Source: Reasons and Persons (1984), pp. 223-224
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Do you have more details about the quote "Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures." by Ralph Waldo Emerson?
Ralph Waldo Emerson 727
American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882Related quotes
“fiction always surpasses reality but reality is always richer than fiction.”
Javier Cercas
(1962) Spanish writer, journalist and professor of Spanish literature
Source: Outlaws
Augusto Boal
(1931–2009) Brazilian writer
Games for Actors and non-Actors (1992)
Context: In truth the Theatre of the Oppressed has no end, because everything which happens in it must extend into life…. The Theatre of the Oppressed is located precisely on the frontier between fiction and reality – and this border must be crossed. If the show starts in fiction, its objective is to become integrated into reality, into life. Now in 1992, when so many certainties have become so many doubts, when so many dreams have withered on exposure to sunlight, and so many hopes have become as many deceptions – now that we are living through times and situations of great perplexity, full of doubts and uncertainties, now more than ever I believe it is time for a theatre which, at its best, will ask the right questions at the right times. Let us be democratic and ask our audiences to tell us their desires, and let us show them alternatives. Let us hope that one day – please, not too far in the future – we’ll be able to convince or force our governments, our leaders, to do the same; to ask their audiences – us – what they should do, so as to make this world a place to live and be happy in – yes, it is possible – rather than just a vast market in which we sell our goods and our souls. Let’s hope. Let’s work for it!
“The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense.”
Tom Clancy
(1947–2013) American author
Attributed to an interview on Larry King Live; also quoted in Quotable Quotes (1997) edited by Deborah Deford
Attributed variant: The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense.
Clancy here expresses an idea evoked in similar statements made by others, all derived from the orignial made by Lord Byron:
Lord Byron: Truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.
Mark Twain: Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities, truth isn't.
G. K. Chesterton: Truth must necessarily be stranger than fiction, for fiction is the creation of the human mind and therefore congenial to it.
Leo Rosten: Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense. (attributed)
1990s
“The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.”
Mark Twain
(1835–1910) American author and humorist
“Words had become to him a means of obscuring facts — not of revealing them.”
The Labours of Hercules (1967)
Context: Words had become to him a means of obscuring facts — not of revealing them. He was an adept in the art of the useful phrase — that is to say the phrase that falls soothingly on the ear and is quite empty of meaning.
“A play is fiction — and fiction is fact distilled into truth.”
Edward Albee
(1928–2016) American playwright
The New York Times (18 September 1966)
