Quotes & Sayings About Wishes And Reality

Have you ever felt as if your dreams were more memorable, more alive, than what you knew to be reality? Have your dreams ever seemed so tangible as to make you question upon waking if you'd truly only dreamt them? Have they at times been addictive enough to consume your waking hours; blurring actuality and pretend together until your wishes and passions stare back at you with open eyes?
If only dreams could be reality, that beautiful garden of sweet-smelling roses we all long for. But reality for me is no such bed of roses. It is nothing but a field of unwanted dandelions.
- From the thoughts of Annabelle Fancher — Richelle E. Goodrich

He who desires or attempts to reform the government of a state and wishes to have it accepted, must at least retain the semblance of the old forms; so that it may seem to the people that there has been no change in the institutions, even though in fact they are entirely different from the old ones. For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities. — Niccolo Machiavelli

I am not offended by your love, Mr.Bigum, but I condemn it. You have done what so many others do. People close their eyes to real life, they don't want to hear the 'no' it shouts at their wishes, they want to forget the deep chasm it shows them between their longing and what they long for. They want to realize their dreams. But life doesn't take dreams into account, there is not a single obstacle that can be dreamed away from reality, and so in the end they lie there wailing at the chasm, which has not changed but is the same as it has always been. — Jens Peter Jacobsen

For many people, the shock of sexual abuse pales before the shock of this mother's statement, "I wish the fuck I never had her." So thoroughly is motherhood sentimentalized that the mother who wishes to be rid of her child is considered a monster. In reality, women have always greeted the burden of motherhood ambivalently, even in the best of circumstances, and many women bear children involuntarily. But the approbrium which attaches to any woman who willing gives up her child is so great that some mothers will keep and mistreat their children rather than admit that they cannot care for them. Sometimes, the revelation of maternal neglect constitutes a plea for outside intervention, signaling the fact that a mother wants to be relieved of the duty to care for her child. — Judith Lewis Herman

Younger love, it seemed, was mainly about the idea of potential
the illusion that magical transformations were bound to occur when the person you think you love has a miraculous impromptu awakening after some metaphorical lightning bolt, made out of your wishes and projections, suddenly brings them to their senses. On the other hand, older love is all about what you are hoping is still possible, after you have mourned the death of the idea of yourself as manufacturer of miracles. Older love starts with the unpleasant truth that expecting a person to change for the better spontaneously, simply because you wish it, makes as much sense as counting on the lottery for next month's rent. — Merrill Markoe

But wishes don't make policy. Policy is made by reality, and the reality of what has been created, whether intentionally or not, can't be abandoned without breathtakingly severe consequences. — George Friedman

The motive forces of phantasies are unsatisfied wishes, and every single phantasy is the fulfillment of a wish, a correction of unsatisfying reality. — Sigmund Freud

In reality, of course, it always does look after itself. All that the conscious ego can do is to formulate wishes, which are then carried out by forces which it controls very little and understands not at all. When it does anything more -when it tries too hard, for example, when it worries, when it becomes apprehensive about the future -it lowers the effectiveness of those forces and may even cause the devitalized body to fall ill. In my present state, awareness was not referred to as ego; it was, so to speak, on its own. This meant that the physiological intelligence controlling the body was also on its own. For the moment that interfering neurotic who, in waking hours, tries to run the show, was blessedly out of the way. — Aldous Huxley

Journalists usually treat anything as true if someone in a position of ostensible authority is willing to say it, even anonymously (and if no one is going to sue over it). The accuracy of anyone's statement, particularly if that person is a public official, is often deemed irrelevant. If no evidence is available for an argument a journalist wishes to include in a story, then up pop weasel words such as "it seems" or "some claim" to enable inclusion of the argument, no matter how shaky its foundation in reality. What's more, too many journalists believe that their job description does not require them to adjudicate between competing claims of truth. Sure, there are "two sides" - and only two sides - to every story, according to the rules of objectivity. But if both sides wish to deploy lies and other forms of deliberate deception for their own purposes, well, that's somebody else's problem. — Eric Alterman

