What We See Is Not Real Quotes & Sayings

Knowing a great deal about what is in the world art, catastrophe, the beauties of nature through photographic images, people are frequently disappointed, surprised, unmoved when the see the real thing. For photographic images tend to subtract feeling from something we experience at first hand and the feelings they do arouse are, largely, not those we have in real life. Often something disturbs us more in photographed form than it does when we actually experience it. — Susan Sontag

What happens when corn and wheat prices rise is that we see real increases in malnutrition and under-nutrition. And when children are malnourished, their brain development actually slows down and is affected. So this is not just a short-term impact. — Jim Yong Kim

It was only after the conclusion, after everything was over, that the sense of reality returned, long after, in fact, when I had been able to gather the pieces of the puzzle up and put them together to see the pattern. This is not remarkable, for, as we know, reality is not a function of the event as event, but of the relationship of that event to past, and future, events. We seem here to have a paradox: that the reality of an event, which is not real in itself, arises from other events which, likewise, in themselves are not real. But this only affirms what we must affirm: that direction is all. And only as we realize this do we live, for our own identity is dependent upon this principle. — Robert Penn Warren

Memorizing someone else's explanation of the truth isn't the same as seeing the truth for yourself. It is what it is - the memorization of second-hand knowledge. It is not your experience. It is not your knowledge. And no matter how much material is learned by rote, and no matter how eloquently we can speak about the memorized information, we're clinging to a description of something that's not ours. What's more, the description is never the item itself. By holding onto our impression of certain descriptions, we frequently are unable to see the real thing when it's right before our eyes. We are conditioned by memorizing and believing concepts - the truth of which we've never genuinely seen for ourselves. — H.E. Davey

I think it's very important for everyone in America to realize right now the state of our country, not just on this issue but on a lot of issues, that it is time to get active again. People have just sat back and just sort of said, oh, let somebody else do it for a long time, and we're seeing what's happening to the country, even freedom of speech. It's not going well. So I think this is a real opportunity for people to see, yes, if you do get out and you do get active, there are other people there. You just have to seek them out. — Mary Steenburgen

Chronosophy does involve ethics. Because our sense of time involves our ability to separate cause and effect, means and end. The baby, again, the animal, they don't see the difference between what they do now and what will happen because of it. They can't make a pulley, or a promise. We can. Seeing the difference between now and not now, we can make the connection. And there morality enters in. Responsibility. To say that a good end will follow from a bad means is just like saying that if I pull a rope on this pulley it will lift the weight on that one. To break a promise is to deny the reality of the past; therefore it is to deny the hope of a real future.
If time and reason are functions of each other, if we are creatures of time, then we had better know it, and try to make the best of it. To act responsibly. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Now, we're just imitating and imitating and imitating what we've done before. The real revolution on how we make clothes and how we wear clothes is about to come. I don't know if we should be afraid or not. That's when we're going to see a Steve Jobs in the industry. — Norma Kamali

I know, that trends and all of those things and formulae that calculate what audiences want to see and what audiences don't want to see and various other demographic demarcations are the eccentric and ludicrous prerogative of Hollywood studios. But out there in the real world - by which I mean the rest of the world where we make truthful organic films, independent films unimpeded by interference - it's not about all those sort of calculating what is commercial. It's about wanting to say things and saying them in a way that will get through to people. — Mike Leigh

I see the gods - the names, images, stories - as the poetic encapsulation of our human experience, our relationship with the ineffable forces that shape human life. While this makes the gods no thing, it does not make them nothing. I see the gods as representing very real, powerful, even dangerous forces. I believe the gods are real. It doesn't matter what we call them or don't call them. They are real and dangerous, and we will contend with them. This for me is the message of the Bacchae. - M. J. Lee, "Being Human When Surrounded by Greek Gods — John Halstead

Why would you believe such things?" he asks. "What good does it do you?" "The world we see with our eyes is not the whole truth. Dreams and visions are just as real as matter. What we can imagine or think exists as truly as anything we can touch or smell. Where do our thoughts come from, if not from God?" "They come from our experience," Sumner says, "from what we've heard and seen and read, and what's been told to us." Otto shakes his head. "If that were true, then no growth or advancement would be possible. The world would be stagnant and unmoving. We would be doomed — Ian McGuire

Do we not see God at work in our circumstances? Dark times are allowed and come to us through the sovreignty of God. Are we prepared to let God do what He wants with us? Are we prepared to be separated from the outward, evident blessings of God? Until Jesus Christ is truly our Lord, we each have goals of our own which we serve. Our faith is real, but it is not yet permanent. And God is never in a hurry. If we are willing to wait, we will see God pointing out that we have been interested only in his blessings, instead of God Himself. — Oswald Chambers

