#reality

when you're a kid, they tell you that it's what's on the inside that counts. Looks don't matter . But that's not true. Guys like Phoebus in The Hunchback, or Dorian, or the old Kyle Kingsbury-- they can be scumbags to women and still get away with it because they're good-looking. Being ugly is a kind of prisoner. ↗

— Alex Flinn

#truth #prison

Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality. ↗

— John Gardner

#self-pity #destruction

The world outside had its own rules, and those rules were not human. ↗

— Michel Houellebecq

#reality #horror

We modern human beings are looking at life, trying to make some sense of it; observing a 'reality' that often seems to be unfolding in a foreign tongue--only we've all been issued the wrong librettos. For a text, we're given the Bible. Or the Talmud or the Koran. We're given Time magazine, and Reader's Digest, daily papers, and the six o'clock news; we're given schoolbooks, sitcoms, and revisionist histories; we're given psychological counseling, cults, workshops, advertisements, sales pitches, and authoritative pronouncements by pundits, sold-out scientists, political activists, and heads of state. Unfortunately, none of these translations bears more than a faint resemblance to what is transpiring in the true theater of existence, and most of them are dangerously misleading. We're attempting to comprehend the spiraling intricacies of a magnificently complex tragicomedy with librettos that describe the barrom melodramas or kindergarten skits. And when's the last time you heard anybody bitch about it to the management? ↗

— Tom Robbins

#fact #life #meaning-of-life #reality #religion

Maybe they'd use biological or chemical weapons instead. Maybe they'd crash the world economy. Maybe they'd turn every program on television into one of those reality shows." "That's mostly done already, Harry." "Oh. Well. I've got to believe that the world is worth saving anyway. ↗

— Jim Butcher

#reality-tv #saving-the-world #economy

If you want to find the real competition, just look in the mirror. After awhile you'll see your rivals scrambling for second place. ↗

— Criss Jami

#athletes #athletics #competition #confidence #improvement

Zen is a liberation from time. For if we open our eyes and see clearly, it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant, and that the past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality. ↗

— Alan Wilson Watts

#future #past #present #reality #way-of-zen

I am just like 99% of my friends in France, who say on their resume they can speak fluent English. In reality, they can't even count up to three. ↗

— Greg Akcelrod

#count #english #even #fluent #france

The buildings that I build very often have a dreamlike reality. I don't mean by that they have a fantasy quality at all, in fact quite the reverse. They contain in some degree the ingredients that give dreams their power... stuff that's very close to us. ↗

— Christopher Alexander

#buildings #close #contain #degree #dreams

We don't just want to win the Super Bowl, we want to make a dynasty. I want to be a player who makes that a reality. ↗

— Shaun Alexander

#dynasty #i #just #make #makes