Modernism had two great wishes. It wanted its audience to be led toward a recognition of the social reality of the sign (away from the comforts of narrative and illusionism, was the claim); but equally it dreamed of turning the sign back to a bedrock of World/Nature/Sensation/Subjectivity which the to and fro of capitalism had all but destroyed. — T.J. Clark

Think about where you'd like to be a year from now and use every bit of your imagination to visualize it. You'll need to do this with a serious intent if you want to make your wishes your reality. — Karen McQuestion

Everyone wants wealth to some extent or another, but few have it. The difference between those who have wealth and those who do not is that the former exert their will to turn what they want into a reality. — Stephen Richards

The heart together with the mind is the most powerful creative state to bring your wishes and ideas into reality. — Steven Redhead

A lover finds his mistress asleep on a mossy bank; he wishes to catch a glimpse of her fair face without waking her. He steals softly over the grass, careful to make no sound; he pauses
fancying she has stirred: he withdraws: not for worlds would he be seen. All is still: he again advances: he bends above her; a light veil rests on her features: he lifts it, bends lower; now his eyes anticipate the vision of beauty
warm, and blooming, and lovely, in rest. How hurried was their first glance! But how they fix! How he starts! How he suddenly and vehemently clasps in both arms the form he dared not, a moment since, touch with his finger! How he calls aloud a name, and drops his burden, and gazes on it wildly! He thus grasps and cries, and gazes, because he no longer fears to waken by any sound he can utter
by any movement he can make. He thought his love slept sweetly: he finds she is stone dead.
I looked with timorous joy towards a stately house: I saw a blackened ruin. — Charlotte Bronte

Faith is a device of self-delusion, a sleight of hand done with words and emotions founded on any irrational notion that can be dreamed up. Faith is the attempt to coerce truth to surrender to whim. In simple terms, it is trying to breath life into a lie by trying to outshine reality with the beauty of wishes. Faith is the refuge of fools, the ignorant, and the deluded,not of thinking rational people. — Terry Goodkind

When you're married, you're privy to the misunderstanding. When you're not married, it's overrated." I try to smile. "You rush in, headlong, full of dreams and wishes, so far removed from reality that you never even realize you've married into a family and the Navy. One refers to you as the girl from L.A., and the other refers to you as the dependent spouse. — Katherine Owen

Miracles don't happen. You make them happen. They're not wishes or dreams or candles on a cake. They're not impossible. Reality is real. It's totally and completely under my control. — Julie Anne Peters

The bizarre reality created by the Nazis became a fertile soil for the expression of sadistic wishes and fantasies in various stages of development. Even in cases where the parents themselves did not suffer psychoses and found themselves only indirectly involved, through the destruction of their relatives, in the fantastic psychotic system of persecution, they became, on the other hand, carriers of an archaic sadomasochistic superego for their children, and on the other, they transmitted to them sadomasochistic wishes and fantasies. — Terez Virag

Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims. Happiness is not the satisfaction of whatever irrational wishes you might blindly attempt to indulge. Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy - a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind's fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but of a producer. Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions. — Ayn Rand

The first law of reason is that what exists, exists; what is, is, and that from this ineducible, bedrock principle, all knowledge is built ... that is the foundation from which life is embraced ... thinking is a choice ... wishes and whims are not facts, nor are they a means to discover them ... reason is our only way of grasping reality
it's our basic tool of survival. We are free to evade the effort of thinking
to reject reason
but we are not free to avoid the penalty of the abyss we refuse to see ... Reason is the very substance of truth itself. The glory that is life is wholly embraced through reason. In rejecting reason one embraces death. — Terry Goodkind

This wasn't the way I had imagined my adventures, but reality ignored my wishes from the get-go, giving me a body best suited for stacking books in the library, injecting so much fear into my veins that I could only cower in the stairwell when the violence came. Maybe someday my arms and legs would thicken with muscle and the fear would drain away like dirty bathwater. I wish I believed these things would happen, but I didn't. — David Benioff

I believe in wishes and in a person's ability to make a wish come true, I really do. And a wish is more than a wish.. it's a goal that your conscience and subconscience can help make reality. — Michael Jackson