We usually do not look into what is really there in front of us. We see life through a screen of thoughts and concepts, and we mistake those mental objects for reality. We get so caught up in this endless thought-stream that reality flows by unnoticed. We spend our time engrossed in activity, caught up in an eternal flight from pain and unpleasantness. We spend our energies trying to make ourselves feel better, trying to bury our fears. We are endlessly seeking security. Meanwhile, the world of real experience flows by untouched and untasted. — Henepola Gunaratana

Not to belittle what we do as actors, but my wife Helen is a teacher, and she makes a real difference to kids. So it's unusual to see people thinking of us as something special. — Colin O'Donoghue

We live in a time of terror, and contrary to what we see on television and allow ourselves to believe, the real goal of terror is not to kill people but to kill thought; to so demoralize a society that it implodes from within. — John Lahr

We underestimate the power of science, and overestimate the power of personal observation. A peer-reviewed, journal-published, replicated report is worth far more than what you see with your own eyes. Our own eyes can deceive us. People can fool themselves, hallucinate, and even go insane. The controls on publication in major journals are more trustworthy than the very fabric of your brain. If you see with your own eyes that the sky is blue, and Science says it is green, then sir, I advise that you trust in Science.
This is not what most scientists will tell you, of course; but I think it is pragmatically true. Because in real life, what happens is that your eyes have a little malfunction and decide that the sky is green, and science will tell you that the sky is blue. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

Look- here's a table covered with red cloth. On it is a cage the size of a small fish aquarium. In the cage is a white rabbit with a pink nose and pink-rimmed eyes. [ ... ] On its back, clearly marked in blue ink, is the numeral 8. [ ... ] The most interesting thing here isn't even the carrot-munching rabbit in the cage, but the number on its back. Not a six, not a four, not nineteen-point-five. It's an eight. This is what we're looking at, and we all see it. I didn't tell you. You didn't ask me. I never opened my mouth and you never opened yours. We're not even in the same year together, let alone the same room ... except we are together. We are close. We're having a meeting of the minds. [ ... ] We've engaged in an act of telepathy. No mythy-mountain shit; real telepathy. — Stephen King

But veteran lawmakers torn apart by PTSD don't have a choice about being Exhibit A in the case against Washington politics. When you see what can happen to a page or a junior congressman, it passes on in a very real way, not in a history-class sense, that reality of what political power really is, .. Who are we to impose this emotional albatross on public servants? As a nation, we pretend to elect our leaders. It seems unjust to make them a special class to suffer for our sins over wrongheaded laws, or pay a continuing emotional price for securing their future careers. — Leon Kass

There is apparently some connection between dissatisfaction with oneself and a proneness to credulity. The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious. The refusal to see ourselves as we are develops a distaste for facts and cold logic. There is no hope for the frustrated in the actual and the possible. Salvation can come to them only from the miraculous, which seeps through a crack in the iron wall of inexorable reality. They ask to be deceived. What Stresemann said of the Germans is true of the frustrated in general: "They pray not only for their daily bread, but also for their daily illusion." The rule seems to be that those who find no difficulty deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. They are easily persuaded and led. — Eric Hoffer

Another principle that I believe can be justified by scientific evidence so far is that nobody is going to emigrate from this planet not ever ... It will be far cheaper, and entail no risk to human life, to explore space with robots. The technology is already well along ... the real thrill will be in learning in detail what is out there ... It is an especially dangerous delusion if we see emigration into space as a solution to be taken when we have used up this planet ... Earth, by the twenty-second century, can be turned, if we so wish, into a permanent paradise for human beings ... — Edward O. Wilson

Widen your vision of what beauty is. Realize and keep close the fact that a beauty standard has been created by the very people who sell it, and that it is no accident that the accepted "beauty standard" can easily be described as "perfect." Flaws are not tolerated if you want to be perfect. But the models that we see most often--even the tallest and thinnest and most doe-eyed--are still pinned and sprayed and pulled into place. Then they are manipulated digitally until, literally, everything that might be perceived as a "flaw" is erased. This is a way to sell product. It has nothing to do with real life. It has nothing to do with you. We are made of so-called "flaws." They are the thread that stitches our parts together and keeps us from being generic cut-out paper dolls. You are beautiful. You are enough, now and always. You have always been enough. — Lindsey Gates-Markel

