Quotes & Sayings About The Harsh Reality

The work-life balance is a harsh reality for so many women, who are forced every day to make impossible choices. Do they take their kids to the doctor ... and risk getting fired? Do they work weekends so they can afford to send their kids to better childcare ... even though it means even less time with their families? Do they take another shift at work, so they can pay for piano lessons for their kids ... even though it means they have to stop volunteering for the PTA? It just shouldn't be this difficult to raise healthy families. — Michelle Obama

I used to have a big dog, a rottweiler, to guard the place. One night I was working late, and he was outside barking in the snow. He wouldn't stop. Then he stopped. I went out ten minutes later with a lamp, and there was a ring of wolves eating my dog. — Martin Cruz Smith

From all that urges and admonishes, the romantic turns away. He wants to dream, enjoy, immerse himself, instead of clearing his way by striving and wrestling. That which has been and rises out of what is past occupies him far more than what is to become and also more than what wants to become; for the word of the future would always be command. Experiences with their many echoes and their billows stand higher in his estimation than life with its tasks; for tasks always establish a bond with harsh reality. And from this he is in flight. He does not want to struggles against fate, but rather to receive it with an ardent and devout soul; he does not want to wrestle for the blessing, but to experience it, abandoning himself, devoid of will, to what spells salvation and bliss. — Leo Baeck

In life man commits himself and draws his own portrait, outside of which there is nothing. No doubt this thought may seem harsh to someone who has not made a success of his life. But on the other hand, it helps people to understand that reality alone counts, and that dreams, expectations and hopes only serve to define a man as a broken dream, aborted hopes, and futile expectations. — Jean-Paul Sartre

It's very advantageous to be sensitive with your work - and, yet, being sensitive, in reality, when criticized, it can annihilate you. It can destroy you. And with the internet there sometimes is a lot of harm, which I find must be very difficult for youngsters coming on - it can be very harsh; the criticism. And, sometimes, it can be a little cruel - which makes it hard for young performers coming on. — Michael Crawford

Exposed! shines a harsh light on the myriad horrors of modern society and reports back from the fearful frontlines with wicked wit and paranoid power. From the murky waters of New Orleans to the scarred psyches of our own image-obsessed existence, Exposed! is the last headline we get to read before reality comes tumbling down. — Jeremy Robert Johnson

Hurricane Katrina exposed the harsh reality that we have been skating on thin ice when it comes to this country's energy concentrations on the Gulf Coast. — Pete Domenici

If only they could live in the twilight of their dreams, in the tiny moment before the harsh light of reality found them, perhaps they could be happy. — D.A. Henneman

You'll fare beer without love. We Medici always do. As soon as I spoke, I regretted it. I'd remembered Papa Clement's phrase exactly, used it to the same horrid purpose. I saw her flinch, take a small step back. I wanted to console her, to somehow ease the harsh reality of what I'd said. But I could not. I would not lie to her nor pretend the task I set before her was anything other than what it was: an act of submission, which could entail the loss of her youthful dreams. — C.W. Gortner

New York remains what it has always been : a city of ebb and flow, a city of constant shifts of population and economics, a city of virtually no rest. It is harsh, dirty, and dangerous, it is whimsical and fanciful, it is beautiful and soaring - it is not one or another of these things but all of them, all at once, and to fail to accept this paradox is to deny the reality of city existence. — Paul Goldberger

So that, logically, in the brief time allotted to us, we should be as kind to one another as is humanly possible and face the harsh facts of reality without fear or flinching. — Michael Swanwick

The harsh, unyielding reality of having to compromise your ideals bit by bit, day by day, just to achieve a few little victories in the face of the world's malice, or indifference. Until sometimes you wonder if there's nothing left of you but the shell of the man you intended to be, just going through the motions because you've nothing better to do. — Simon R. Green