No trees in sight, just concrete
Still I see
Two roads twist and turn in front of me
No signs, but screams
Which way's reality?
So you choose; yeah, you choose
Maybe you lose
The sidewalk paved in hitches
Broken hearts not fixed by stitches
But morning's coming soon
No right in sight, just questions
And you find
There is no map to Mecca
It's just life
No right answer; perfect marks
It's no big deal; it's just your heart
Falling stars and lightning sparks
This will only sting a bit
We are all just
Magnets for fate
Stumbling, skipping, running at our pace
Making choices, losing voices
Making wishes for forgiveness
But morning's coming soon

And no matter where you sit, how fast you sip
The coffee tastes the same on magnet lips

"Magnets for Fate"
-Electric Freakshow — Cat Patrick

Importance of dreams is not in using - importance is in having. You think dreams must mean something real, that fantasy bad for the soul. All wrong, all wrong. Fantasy just as important as reality. Reality is feeding body - finding food for keep alive. Fantasy feeds spirit. Soul need food same as body, and dreams, philosophies, stories, creations, all food for spirit, see? — Garry Douglas Kilworth

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

Felix had gone to live in a lotus land of his imagination. Where what is desired is dreamed of as already happened, where obstacles dissolve under the weight of desire, and where reality has vanished entirely. — Iain Pears

People withhold their forgiveness, thinking that it makes them badass. But really, the unwillingness to forgive is merely the wishing that things were better. You wish that you had better, you wish that someone else were better so they could have treated you better ... it's you making wishes. And that's not badass. To forgive is to be able to look at the person and say "I accept that you weren't any better than what you were", "I accept what you were you and couldn't have been what I wished you to be", "I accept that things were the way they were and weren't any better." The ability to forgive is intertwined with the ability to accept the reality of the way things are/ the way a person is or was. You stop wishing things and you just accept. And hope is what says to you: "One day you'll have what's better. — C. JoyBell C.

As for him who envies or even fears us (and envied and feared great powers must always be), and who on this account wishes Syracuse to be humbled to teach us a lesson, but would still have her survive in the interest of his own security, the wish that he indulges is not humanly possible. A man can control his own desires but he cannot likewise control circumstances; and in the event of his calculations proving mistaken, he may live to bewail his own misfortune, and wish to be again envying my prosperity. An idle wish, if he now sacrifice us and refuse to take his share of perils which are the same in reality, though not in name, for him as for us; what is nominally the preservation of our power being really his own salvation. — Thucydides

If God wishes to be born as man and to unite mankind in the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, He suffers the terrible torment of having to bear the world in its reality. It is a crux; indeed, He Himself is His own cross. The world is God's suffering, and every individual human being who wishes even to approach his own wholeness knows very well that this means bearing his own cross. But the eternal promise for him who bears his own cross is the Paraclete. — Carl Jung

Reason. The first law of reason is this: what exists, exists; what is, is. From this irreducible, bedrock principle, all knowledge is built. This is the foundation from which life is embraced. Reason is a choice. Wishes and whims are not facts, nor are they a means to discovering them. Reason is our only way of grasping reality - it's our basic tool of survival. We are free to evade the effort of thinking, to reject reason, but we are not free to avoid the penalty of the abyss we refuse to see. — Terry Goodkind

It can be demonstrated that the child's contact with the real world is strengthened by his periodic excursions into fantasy. It becomes easier to tolerate the frustrations of the real world and to accede to the demands of reality if one can restore himself at intervals in a world where the deepest wishes can achieve imaginary gratification. — Selma Fraiberg

The discovery of this reality is hindered rather than helped by belief, whether one believes in God or believes in atheism. We must here make a clear distinction between belief and faith, because, in general practice, belief has come to mean a state of mind which is almost the opposite of faith. Belief, as I use the word here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would "lief" or wish it to be. The believer will open his mind to the truth on condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go. In this sense of the word, faith is the essential virtue of science, and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception. — Alan W. Watts

Maybe the world isn't enough, or maybe the distinction between the world and fiction is not so clear. Fiction is made from the stuff of the world, after all, which includes dreams and wishes and fantasies and memory. And it is never really made alone, but from the material between and among us: language. — Siri Hustvedt

Reason and reality are the only means to just laws; mindless wishes, if given sovereignty, become deadly masters. — Terry Goodkind