Ife onye metalu' ['what a man commits'] - a statement unclear and menacing in its very inconclusiveness. What a man commits ... Follows him? Comes back to take its toll? Was that all? No, that was only part of it ... The real burden of that cryptic scripture seemed to turn the matter right around. Whatever we see following a man, whatever fate comes to take its revenge on him, can only be what that man in some way or another, in a previous life if not in this, has committed. That was it! So those three words wrapped in an archaic tongue and tucked away at the tail of the bus turn out to be the opening segment of a full-blooded heathen antiphony offering a primitive and quite deadly exposition of suffering. The guilty suffers; the sufferer is guilty. As for the righteous, those whose arms are straight, they will always prosper! — Chinua Achebe

Think for a moment about an emergency siren. What is its purpose? The siren is an indication and a warning that something harmful is coming. If we hear it, we naturally panic. But what happens when they need to test the siren? What happens when it's just a drill to see how we will react? The test siren sounds exactly the same, but it is "only a test." Although it looks, sounds, and feels real, it is not. It is only a test. And we're reminded of that again and again throughout the test. This is exactly what Allah tells us about this life. It is going to look, sound, and feel very, very real. At times it's going to scare us. At times it's going to make us cry. At times it's going to make us flee, instead of standing firm - even more firm - in our places. But this life and everything in it is only a test. It is not actually real. And like that test of the emergency broadcast system; it is training us for what is real. — Yasmin Mogahed

It's not unfortunate that people aren't genuine; what's unfortunate is that insincere people try to act sincere and in doing so, mislead and deceive the other. I would rather meet a person who is not amiable and who does not feel any burden to act amiable towards me, than to have the misfortune of knowing people who feel like they need to be gracious and compassionate so they will appear to be good people, whilst possessing none of those qualities within themselves! It's the latter that causes the pain in life. And that's another reason why I don't believe in religion; I have observed that religion tells people that it is highly prized a quality to act kind and compassionate and so on and so forth, but some people just do not have these innate qualities within them! We get deceived, and I'd rather not be deceived! I'd rather be able to see a person for who he/she is and not judge a brute for being a brute, but avoid the brute who carries the burden of acting like a wonderful one! — C. JoyBell C.

See, even though Jesse's a ghost, and can walk through walls and disappear and reappear at will, he's still ... well, there. To me, anyway. That's what makes me-and Father Dom-different from everybody else. We not only can see and talk to ghosts, but we can feel them too-just as if they were anybody else. Anybody alive, I mean. Because to me and Father Dom, ghosts are just like anyone else, with blood and guts and sweat and bad breath and whatever. The only real difference is that they kind of have this glow around them-an aura, I think it's called. — Meg Cabot

I felt tired, but I pitched the ball back at her. You want me to talk about myself, right? Let me tell you what 'self' means to me. The self, myself, the self as I see it, is composed mainly of selected memories from my history. I am not what I am doing now. I am what I have done, and the edited version of my past seems more real to me than what I am at this moment. I don't know who or what I really am. The present is fleeting and intangible. No one in China wants to talk about his past, because nobody wants to paint his face black. Our past is not a flattering picture, and no one wants to look at it for long. Yet what we were in fixed and final. It is the basis for predictions of what we will be in the future. To tell you truth, I identify with what no longer exists more than what actually is. We have lied about what we actually are, and that, unfortunately, will be your book. So would you still like me to talk about myself? — Anchee Min

Normal is the greatest enemy with regard to creating the new. And the way of getting around this is you have to understand normal not as reality, but just a construct. And a way to do that, for example, is just travel to a lot of different countries and you'll find a thousand different ways of thinking the world is real, all of which are just stories inside of people's heads. That's what we are too. Normal is just a construct, and to the extent that you can see normal as a construct in yourself, you have freed yourself from the constraints of thinking this is the way the world is. Because it isn't. This is the way we are. — Alan Kay

Everything in the universe is older than it seems. Blame Einstein for that. We see what a thing was when the light left it, and that was long ago. Nothing in the night sky is contemporary, not to us, not to one another. Ancient stars exploded into ruin before their sparkle ever caught our eyes; those glimpsed in glowing "nurseries" were crones before we witnessed their birth. Everything we marvel at is already gone.
Yet, light rays go out forever, so that everything grown old and decayed retains somewhere the appearance of its youth. The universe is full of ghosts.
But images are light, and light is energy, and energy is matter; and matter is real. So image and reality are the same thing, after all. Blame Einstein for that, as well. — Michael Flynn