You can have the best intentions in the world, but if you do nothing, you are nothing. It is a harsh glare to shed that kind of light, but in my heart that is pure reality for me. How does the quote go? "Evil triumphs when good men do nothing." This is the downside to the longevity of sloth. It is an exit on a highway that leads to the worst parts of town. — Corey Taylor

Most products are ugly. The harsh reality is that in many of these markets, form follows funding. And that products go where the market takes them. — Bran Ferren

It's easy to dislike the truth for it is ugly and harsh to the naked eye. — Antonio Kowatsch

The youth of Taiwan not only have to face the harsh reality of low wages and high commodity and housing prices, but due to the lack of employment opportunities, many young people are forced to leave their home towns to search for jobs in the cities. — Tsai Ing-wen

I still believe that capitalism is too harsh and I believe that, even within that, there is a lot of satisfaction and beauty if you happen to be one of the lucky ones, although that doesn't eradicate the reality of the suffering. It's all true at once, kind of humming and sublime. — George Saunders

To tip the cognitive hurdle fast, tipping point leaders such as Bratton zoom in on the act of disproportionate influence: making people see and experience harsh reality firsthand. Research in neuroscience and cognitive science shows that people remember and respond most effectively to what they see and experience: "Seeing is believing." In the realm of experience, positive stimuli reinforce behavior, whereas negative stimuli change attitudes and behavior. Simply — W.Chan Kim

The things that kept them awake in the middle of the night, the things they did underneath the cover of darkness, both dreadful and beautiful, both attractive and repulsive, were revealed in stark clarity to their minds. A harsh reality that intensified sensations with each gust of wind. They shrank from it with frightened whimpers. The setting in each house would have fit perfectly into a post-apocalyptic tale of nuclear holocausts. Shell-shocked expressions gazed into the nothingness. Blankets over faces, silent prayers to the heavens. No curious eyes at the windows, or storm watchers dared to partake. The mere thought of looking out was too much to be borne. — Jaime Allison Parker

The first step to change,... is accepting your reality right now. Honoring your process. Compassionate self-awareness leads to change; harsh self-criticism only holds the pattern in place, creating a stubborn and defensive Basic Self. Be gentle with yourself as you would with a child. Be gentle but firm. Give yourself the space to grow. But remember that the timing is in god's hands, not yours. page~147 — Dan Millman

Cocooning: The need to protect oneself from the harsh, unpredictable realities of the outside world. — Faith Popcorn

I have little use for religion as it is practiced, or for astrology, or for belief in witchcraft or omens of good or ill-luck. I think they all stem from some insufficiency in men's minds, perhaps from a lack of a willingness to feel themselves utterly alone. But now and then I feel that there is something beyond the material world, somethings we all feel intimations of but cannot explain. Underneath the religious vision there is the harsh fundamental reality of all our lives, because we know we must live and die as the animals we are. But sometimes I suspect that under that harsh reality there is a further vision, still deeper based, that comes nearer to true reality than the reality we know. — Winston Graham

But [Stanley Wade] instead removed his glasses and wiped his eyes. They were moist not from fear but from the harsh reality of being confronted by one of his victims. How many others were out there? Why had he chosen to spend his career screwing these people?

~from "Michael's Room"~ — John Grisham

You can choose daily to brace up and face the harsh realities of life . . .
Or while away the days that come by daydreaming . . .
Better still, you can make your dreams your realities. — Ufuoma Apoki

There's a bit more of a safe distance when you're making a narrative movie, a bit more perspective. Audiences can separate themselves from the harsh reality of the facts a little bit more and think: 'Okay, how do I consider this?' — Tom McCarthy

Anyone who thinks they stand apart from society and defies all which govern its existence has less in common with the lone wolf patriot standing up to dystopic forces of oppression - a myth - and more in common with the disease known as cancer - a harsh reality. — Steven Weber

She was right that reality can be harsh and that you shut your eyes to it only at your peril because if you do not face up to the enemy in all his dark power, then the enemy will come up from behind some dark day and destoy you while you are facing the other way. — Frederick Buechner