Her thoughts drifted to Tyler Dunn... to the feeling of being held in his arms. Wistfulness curled through her heart and she wished for the freedom to enjoy the attention of a man... to indulge in a lady-like flirtation... to fall in love. Although the wishes weren't new, for the first time, she had someone to weave the fantasy around. She could easily paint a romantic dream of living here with Tyler. But, Lily knew that dreaming about such a life would only make it harder to live with her reality. Yet, she couldn't help imagining him in the pool like this, naked as a newborn babe, yet all man. — Debra Holland

The ordinary modes of human thinking are magical, religious, social, and personal. We want our wishes to come true; we want the universe to care about us; we want the approval of those around us; we want to get even with that s.o.b. who insulted us at the last tribal council. For most people, wanting to know the cold truth about the world is way, way down the list. — John Derbyshire

Dreams are born from the Rubbles of Pain. — Ankit Mishra

For the wise men of old, the cardinal problem of human life was how to conform the soul to objective reality, and the solution was wisdom, self-discipline, and virtue. For the modern, the cardinal problem is how to conform reality to the wishes of man, and the solution is a technique. — Peter Kreeft

But fantasies are often the best thing we can make of our multiple and contradictory wishes; they allow us to inhabit one reality without destroying the other. Fantasizing spares those we care about from the full irresponsibility and scary strangeness of our urges. — Alain De Botton

Think about the reality shows we used to watch versus those today. It used to be "champagne wishes and caviar dreams" on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. It was inspirational. Now it's a diabetic chick with festering bedsores who collects her own toenails in Ziploc bags. We've gone from "Life Styles of the Rich and Famous" to "Lice Styles of the Poor and Depressed." It's all geared and produced for the viewers to think, "Well, my life is bad but not that bad. They just cut back my hours at work but I'm watching a chick who will eventually be killed by the avalanche of her own hoarded newspapers. — Adam Carolla

You have broken my heart
I am a little kid,
I cannot stop crying
I hit my feet to the ground and my hands to my head
Like a fly
I cannot get up from the sticky ground
I cannot talk about you
Because it hurts
I feel the pain inside my bones
I cannot forget you
The reality has become dream and dream has become nightmare
These are my tears
They are not my sweats
I have not pissed on myself
Every drop carries pain and regret
They are all because of you,
You broke my virgin heart and poor soul,
I thought we belonged with each other
We shared dreams and wishes
We shared love and devotion
I did not know they were all lies,
If I knew you were leaving me one day, I would have loved you more than I did
Maybe it would have changed your mind
Because I still love you — M.F. Moonzajer

Those who tell you that man is unable to perceive a reality undistorted by his senses, mean that they are unwilling to perceive a reality undistorted by their feelings. "Things as they are" are things as perceived by your mind; divorce them from reason and they become "things as perceived by your wishes. — Ayn Rand

It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall, The dark threw patches down upon me also; The best I had done seemed to me blank and suspicious; My great thoughts, as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre? would not people laugh at me? It is not you alone who know what it is to be evil; I am he who knew what it was to be evil; I too knitted the old knot of contrariety, Blabbed, blushed, resented, lied, stole, grudged; Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak; Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant; The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me; The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting; Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting. — Walt Whitman

With God, what's possible will always be infinitely greater than what we believe to be probable. And we can be thankful that such a reality means that where we see a wall, God wishes to unveil a horizon. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Life takes twists and turns that lead us on an unplanned journey. With our own wishes tucked away in our pockets we button our spiritual coat and trudge through the storms of reality. We follow fate. Karen Kelly Boyce, "In the Midst of Wolves" Chapter 2 — Karen Kelly Boyce

Write it down. Written goals have a way of transforming wishes into wants; cant's into cans; dreams into plans; and plans into reality. Don't just think it - ink it! — Michael Korda

We must set aside our wishes and give heed to reality. Nobody can accept the truth while hiding from it. When a decision matters, we have to stare at the truth unflinchingly. Only then can we find peace in our choices. — Brandon Mull

Cultivate an intellectual habit of subordinating one's opinions and wishes to objective evidence and a reverence for things as they really are. — William Ian Beardmore Beveridge

wisdom lies in correctly discerning where we are free to mould reality according to our wishes and where we must accept the unalterable with tranquillity. The — Alain De Botton