cried because she hated someone so much? Had she ever craved betrayal to the point where she pushed the crudest fantasies into reality, coming up with sequences that she and nobody else could read, moving the game as you play it? Could she locate the moment she went dead inside? Does she remember the year it took to become that way? The fades, the dissolves, the rewritten scenes, all the things you wipe away - I now want to explain all these things to her but I know I never will, the most important one being: I never liked anyone and I'm afraid of people. — Bret Easton Ellis

To worship God 'in spirit and in truth' is first and foremost a way of saying that we must worship God by means of Christ. In him the reality has dawned and the shadows are being swept away (Hebrews 8:13). Christian worship is new covenant worship; it is gospel-inspired worship; it is Christ-centered worship; it is cross-focused worship. — D. A. Carson

... then he sat on his bed and for a fraction of a second the shadows retreated and he had a fleeting glimpse of reality. He felt dizzy and he closed his eyes. Without knowing it he fell asleep. — Roberto Bolano

As in mysterious and transcendent union the Divine takes into itself the human in the person of Jesus, and eternity is blended with time; we, trusting Him, and yielding our hearts to Him, receive into our poor lives an incorruptible seed, and for us the soul-satisfying realities that abide forever mingle with and are reached through the shadows that pass away. — Alexander MacLaren

Other big questions tackled by ancient cultures are at least as radical. What is real? Is there more to reality than meets the eye? Yes! was Plato's answer over two millennia ago. In his famous cave analogy, he likened us to people who'd lived their entire lives shacked ina a cave, facing a blank wall, watching the shadows cast by things passing behind them, and eventually coming to mistakenly believe that these shadows were the full reality. Plato argued that what we humans call our everyday reality is similarly just a limited and distorted representation of the true reality, and that we must free ourselves from our mental shackles to comprehending it. — Max Tegmark

And now I begin to understand why I was imprisoned so many years in this lonely chamber, and why I could never break through the viewless bolts and bars; for if I had sooner made my escape into the world, I should have grown hard and rough, and been covered with earthly dust, and my heart might have become callous by rude encounters with the multi-tude ... But living in solitude till the fulness of time was come, I still kept the dew of my youth and the freshness of my heart ... I used to think that I could imagine all passions, all feelings and states of the heart and mind; but how little did I know! ... Indeed, we are but shadows - we are not endowed with real life, and all that seems most real about us is but the thinnest substance of a dream - till the heart be touched. That touch creates us, - then we begin to be, - thereby we are beings of reality and inheritors of eternity. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

It was clear to her now, Happiness was a seductive illusion. No one as fucked up as her deserved one drop of joy. But oh god was it delicious when it fell into her lap for a little while. (Such a pretty face) she muses (with such a bruised and battered soul). When the dawn of a promise fades into the dusk of reality, all that remains is the nightmare. Sweet, sweet loneliness. Shadows come to play and prey on her beaten mind. Her lovely little dreams of poison. — Solange Nicole

I believe in the invisible. I do not believe in the definitive reality of things around us. For me, reality is the intuition and the imagination and the quiet voice inside my head that says: isn't that extraordinary? The things in our lives are the shadows of reality, just as we ourselves are shadows. — Duane Michals

Many shadows hide behind light, and the best lies are those seasoned liberally with truth: salt covering the flavor of rotten meat. — Brent Weeks

A big part of filmmaking, and a big part of the power of filmmaking, is creating characters that people fall in love with. So, those things, like the bloopers, create more reality and dimension, and the sense that these are not drawings or shadows, but they are living, breathing, thinking characters. That's the illusion. — Rob Minkoff

Children are people, and they should have to reach to learn about things, to understand things, just as adults have to reach if they want to grow in mental stature. Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows. Most things are good, and they are the strongest things; but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality. The important thing is to teach a child that good can always triumph over evil. — Walt Disney Company

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

In other words, all of my books are lies. They are simply maps of a territory, shadows of a reality, gray symbols dragging their bellies across the dead page, suffocated signs full of muffled sound and faded glory, signifying absolutely nothing. And it is the nothing, the Mystery, the Emptiness alone that needs to be realized: not known but felt, not thought but breathed, not an object but an atmosphere, not a lesson but a life. — Ken Wilber

In The Republic, Plato imagines human beings chained for the duration of their lives in an underground cave, knowing nothing but darkness. Their gaze is confined to the cave wall, upon which shadows of the world are thrown. They believe these flickering shadows are reality. If, Plato writes, one of these prisoners is freed and brought into the sunlight, he sill suffer great pain. Blinded by the glare, he is unable to seeing anything and longs for the familiar darkness. But eventually his eyes adjust to the light. The illusion of the tiny shadows is obliterated. He confronts the immensity, chaos, and confusion of reality. The world is no longer drawn in simple silhouettes. But he is despised when he returns to the cave. He is unable to see in the dark as he used to. Those who never left the cave ridicule him and swear never to go into the light lest they be blinded as well. — Chris Hedges

I was reminded of a remark of Willa Cather's, that you can't paint sunlight, you can only paint what it does with shadows on a wall. If you examine a life, as Socrates has been so tediously advising us to do for so many centuries, do you really examine a life, or do you examine the shadows it casts on other lives? Entity or relationships? Objective reality or the vanishing point of a multiple perspective exercise? Prism or the rainbows it refracts? And what if you're the wall? What if you never cast a shadow or rainbow of your own, but have only caught those cast by others? — Wallace Stegner

I did this.
The sudden reality of the situation sets in and I know that not only will I kill again, but I have doomed this poor soul to a life in the shadows, stalking his prey by the silver light of the full moon.
The corners of my mouth slants toward the heavens and I am smiling. — Benjamin M. Strozykowski