#reality

On the planet O there has not been a war for five thousand years, she read, and on Gethen there has never been a war." She stopped reading, to rest her eyes and because she was trying to train herself to read slowly. "There has never been a war." In her mind the words stood clear and bright, surrounded by and sinking into an infinite, dark, soft incredulity. What would that world be, a world without war? It would be the real world. Peace was the true life, the life of working and learning and bringing up children to work and learn. War, which devoured work, learning, and children, was the denial of reality. But my people, she thought, know only how to deny. Born in the dark shadow of power misused, we set peace outside our world, a guiding and unattainable light. All we know to do is fight. Any peace one of us can make in our life is only a denial that the war is going on, a shadow of the shadow, a doubled unbelief. So as the cloud-shadows swept over the marshes and the page of the book open on her lap, she sighed and closed her eyes. thinking, "I am a liar." Then she opened her eyes and read more about the other worlds, the far realities. ↗

— Ursula K. Le Guin

#reality #war #forgiveness

Nothing so ageing as giving into preconceived perceptions; the youth within one would not have given in to such stodginess. ↗

— allison malm

#age

We must step out of our digital avatars, and come together and have face-to-face dialogue as often as possible. ↗

— Bryant McGill

#bravery #discovery #facing-reality #love-yourself #reality

I realized that the longing for art, like the longing for love, is a malady that blinds us, and makes us forget the things we already know, obscuring reality. ↗

— Orhan Pamuk

#longing #love #reality #art

Beauty begins in the eyes of the beholder; Reality ends in the mind of the observer. ↗

— Joey Lawsin

#reality #beauty

Men are like parking spots. All the good ones are taken, and those that aren’t are inaccessible.” PHOEBE TRAEGER ↗

— Jill Shalvis

#men

Presque tous les malheurs de la vie viennent des fausses idées que nous avons sur ce qui nous arrive. Connaître à fond les hommes, juger sainement des événements, est donc un grand pas vers le bonheur." ("Almost all our misfortunes in life come from the wrong notions we have about the things that happen to us. To know men thoroughly, to judge events sanely, is, therefore, a great step towards happiness.") [Journal entry, 10 December 1801] ↗

— Stendhal

#reality #reality-check #self-knowledge #self-perception #unhappiness

Living a horror movie cliché, so to speak?” Caleb softly replied. “I know this is hard to comprehend, especially since we study science and things that are proven or explainable. But, all my life I’ve been on the road to this very place.” He pointed downwards with his index finger for effect. “Many things I’ve personally seen keep leading me to the same conclusion. In reality, the impossible doesn’t exist. ↗

— Davee Jones

#reality #suspense #movies

To hell with reality! I want to die in music, not in reason or in prose. People don't deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them. To hell with them! ↗

— Louis-Ferdinand Celine

#deserve #die #front #going #hell

What is important is not what you hear said, it's what you observe. ↗

— Michael Connelly

#observation #reality #truth #music