We are staring at each other, forgetting about the harsh reality and I can feel my heart reacting. He touches my cheek and the familiar electric current runs through me. His hands are warm, caressing my pale skin. His deep-blue eyes are filled with serenity and passion. I keep telling myself to breathe, but I am unable to exhale the air from my lungs. Then he leans forward and his lips touch mine, increasing the temperature in my body. He kisses me gently, trying to break his way through, testing to see if I let him in. His lips are sweet and warm. A few seconds later it is all over and he disappears once again, leaving me uncontrollably awake and trying to gather my wild thoughts. — Joanna Mazurkiewicz

Perhaps he was probing the enigma of why men fall in love with their dreams, which are then so destroyed by harsh realities that their dreamers become cuckolded by their own illusions. Perhaps... — Juan Filloy

I'm of the opinion that many Christians are in deep denial about the reality of there being 'real' Evil in this world. Evil that cannot be reasoned with; is reprobate, incorrigible, determined, un-appeasable, violent, murderous, and unrelenting. I find this denial shocking in that the Bible clearly shows that in the end this battle is all about Good vs. Evil. This is a very real and present danger to the leaders and people of Israel. They know the truth and are not in any denial about it!!! It's harsh, yes! However, it is Real and a danger to those in Israel. This is not my first rodeo!!! Combat brings me no joy!!! But, God has His holy warriors who risk their lives so others can have the luxury to live in denial!!! Israeli's have no such luxury!!! — R. Alan Woods

I can't kill him and he can't keep me alive. The world we've lived in together is an illusion that can't be maintained. The edges are fraying, curling away to reveal the harsh reality beneath. The lion and the lamb do not lie down together. It just can't be. — Kitty Thomas

At the end of the day, the harsh reality is that if you're a fan of Kate Bush, Charles Dickens, Scrabble, David Attenborough and University Challenge, then there's not much out there for you in terms of a youth movement. — David Nicholls

I always used to suffer a great deal if I let myself get too close to reality since the definitive world of the everyday with itshard edges and harsh light did not have enough resonance to echo the demands I made upon experience. It was as if I never experienced experience as experience. Living never lived up to the expectations I had of it
the Bovary syndrome. — Angela Carter

Hope was a fragile flicker that he wanted to cup with both hands to protect against the harsh winds of reality. — C.L. Wilson

At last, liveried in the costume of the age, reality entered the room in the shape of a servant to tell the duchess that her carriage was waiting. She wrung her hands in mock despair. "How annoying!" she cried. "I must go. I have to call for my husband at the club, to take him to some absurd meeting at Willis's Rooms, where he is going to be in the chair. If I am late he is sure to be furious, and I couldn't have a scene in this bonnet. It is far too fragile. A harsh word would ruin it. No, I must go, dear Agatha. Good-bye, Lord Henry, you are quite delightful and dreadfully demoralizing. I am sure I don't know what to say about your views. You must come and dine with us some night. Tuesday? Are you disengaged Tuesday? — Oscar Wilde

The difference is as basic as between a professional football player and a rabid fan. One is a performer in a harsh, unique corner of reality; the other is a cultist, a passive worshiper, and occasionally a sloppy emulator of a style that fascinates him because it is so hopelessly remote from the reality he wakes up to every morning. — Hunter S. Thompson

The harsh reality will be the fear that has always been at the back of your mind coming to play right in front of your eyes — Tshepang Sharon Koji

But there was no protecting you from it today. The world can be a harsh place and you witnessed that cold reality firsthand. You've been forced to grow up today in ways that aren't fair to you. — Rob Buyea

Until I read Anne Frank's diary, I had found books a literal escape from what could be the harsh reality around me. After I read the diary, I had a fresh way of viewing the both literature and the world. From then on, I found I was impatient with books that were not honest or that were trivial and frivolous. — Alexandra Fuller

Our stereotyping societies force us to feel more alone. They stamp masks on us and isolate out real selves. We all live in two worlds: the old comfortable man-centred world of absolutes and the harsh real world of relatives. The latter, the relativity reality, terrifies us; and isolates and dwarfs us all. — John Fowles