So how can we determine what's real and what's not? We can't. We can just pick and choose what we want to believe and rationalize it as best we can. Reality, after all, is basically a movie projected inside our heads. It's based on the colors our senses permit us to see, the sounds they permit us to hear and whatever else our brains let slip through the gates. But outside our limited senses, surrounding us, there is, unquestionably, a much greater reality, a universe we live in but cannot see. Well, most of us, anyway. Out there, in the dark, All Things Are Possible. — Richard B. Spence

The irony is that the opposite is true: available people are the ones who are dangerous, because they confront us with the possibility of real intimacy. They might actually hang around long enough to get to know us. They could melt our defenses, not through violence but through love. This is what the ego doesn't want us to see. Available people are frightening. They threaten the ego's citadel. The reason we're not attracted to them is because we're not available ourselves. — Marianne Williamson

What makes Capa a great photo journalist?" asks a reporter covering a 1998 retrospective of his work. "We see his own appetite for life, his mix of urgency with compassion . . . the artistic thrust of his photography always had more to do with its emotional pitch, which remained genuine and deeply felt." Or, in Capa's own words, a great picture "is a cut out of the whole event which will show more of the real truth of the affair to some one who was not there than the whole scene. — John Steinbeck

I really loved Kiyoyori-in the way you people love each other, and we, not so much. I had never felt that before. I should be able to pass away without regret, as easily as the leaf falls from the tree in autumn, but the idea of never seeing him again, in whatever form, fills me with sorrow. I cling to life for his sake. This is what love does to you Shikanoko. See how the false wolf grows more real every day, because it has become attached to you. It shivers at your approach and wags its tail at the sound of your voice. It has made you its master, it lives for your affection. But, as your saints teach and we have always known, attachment enslaves you. Only those free from it see the world as it really is and have power over themselves and all things. — Lian Hearn

Malinda moved so we were eye-level. "Forget the people who've hurt you. You don't have them anymore, but you have two others that'll do anything to you. Mason and Logan would move mountains for you. I see how you are with them. You love them, but you're scared to let yourself be happy. Why? Because that's when they'll leave? Is that what you think? You've got it all wrong. Those two will never leave you." She tapped my chest. Once. Twice. "You. You're the one that's going to hurt them. You have that power, and you don't know it. You could rip those two apart in a second, and they're the ones who are scared of you. Not the other way around. You need to recognize the real situation. — Tijan

Wandering around back stage at a willie Nelson concert is a bit like being the parrot on the shoulder of the guy who's running the Ferris wheel. It's not the best seat in the house, but you see enough lights, action, people, and confusion to make you wonder if anybody knows what the hell's going on. If you're sitting out front, of course, it all rolls along as smoothly as a German train schedule, but as Willie, like any great magician, would be the first to point out, the real show is never in the center ring. As Willie always says, Fortunately, we're not in control. — Kinky Friedman

The truth is that what fascinates me is not so much being in a place as not being there: how places live in the mind once you have left them, how they are imagined before you arrive, or how they are seemingly called out of nothing to illustrate a thought or story like my tree down yonder. These mental spaces map our Innes lives more fully than any "real" map, delineating the borders of here and there that also shape what we see in the present. — Siri Hustvedt

Why do you like jellyfish so much?" I asked.
"I don't know. I guess I think they're cute," she said. "But one thing did occur to me when I was really focused on them. What we see before us is just one tiny part of the world. We get into the habit of thinking, This is the world, but that's not true at all. The real world is in a much darker and deeper place than this, and most of it is occupied by jellyfish and things. We just happen to forget all that. Don't you agree? Two thirds of the earth's surface is ocean, and all we can see of it with the naked eye is the surface: the skin. We hardly know anything about what's beneath the skin. — Haruki Murakami

The language we're exchanging, the fillings in our teeth, the pavement on the road outside, everywhere you look, for better or for worse, you're going to see evidence that accepting reality is not a human's tendency, and not what we're good at, and not, in my speculation, what God or Natural Selection hired us to do. We've been hired, by this universe, to dream, to aspire, to make things that weren't real real - and because that involves a lot of failure, we're damn good at doing that, too. — Dan Harmon

I've got three kids. I worry about them but the gospel freed me and freed my wife. We are not trying to make our kids think that we're super spiritual or we've got it all together. They see mom and dad being real people. What they hear dad talking about at home is not different from what they see from dad [at church]. That won't guarantee that they'll avoid the whole PK, MK thing. But we are hopefully not contributing to what normally produces that crisis, which is pretending. — Tullian Tchividjian

