Realism
- Age-old question: Is the glass half empty or half full?
Answer: Who cares?
Does it really matter whether the glass is half full or half empty? The issue is whether it quenches your thirst.--Larry Winget (in 1 Question 2 Answers by Winget and Percy)
- Anything, everything, can be learned if you can just get yourself in a little patch of real ground, real nature, real wood, real anything … and just sit still and watch.--Lauren Hutton
- At bottom, the heart that seeks to awaken, to live genuinely, is more real than anything. It is the nameless drive that calls us to be who we most truly are.--Ezra Bayda (The Authentic Life)
- Being an idealist is not being a simpleton; without idealists there would be no optimism and without optimism there would be no courage to achieve advances that so-called realists would have you believe could never come to fruition.--Alisa Steinberg
- The belief that one's own view of reality is the only reality is the most dangerous of all delusions.--Paul Watzlawick
- Business underlies everything in our national life, including our spiritual life. Witness the fact that in the Lord's Prayer, the first petition is for daily bread. No one can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach.--Woodrow Wilson
- Competition creates better products, alliances create better companies.--Brian Graham
- Don't be afraid of the space between your dreams and reality. If you can dream it, you can make it so.--Belva Davis
- Every time we start thinking we're the center of the universe, the universe turns around and says with a slightly distracted air, "I'm sorry. What'd you say your name was again?"--Margaret Maron (Bootleggers's Daughter)
- Everyone has the right to believe and accept what he or she wants, but reality doesn't discriminate. Reality is not different for different people. Not once has reality excused anyone for good intentions ignorance or stubbornness. Reality shows no mercy, accepts no excuses, and issues no pardons. Reality does not "turn the other cheek." This does not mean that reality is cruel, it just means that reality is.--Gary Ryan Blair (Mind Munchies : A Delicious Assortment of Brain Snacks!)
- Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.--Albert Einstein
- Facts as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a spirit.--G. K. Chesterton
- The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.--Marcus Aurelius
- The frontiers of our dreams always converge with reality.--Gerd De Ley
- God is personified in sacred writings, but long before the pen, ultimate reality, the ever creating God, was defined in the majestic mountains, trees and flowing waters.--J. Lloyd Ewart (Inspirational Images)
- The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none. Recognizing our limitations and imperfections is the first requisite of progress. Those who believe they have "arrived" believe they have nowhere to go. Some not only have closed their minds to new truth, but they sit on the lid.--Dale Turner
- Humankind cannot bear very much reality.--T. S. Eliot (Murder in the Cathedral)
- I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities.--Dr. Seuss
- I made some studies, and reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it. I can take it in small doses, but as a lifestyle I found it too confining.--Jane Wagner
- If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their won and depart.--Plato
- If reality can destroy dreams, then dreams can destroy reality.--Conway Stone
- If we think we have ours and don't owe any time or money or effort to help those left behind, then we are a part of the problem rather than the solution to the fraying social fabric that threatens all Americans.--Marian Wright Edelman
- If you can't solve it, it's not a problem--it's reality.--Barbara Colorose
- If you go near a tree you will get shade; if you go near a fire you will be relieved of coldness; if you go to the river and drink, your thirst will be quenches; if you go near God you will get His grace.--Kaivalya Navanitam
- If you see a whole thing--it seems it's always beautiful. Planets, lives... But close up a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.--Ursula K. LeGuin
- In times like these it helps to recall that there have always been times like these.--Paul Harvey
- It is difficult to say what is impossible for the dream of yesterday is the reality of tomorrow.--Dr. Robert H. Goddard
- It may be said with a degree of assurance that not everything that meets the eye is as it appears.--Rod Serling
- Let us look at our own faults, and not other people's. We ought not to insist on everyone following in our footsteps, nor to take upon ourselves to give instructions in spirituality when, perhaps, we do not even know what it is.--Saint Theresa of Lisieux
- Let us take things as we find them: let us not attempt to distort them into what they are not.... We cannot make facts. All our wishing cannot change them. We must use them.--John Henry Cardinal Newman
- Lots of times you have to pretend to join a parade in which you're not really interested in order to get where you're going.--Christopher Darlington Morley
- The miracles of nature do not seem miracles because they are so common. If no one had ever seen a flower, even a dandelion would be the most startling event in the world.--Anonymous
- No authority is higher than reality.--Peter Nivio Zarlenga
- No matter what we want of life we have to give up something in order to get it.--Raymond Holliwell
- Normality is a paved road, it’s comfortable to walk but no flowers grow on it.--Vincent van Gogh
- Not everything that can be counted, counts. And not everything that counts can be counted.--Albert Einstein
- Now the writer, I think, has the chance to live more than other people in the presence of ... reality. It is his business to find it and collect it and communicate it to the rest of us.--Virginia Woolf (A Room of One's Own)
- One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.--Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza
- One cannot help but be in awe when one contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.--Albert Einstein
- Only the dreamer shall understand realities, though, in truth, his dreaming must not be out of proportion to his waking!--Margaret Fuller
- The optimist thinks this is the best of all worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.--J. Robert Oppenheimer
- Our focus is our reality. What we choose to focus on becomes our world. It produces our thoughts, values, attitudes, and beliefs.--David J. Lieberman (Make Peace With Anyone)
- Our tendency to create heroes rarely jibes with the reality that most nontrivial problems require collective solutions.--Warren Bennis
- The paradox of reality is that no image is as compelling as the one which exists only in the mind's eye.--Shana Alexander (Talking Woman)
- The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality. The tree that you are aware of intellectually, because of that small time lag, is always in the past and therefore is always unreal. Any intellectually conceived object is always in the past and therefore unreal. Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectualization takes place. There is no other reality.--Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)
- People are where they are because that is exactly where they really want to be--whether they will admit that or not.--Earl Nightingale
- The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality.--James Michener
- A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.--Sir Winston Churchill
- The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.--George Bernard Shaw
- The practical life of a vast number of people is not, as a matter of fact, worth while at all. It is like an impressive fur coat with no one inside it. One sees many of these coats occupying positions of great responsibility. Hans Andersen's story of the king with no clothes told one bitter and common truth about human nature; but the story of the clothes with no king describes a situation just as common and even more pitiable.--Evelyn Underhill (The Spiritual Life)
- Real change is seldom a giant step. It’s usually a small one. Small but deeply real. We hold the fear and the faith at the same time and we cross the bridge slowly. When we get to the other side, we have been transformed- not by the step itself- but by the willingness to stay open during the crossing. That’s what changes us- creating a space inside for a new way of being to emerge.--Jeff Brown (on Facebook, 3/28/14 (from Love it Forward?))