It wasn't his fault he'd been reared in a nice, safe, civilized society that protected him from the harsh reality of an older and grimmer set of imperatives. — David Weber

In the blackness of the midnight sleep world, immunized from the harsh glare of daytime reality, the active imagination of the soul dances in the mind of a dream weaver. Safely shrouded in the all-encompassing blanket of darkness supplied by nighttime sleep, our secret wishes speak to us by channeling the collective mythology of the primordial mind. During the wee hours of night, right before first light, we summon our personal muse to tell us in operatic fashion what it means to be human. If we listen carefully, our muse's heart songs shares with us what it means to experience both the tragedy and comedy of life, and encourages us to unreservedly embrace in a moral manner the banality, brutality, beauty, and splendor of nature that occurs eternally in the cosmic world that swaddles us. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I completely reject the idea that working adults need to be treated like infants or worse and not told the realities, harsh or not, about the world of work. Keeping people in the dark and filling them with stories that are either mostly fabricated, unusually rare, or both, doesn't do anyone any good. It is one of the reasons that workplaces and careers remain in such dire straits. — Jeffrey Pfeffer

We all know the epicentre of terrorism in the world today is Pakistan. The world community has to come to grips with this harsh reality. — Manmohan Singh

I have received 16 Grammy nominations and I have no trophies, because I chose to write the harsh realities. I stayed true to myself and I've taken a little beating behind it. — Curtis Jackson

Atheists often denounce Christianity as harsh and negative. But in reality it offers a much more positive view of the human person than any competing religion or worldview. It is so appealing that adherents of other worldviews keep free-loading the parts they like best. — Nancy Pearcey

A harsh reality of newspaper editing is that the deadlines don't allow for the polish that you expect in books or even magazines. — Bill Walsh

As sure as water's wet and days are long and a friend will always disappoint you in the end. — Neil Gaiman

Myth becomes a kind of experimental hypothesis through which the individual or the community formulates an explanation of life, so replacing the fixed systems and creeds of earlier generations. Inevitably, each hypothesis or world-view proves inadequate when subjected to harsh reality, and collapses. 'None of our theories,' comments the narrator in Felix Holt laconically, 'are quite large enough for all the disclosures of time.' But this is the education of the human race out of which new myths or patterns of meaning emerge. — David Carroll

Graduates leave university and can't find a job. Old people reach retirement and have almost nothing to live on. Grown-ups have no time to dream, struggling from nine to five to support their families and pay for their children's education, always bumping up against the thing we all know as harsh reality. — Paulo Coelho

Athletics lasts for such a short period of time. It ends for people. But while it lasts, it creates this make-believe world where normal rules don't apply. We build this false atmosphere. When it's over and the harsh reality sets in, that's the real joke we play on people ... Everybody wants to experience that superlative moment, and being an athlete can give you that. It's Camelot for them. But there's even life after it. — H. G. Bissinger

It may be that a second wave of the sexual revolution might at last accomplish its aim of freeing half the race from its immemorial subordination
and in the process bring us all a great deal closer to humanity. It may be that we shall even be able to retire sex from the harsh realities of politics, but not until we have created a world we can bear out of the desert we inhabit. — Kate Millett

Willy DeVille knows the truth of a city street and the courage in a ghetto love song. And the harsh reality in his voice and phrasing is yesterday, today, and tomorrow - timeless in the same way that loneliness, no money, and troubles find each other and never quit for a minute. — Doc Pomus

Mixing humour and harsh reality is a very human behaviour, it's the way people stay sane in their daily lives. — Jorge Garcia