One thing I have discovered since I've been ill, though, is that nobody ever knows anybody, and maybe least of all the people who are closest to them. Sort of a business of not being able to see the trees for the woods. We all live in isolated prisons of our own bodies and there's no real contact with any other human being. That's what sex is, in a way, isn't it, a desperate striving for contact? With which cheerful Thought for Today, I will bid you good afternoon. — Madeleine L'Engle

On the other side, is a substantial, more materialism, everything is real long to the extent we can see or measure it, and things are as real as I think they. That's way too materialistic or substantialist, because things are not really what they seem to be. — Surya Das

My belief is that if we live another century or so - I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals - and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the common sitting-room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky, too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves; if we look past Milton's bogey, for no human being should shut out the view; if we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women, then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare's sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down. — Virginia Woolf

We do not see what is "real," we see what we are. — Willy Ronis

A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you'll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you'll have to change your way of doing things. Only you don't. You can't. Somehow it's already too late. And maybe it's even worse than that: maybe the thing you see coming from far away is not the real thing, the thing that scares you, but its aftermath. And what you've feared will happen has already taken place. This is similar in spirit to the realization that all the great new advances of medical science will have no benefit for us at all, thought we cheer them on, hope a vaccine might be ready in time, think things could still get better. Only it's too late there too. And in that very way our life gets over before we know it. We miss it. And like the poet said: The ways we miss our lives are life. — Richard Ford

To do only if you don't have a good argument. This is also a good way to keep people at one another's throats constantly so they can't form a united front and deal logically with the many real issues facing the nation. Individually, Americans need to choose to be the bigger person, overlook offense, and be willing to have candid discussions about volatile issues. There have been many stories recently about the bullying epidemic that seems to be occurring in our public school system. We should not be terribly surprised by this because children emulate what they see adults doing. One does not have to look at television for very long or listen to the radio for an extended period before one sees supposedly — Ben Carson

Experiments recently conducted by Merle Lawrence (Princeton) and Adelbert Ames (Dartmouth) in the latter's psychology laboratory at Hanover, N.H., prove that what you see when you look at something depends not so much on what is there as on the assumption you make when you look. Since what we believe to be the "real" physical world is actually only an "assumptive" world, it is not surprising that these experiments prove that what appears to be solid reality is actually the result of "expectations" or "assumptions. — Neville Goddard

I couldn't sleep last night because I know that it's over between us. I'm not bitter any more, because I know that what we had was real. And if in some distant place in the future we see each other in our new lives, I'll smile at you with joy and remember how we spent the summer beneath the trees, learning from each other and growing in love. The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds, and that's what you've given me
- Noah The Notebook — Nicholas Sparks

My grandfather ran off the V-2 rocket film a dozen times and then hoped that someday our cities would open up more and let the green and the land and the wilderness in more, to remind people that we're allotted a little space on earth and that we survive in that wilderness that can take back what it has given, as easily as blowing its breath on us or sending the sea to tell us we are not so big. When we forget how close the wilderness is in the night, my grandpa said, someday it will come in and get us for we will have forgotten how terrible and real it can be. You see? — Ray Bradbury

What we see before us is just one tiny part of the world. We get in the habit of thinking, this is the world, but that's not true at all. The real world is a much darker and deeper place than this, and much of it is occupied by jellyfish and things. — Haruki Murakami

I'm just a girl from Flatbush, Bo. There's nothing special here.""You're so wrong.""I know what people think. To friends and family I'm sweet and helpless. To guys I'm a body.""Your body is spectacular. I'm not going to pretend I don't see that. But I can have any body. You've lit something inside me. And it's you, not your assets.""You don't know me. We've hardly scratched the surface.""That's why I need time. I want to know your story, your dreams, your longings. Every part I see makes me want more." He was speaking her own desire to understand him, because his real self called to her more strongly than anyone she'd known , even people she'd known for years. — Kristen Heitzmann

What if I can't do this, Gregori?" She sounded close to tears. "What if I can never do this?"
"No one is making you do anything, ma petite," he replied gently, kissing her stomach. "We are just exploring possibilites."
"But,Gregori," she tried to protest, attempting to bring his head back up so that he could see her very real fear for him, for their life together.
"If I cannot persaude you otherwise, mon amour, I am not much of a lifemate, now am I?" The words were muffled in the tight silky curls, the intriguing little triangle at the apex of her thighs.
"You don't understand,Gregori." Savannah closed her eyes against the waves of fire racing through her. "It's me who is no real lifemate.I don't know how to please you, and I'm so afraid of this."
"Relax,bebe." He breathed warm air against her, inhaled her scent. "You please me far more than you will ever know. — Christine Feehan

Isn't it strange??