- A Realist is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been purified. A skeptic is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been burned.--Warren W. Wiersbe (in Leadership)
- Reality cannot be ignored except at a price; and the longer the ignorance is persisted in, the higher and more terrible becomes the price that must be paid.--Aldous Huxley ("Religion and Time" in Vedanta for the Western World ed. by Isherwood)
- Reality has a long history of not altering itself to make us happy or comfortable.--Philip Gulley (Sermon, March 2013)
- Reality is a product of our dreams, decisions and actions, you have to believe in yourself when no one else does. That makes you a winner right there.--Venus Williams
- Reality is above all else a variable, and nobody is qualified to say that he or she knows exactly what it is. As a matter of fact, with a firm enough commitment, you cn sometimes create a reality which did not exist before.--Margaret Halsey
- Reality is something you rise above.--Liza Minnelli
- Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.--Philip K. Dick (in I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon ed. by Hurst and Williams)
- "Reality" is the only word in the English language that should always be used in quotes.--Unknown
- Reality isn't the way you wish things to be, nor the way they appear to be, but the way they actually are.--Robert J. Ringer
- The reality of any place is what its people remember of it.--Charles Kuralt
- Science shows us what exists but not what to do about it.--Heinz R. Pagels (The Dreams of Reason)
- Since we cannot change reality, let us change the eyes which see reality.--Nikos Kazantzakis
- The sky is not less blue because the blind man does not see it.--Danish Proverb
- A small trouble is like a pebble. Hold it too close to your eye and it fills the whole world and puts everything out of focus. Hold it at a proper distance and it can be examined and properly classified. Throw it at your feet and it can be seen in its true setting, just one more tiny bump on the pathway of life.--Celia Luce
- The smaller your reality, the more convinced you are that you know everything.--Thomas Campbell (My Big Toe: The Complete Trilogy)
- Sometimes we just have to accept there are things we can’t know. Why is your sister ill? Why did my father die?…Sometimes we think we should be able to know everything. But we can’t. we have to allow ourselves to see what there is to see, and we have to imagine.--David Almond (Skellig)
- Sometimes we think we should be able to know everything. But we can't. We have to allow ourselves to see what there is to see, and we have imagine. -- David Almond (Skellig)
- Spirituality is about being ready. All the spiritual disciplines of your life - prayer, study, meditation or ritual, religious vows - are there so you can break through to the eternal. Spirituality is about awakening the eyes, the ears, the heart so you can see what's always happening right in front of you.--Richard Rohr (Jesus' Plan for a New World)
- There are few things as seemingly untouched by the real world as a child asleep.--John Irving
- There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.--Douglas Everett
- A thing either is what it appears to be; or it is not, but yet appears to be; or it is, but does not appear to be; or it is not, and does not appear to be.--Epictitus
- Things ain't what they used to be and never were.--Will Rogers
- To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.--Elbert Hubbard
- To bemoan the messiness of politics is not just a folly; it betrays a dangerous impatience with basic human realities.--Theodore Roszak
- To gain what is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else.--Bernadette Devlin
- Too many people miss the silver lining because they're expecting gold.--Maurice Setter
- The true purpose is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes.--Shunryu Suzuki
- Underneath the question of whether spiritual life is easy or difficult, far deeper than that question is the truth of how a woman actually lives her life. The important issue, one woman told us, is not how to develop spiritually, but how to live authentically. "I'm not the least bit interested in spirituality," another said emphatically. "I'm interested in reality."--Sherry Ruth Anderson and Patricia Hopkins (The Feminine Face of God)
- We may all have come on different ships, but we are all in the same boat now.--Martin Luther King, Jr. (from The Quotable Teacher, comp. by Howe)
- We must have strong minds, ready to accept facts as they are.--Harry Truman
- We must learn to tailor our concepts to fit reality, instead of trying to stuff reality into our concepts.--Victor Daniels
- We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions.--Jessamyn West
- Welcome to reality! Our time is limited. We might as well get on with it; so why not choose now to live the life of our dreams?--Seth David Chernoff
- Whatever you believe with emotion becomes your reality. You always act in a manner consistent with your innermost beliefs and convictions.--Brian Tracey (The Treasury of Quotes)
- When you're the victim of the behavior, it's black and white; when you're the perpetrator, there are a million shades of gray.--Laura Schlessinger
- You and I do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.--Herb Cohen
- You can get all A's and flunk life.--Walker Percy
- You cannot seek for the ideal outside the realm of reality.--Leon Blum (New Conversation)
- You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help small men by tearing down big men. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage-payer. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatreds. You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man's initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.--Abraham Lincoln
- You get criticized most when you deserve it least.--[Larry] Nyland's Law
- You need to claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all that you have been and done, which may take some time, you are fierce with reality.--Florida Scott Maxwell
- You're either part of the solution or part of the problem.--[Leroy] Eldridge Cleaver (Speech, 1968)
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