The term - 'Fairy-Tales' is so ironical in itself, when I sometimes sit to write love stories with a happy ending, it usually drags me into a dilemma whether, I should even begin with a love story at first place or not? Because honestly, I haven't seen many of them reaching climax, most of them just die out in the mid. Then comes the concept of fairy tales or what we say 'fiction', where nothing is impossible!
But over time, if I've realized something, it is that there's no such term called fiction when it comes to reality! Its harsh, in-your-face-sarcastic, ironical and highly irrational. You can't expect what's coming up next, and how it's going to blow you. In the real life, the entire meaning of fiction ceases to exist. Conclusively, we writers, deal with harsh reality and write lively fictions, this job in itself is so ironical but, that's life ... — Mehek Bassi

Running is a road to self-awareness and reliance-you can push yourself to extremes and learn the harsh reality of your physical and mental limitations or coast quietly down a solitary path watching the earth spin beneath your feet. — Doris Brown Heritage

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

The harsh reality is that my flesh must die not so much because of what it does, but because of what it is. — Kelly Minter

The hurt means you're alive. It means your body is reacting and willing to fight - both to fight back and fight through it. So rather than running from grief's harsh reality, you may find that in letting it groan and pierce and ache and cry, you begin to exhaust some of its staying power. You expose its secret hiding places. You force it into the open air where it can be more easily outlined and dealt with. — Frank Page

The cold harsh reality is that we have to balance the budget. — Michael Bloomberg

There's only so many times you can fight before the only person you fight for is yourself. — S.R. Crawford

Be Your Own Biggest Cheerleader The world can sometimes be a harsh and cruel place. Everyone has their own opinions on different things and some of them will have no problem voicing what they think about your dreams. I really wish everyone can have their own group of supporters who will encourage them and cheer them on, but that's hardly the case. For many, the reality is they just have to be their own biggest cheerleader. Your opinion is what really counts. You can have tons of people tell you that you can achieve your dreams but if you personally don't believe it, you're not going to put in the effort to make your dreams happen. If you have tons of people hating on you and discouraging you, does it make things harder? Of course it does! But if you allow other people's opinion of you to negatively affect the belief you have in yourself, then you're just letting them win without even putting up a fight. — Kevin Ngo

I love the combination of smartness, pain, and what one might call conscious postmodern trashiness in this book: a version of the erotic full of nervous tension which animates the sensuality, and also Zimroth's feeling for words, compressed, ironic, withholding, but also 'asking for it ... the siege, the thrill, the battle fatigue.' A profoundly urban book, of harsh memory and fantasy, set in harsher reality. — Alicia Ostriker

And what's wrong with dimming the harsh reality of life a little, anyway? In essence, being alive is a bloody long and hard walk to death. Why not make it as pleasant along the way as you can? — Lucinda Riley

It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from a harsh reality. There are more television addicts, more baseball and football addicts, more movie addicts, and certainly more alcohol addicts in this country than there are narcotics addicts. — Shirley Chisholm

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

I'm sorry if this sounds harsh or surprises anyone, but this is where we are. If you want the outcome to be different, you will have to do something about it. — Sheryl Sandberg

The harsh reality is that if you are middle-aged, write computer code for a living, and earn a six-figure salary, you're headed for the unemployment lines. Your market value declines as you age, and it becomes harder and harder to get a job. — Vivek Wadhwa

I cannot, will not, withhold from my young readers the harsh realities of human hunger and suffering and loss, but neither will I neglect to plant that stubborn seed of hope that has enabled our race to outlast wars and famines and the destruction of death. — Katherine Paterson

Chilvalry's essential function, Maurice Keen has written, is always to hold up an idealised image of armed conflict in defiance of the harsh realities of actual warfare. By definition, chivalry also reaffirms the paramount importance of custom, hierarchy and inherited rank. — Linda Colley

Good morning, Hell-A. In the land of the lotus-eaters, time plays tricks on you. One day you're dreaming, the next, your dream has become your reality. It was the best of times. If only someone had told me. Mistakes were made, hearts were broken, harsh lessons learned. My family goes on without me, while I drown in a sea of pointless pussy. I don't know how I got here. But here I am, rotting away in the warm California sun. There are things I need to figure out, for her sake, at least. The clock is ticking. The gap is widening. She won't always love me no matter what — Hank Moody