When you don't have something you want more and more even when you see it on the TV for example the the drug from the Limitless... you want it don't ya??

A drug which makes your the smartest person on the earth... A drug which helps you understand fast everything... you can read in about 1500 books in a year... isn't it crazy... it will be awesome to have this drug... but it's not possible unfortunately... as for now...let's go in the real world shall we?

What happens when you want something... let's take it that you get it... you want more and more and more... when you have from something which is like candy like 1000 in one place... somehow a limit comes... it comes the moment when you can't eat anymore - Isn't it interesting this fact? — Deyth Banger

It is true that our everyday view of the world is not quite naively realistic, but that is what it would like to be. Common-sense is naively realistic wherever it does not think that there is some positive reason why it should cease to be so. And this is so in the vast majority of its perceptions. When we see a tree we think that it is really green and really waving about in precisely the same way as it appears to be. We do not think of our object of perception being 'like' the real tree, we think that what we perceive is the tree, and that it is just the same at a given moment whether it be perceived or not, except that what we perceive may be only a part of the real tree. — Charlie Dunbar Broad

This is the real drama for me; the belief that we all, you see, think of ourselves as one single person: but it's not true: each of us is several different people, and all these people live inside us. With one person we seem like this and with another we seem very different. But we always have the illusion of being the same person for everybody and of always being the same person in everything we do. But it's not true! It's not true! We find this out for ourselves very clearly when by some terrible chance we're suddenly stopped in the middle of doing something and we're left dangling there, suspended. We realize then, that every part of us was not involved in what we'd been doing and that it would be a dreadful injustice of other people to judge us only by this one action as we dangle there, hanging in chains, fixed for all eternity, as if the whole of one's personality were summed up in that single, interrupted action. — Luigi Pirandello

This is perhaps as good a place as any to point out that what distinguishes many reformers from those who cannot accept their proposals is not their greater philanthropy, but their greater impatience. The question is not whether we wish to see everybody as well off as possible. Among men of good will such an aim can be taken for granted. The real question concerns the proper means of achieving it. And in trying to answer this we must never lose sight of a few elementary truisms. We cannot distribute more wealth than is created. We cannot in the long run pay labor as a whole more than it produces. — Henry Hazlitt

This is ridiculous," she said, then changed her mind. The last time she had confessed her real feelings to this man, it hadn't gone well. "Our lines, I mean, in this play. But I hope you will choose to enjoy it a little."
"Of course. It would be uncivil to say I will not enjoy making love to you tonight."
Jane's mouth was dry. "Wh-what?"
"Tonight as we perform the play," he said, completely composed. "My character professes love to your character, and to say that such a task is odious would be an insult to you."
"Ah," she said with a little laugh. "All right then." She had forgotten for a moment that "making love" did not mean to Austen what it meant today. Of course, Mr. Nobley the twenty-first-century actor knew that, and she squinted at him to see if he had been playing with her. — Shannon Hale

in simple terms, what you perceive as real, is actually a neurological reconstruction or simulation of the actual real thing. It's not as simple as saying, we see as it is. Actually we do not ever see as it is. — Abhijit Naskar

You expect me to believe you're a witch? A broom riding, cauldron stirring, poison apple witch? Witches are Fae, Angelina," Dasan mocked.
"No, you creeper, witches are not Fae. Maybe some are, but there are mortals who practice witchcraft, and I'm one of them!" Angelina almost spit the words at him. "And we don't ride brooms, get real! How Hans Christian Anderson are you, anyway? As for poison apples, you'll be lucky to not get served one in your lifetime! I mean, you and your buddy here turn into giant ... what are you ... dogs ... but you can't believe in a little earth magic? Grow up!"
"See, this is the kind of conversation that would crop up on like a third or fourth date," I chimed in, unable to help myself.
-told by Finley in The Sacred Oath — D.C. Grace

And if clever rabbit doesn't quite have what it takes, abrasive Eeyore certainly doesn't either. Why not? Because of what we could call the Eeyore Attitude. You might say the while rabbit's little routine is that of knowledge for the sake of being clever, and while Owl's is that of knowledge for the sake of appearing wise, Eeyore's is knowledge for the sake of complaining about something. As anyone who doesn't have it can see, the Eeyore attitude gets in the way of things like wisdom and happiness, and pretty much prevents any sort of real accomplishment in life. — Benjamin Hoff