9/10 startups fail, which is a harsh reality in the world of entrepreneurship. However, I believe that such a high number of startups fail because they do not take the right steps necessary when building their business. The biggest challenge people have is building something that their target audience or niche really wants. — Jeet Banerjee

The reality of boy-girl life gets harsh, but in my fantasy, the music keeps them together. — Rob Sheffield

Why should you buy the cow, if you can get the milk for free?" Answer: There is no reason, no incentive, no need to buy the cow. If the cow continues to supply free milk, the milk's value and the cow's value are greatly reduced and free milk will keep that cow feeling empty, misused and unwanted. This is the harsh reality of giving out discounts. Of course, we are not cows, but rather sons and daughters of the Most High God, so let's be mindful not to discount the price that was paid for us on Calvary. — Lindsay Marsh Warren

Youthful vigor becomes more rot than wisdom. Hopeful optimism is battered by harsh reality. Health and understanding seem to intersect in one's forties, the one peaking as the other begins its slow ascent. Maybe you'll know one day what you should've taken the time to appreciate. Maybe it'll be when your knees start popping, when your hands no longer work like they should. It probably won't be any sooner. — Hugh Howey

The events inspired characters that truly existed, as well as fictitious people I had to invent. Sometimes the harsh reality was too much, too absurd. This was the case with the story of the cat who roamed from one trench to another and in the film ended up being imprisoned. In reality, the tom cat was accused of spying and was arrested by the French army, and then shot according to regulations. — Christian Carion

Many people are just waking to the reality that unlimited expansion, what we call progress, is not possible in this world, and maybe looking to monks (who seek to live within limitations) as well as rural Dakotans (whose limitations are forced upon them by isolation and a harsh climate) can teach us how to live more realistically. These unlikely people might also help us overcome the pathological fear of death and the inability to deal with sickness and old age that plague American society. — Kathleen Norris

There are those who believe that a new modernity demands a new morality. What they fail to consider is the harsh reality that there is no such thing as a new morality. There is only one morality . All else is immorality. — Theodore Roosevelt

You
see, I came into this world just like I'm assuming
you did - full of excitement and
promise. I wanted to do so much good work,
help so many people, and give as much as I
could to those who needed me. But then I
learned a very harsh lesson - the world
doesn't always give back. I am not a tragic case of the world; I am
the world - cruel, unfair, and not a fairy tale.
People are not born heroes or villains;
they're created by the people around them.
And one day when your bright-eyed and
bushy-tailed view of life gets its first taste of
reality, when bitterness and anger first run
through your veins, you'll discover that you
are just like me - and it'll scare you to death. — Chris Colfer

The harsh reality is that America moves on four wheels, powered by conventional internal-combustion engines. At this point, while the elite media (excluding Newsweek) trumpet the benefits of hybrids and Ford and Toyota plan to lead the nation into a low-powered, high-mileage hybrid Utopia, the multitudes remain loyal to the gas-guzzling family bus in the driveway. — Brock Yates

As I observe my daily life and that of others, I have come to the conclusion that genuine joy is a potent mixture of harsh reality, and the realization that life can be funny. — Tone Bell

But it turned out life was more like the kind of song the Stones wrote: you didn't get any satisfaction, you took one hit to the body after another, if you were a woman you were a bitch who belonged under someone's thumb, and if you wanted mother's little helper from your dear doctor you better have the silver, take it or leave it, and don't come crying for sympathy, that was just for the devil. — Joe Hill

I like college football a lot, because it's the dream that you're chasing. The dream of one day possibly making it, with the harsh reality that only one percent make it. — Ray Lewis

The trapdoor beneath our feet swings open. We find ourselves in bottomless free fall. We are lost in a great darkness, and there's no one to send out a search party. Given so harsh a reality, of course we're tempted to shut our eyes and pretend that we're safe and snug at home, that the fall is only a bad dream. — Carl Sagan