Pain exists only in the mind. Whether an event is real or not doesn't matter, only that the mind believes it is. Suffering can be suspended by achieving new beliefs and perspectives. We see what we want to see, and feel what we want to feel. Never doubt that the life you lead is the life you want. — Shaman Elizabeth Herrera

They can see everything they want to, but never forget that they cannot see beyond the distortion of their imagination where there is no color and everything exists in black and white. And that is why we will survive, because they do not have what is necessary to defeat us. The real war is between our imagination and theirs, what we can see and what they are blinded to. Do not despair. None of them can see far enough, and so long as we do not let them violate our imagination we will survive. — Lawrence Thornton

Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to form of mental agoraphobia and that brings its own terrors. I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters, they are often more afraid. What is more, those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude through our own apathy. — J.K. Rowling

My Dearest Allie. I couldn't sleep last night because I know that it's over between us. I'm not bitter anymore, because I know that what we had was real. And if in some distant place in the future we see each other in our new lives, I'll smile at you with joy and remember how we spent the summer beneath the trees, learning from each other and growing in love. The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds, and that's what you've given me. That's what I hope to give to you forever. I love you. I'll be seeing you. Noah — Nicholas Sparks

What propels an embryo from one stage to the next-and makes one species different from another-is not a blueprint but rather an enormous autonomous library of the instructions contained within its genome. Each gene does double duty, specifying both a recipe for a protein and a set of regulatory conditions for when and where it should be built. Taken together suites of these IF-THEN genes give cells the power to act as parts of complicated improvisational orchestras. Like real musicians, what they play depends on both their own artistic impulses and what the other members of the orchestra are playing. As we will see in the next chapter, every bit of this process-from the Cellular Big 4 to the combination of regulatory cues-holds as much for development of the brain as it does for the body. — Gary F. Marcus

This is another thing I think of, turning it over, try to put together two pictures of it, but this time it's about me, it's myself I'm trying to figure. Because one sounds so disgusting, not even able to tell Al about it, win the big game, take the virgin to her first bonfire, feed her a beer or two, and then the two of us in someone's car with your hand between my legs, unbuttoned and hiked down and the noises I made, before I finally, gasping, stopped you. It sounds terrible and it's probably the truth, the real picture, gross when I write it down and shamed about it. But it's the real, whole truth I'm trying to get down, how it happened, and honestly it felt different then, different from that bad picture. I can see it, so gentle the way you moved, the thrill that was there with us as no one knew where we were or what we were doing. — Daniel Handler

The point is, the only real tools we have are our eyes and our heads. It's not the act of seeing with our eyes alone; it's correctly comprehending what we see. Treating life as an autopsy. — Warren Ellis

Oh, it's mysterious lamplit evenings, here in the galaxy, one after the other. It's one of those nights when I wander from window to window, looking for a sign. But I can't see. Terror and a beauty insoluble are a ribband of blue woven into the fringes of garments of things both great and small. No culture explains, no bivouac offers real haven or rest. But it could be that we are not seeing something. Galileo thought that comets were an optical illusion. This is fertile ground: since we are certain that they're not, we can look at what scientists are saying with fresh hope. What if there are really gleaming castellated cities hung upside-down over the desert sand? What limpid lakes and cool date palms have our caravans passed untried? Until, one by one, by the blindest of leaps, we light on the road to these places, we must stumble in darkness and hunger. — Annie Dillard

Loving yourself isn't just about celebrating your accomplishments and nurturing your talents. Those things are nice, sure. But that's not how we know others love us. We know others love us when they see us with our face on the ground, crying and weak, feeling like we've got nothing to offer the world - and they smile, and they reach out, and they love us anyway. Loving yourself is what you do when you fail, when you don't know, when you screw up, when you forget, when you lose everything. Loving yourself is what you do when you can't approve of what you've done. Loving yourself is what you do when you're not sure if it's going to get better. Loving yourself is what you must do in those moments when you can't like yourself. Real love is when you reach out for no good reason at all, except to love. — Vironika Tugaleva

You must create the character's internal life. What do I mean by internal life? I mean the thoughts, feelings, memories, and inner decisions that may not be spoken. When we look into the eyes of actors giving fully realized performances, we can see them thinking. We're interested in what they're experiencing that may never be spoken, that quality of nonverbal expression - which is as much a part of the characters as breathing and as real as what they say and do. This is their internal life. It helps us believe in the characters and care about them. — Larry Moss

It was not the privileged and the fortunate who took in the Jews in France. It was the marginal and damaged, which should remind us that there are real limits to what evil and misfortune can accomplish. If you take away the gift of reading, you create the gift of listening. If you bomb a city, you leave behind death and destruction. But you create a community of remote misses. If you take away a mother or a father, you cause suffering and despair. But one time in ten, out of that despair rises as indomitable force. You see the giant and the shepherd in the Valley of Elah and your eye is drawn to the man with sword and shield and the glittering armor. But so much of what is beautiful and valuable in the world comes from the shepherd, who has more strength and purpose than we ever imagine. — Malcolm Gladwell

It takes real feelings to create the illusion that others have power to offend and anger us.
Projecting such interpretations upon everything around us is in many ways like living in a box of our own making ... you might think of these walls as a falsification of reality
a distorted way of seeing, feeling, and thinking about other people that makes them seem offensive or malicious or otherwise untrustworthy. Remember, the people are really there, but we all ourselves off from the truth about them by the false way we picture them ...
Living in a box means being convinced that other people and our circumstances are responsible for our feelings and our helplessness to overcome them. What we can't see when we're in the box is that the way the world appears to us is a projection, and that we are making this projection to justify ourselves in self-betrayal. We cannot see that it's not others' actions but our accusations that result in our feeling offended. — C. Terry Warner

It's a great idea to analyze how screen time has changed your life and how it alters your behavior. If you don't like what you see, implement changes. Get comfortable again with real human connection and don't give so much power to the screen and what is behind it. Real life is in the present moment, happening right now. We never know how many days we have in front of us. Let's live them fully, not virtually. — Jennifer L. Scott

The myth of what we might term, simply, freedom - the myth that the less encumbered and entangled I am, or the less accountable and anchored I am to a particular relationship, the better able I am to find my truest self and secure real happiness. This myth is so ingrained in our imaginations, I suspect, that it may undergird and nurture all the other myths Myers mentions. And it's not hard to see how it strikes at the root of friendship. If your deepest fulfillment is found in personal autonomy, then friendship - or at least the close kind I want to recommend in these pages - is more of a liability than an asset. — Wesley Hill

... I'm afraid of what the digital age will do to the world, to the things we think are important ... it's almost like people want to believe in some illusion that they're robots and forget altogether that they're real, living people ... but everything these days is disposable, even people themselves, and that's why I'm afraid for the world," Mandy confessed, looking depressed and worried.
"So am I ... but I'll still watch all of it as the world dooms itself, because I want to see how it ends, and whether or not they'll be intelligent enough to forget all of this digital illusion afterwards," Alecto explained. "I'm sure that they'll be able to realize how wrong it all is ... even though the idiots outnumber most people these days, there are still enough intelligent people to fight against it. — Rebecca McNutt

What happens if you lose?" Jeremy pressed.
"I don't see it as winning or losing. I'm just looking for a middle ground," he [Justin] said. "I get that technology is convenient and has its benefits. We definitely can't live without it. We can't go back to living in caves. But most people are so plugged in, they're not even living in the real world. Our lives aren't grounded by anything. Being too dependent on something makes you a slave to it. And I sure as hell won't worship a digital screen. So I'm looking for a halfway point. A balance. It's not just about ending digital school. It's about having a choice. — Katie Kacvinsky

So how's Cupid Day treating you?" He pops a mint in his mouth and leans closer. It grosses me out, like he thinks he can seduce me with fresh breath. "Any big romantic plans tonight? Got someone special to cozy up next to?" He raises his eyebrows at me.
[ ... ]
"We'll see," I say, smiling. "What about you? Are you going to be all by your lonesome? Table for one?"
He leans forward even more, and I stay perfectly still, willing myself not to pull away.
"Now why would you assume that?" He winks at me, obviously thinking that this is my version of flirting
like I'm going to offer to keep this company or something.
I smile even wider. "Because if you had a real girlfriend," I say, quietly but clearly, so he can hear every word perfectly, "you wouldn't be hitting on high school girls. — Lauren Oliver

[That wall] might be breached sometime in the future, but for now the only real conversation between them was the roots that had already grown low and deep, under the wall, where they could not be broken.
The most terrible thing, though, was the fear that the wall could never be breached, that in his heart Alai was glad of the separation, and was ready to be Ender's enemy. For now that they could not be together, they must be infinitely apart, and what had been sure and unshakable was now fragile and insubstantial; from the moment we are not together, Alai is a stranger, for he has a life now that will be no part of mine, and that means that when I see him we will not know each other. — Orson Scott Card