Quotes about real
page 11

“They say that nameless things change constantly -that names fix them in place like pins. But without a name, a thing isn't quite real either.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Source: Ironside

Change

“Real generosity is anonymous to the extent that a man should be prepared even to be considered ungenerous rather than explain it to others.”

Idries Shah book Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way

Source: Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way

“Men are more interesting in books than they are in real life.”

Annie Barrows book The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Life, Men, Books

“To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

“What a strange world it is where you can have as much sex as you like but love is taboo. I'm talking about the real thing, the grand passion, which may not allow affection or convenience or happiness. The truth is that love smashes into your life like an ice floe, and even if your heart is built like the Titanic you go down. That's the size of it, the immensity of it. It's not proper, it's not clean, it's not containable.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: The Powerbook (2000)

Love, Life, Happiness, Truth

“The real purpose of the scientific method is to make sure nature hasn’t misled you into thinking you know something you actually don’t know.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Nature, Thinking

“In the real world, you can make your own miracles.”

Richelle Mead book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite

World

“Every person professes to love good and hate evil, but in his actions his real preferences emerges.”

Piers Anthony Bearing an Hourglass

Source: Bearing an Hourglass

Love, Hate, Evil, Personality

“I closed the box and put it in a closet.
There is no real way to deal with everything we lose.”

Joan Didion Where I Was From

Source: Where I Was From

Way, Box

“A real education takes place, not in the lecture hall or library, but in the rooms of friends, with earnest frolic and happy disputation.”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

Happiness, Education

“Every day has its great grief or its small anxiety…. One cloud is dispelled, another forms. There is hardly one day in a hundred of real joy and bright sunshine.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Joy

“Why do you want to be on The Real World?
-Because I want everyone to witness my youth

Why?
-Isn't it gorgeous?”

Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Youth, World

“Optimism is the first cousin of love, and it's exactly like love in three ways: it's pushy, it has no real sense of humour, and it turns up where you least expect it.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Love, Way, Optimism, Sense

“Because', she said, 'your problems are not real problems. You're dating two beautiful girls at once. Think about it. That's like… having rock-star problems.'
'Having rock-star problems may be the closest I ever get to being an actual rock star.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Beauty, Girl, Star, Problem

“In real life I do violence, but for psychic stuff I do other things better.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Skin Trade

Source: Skin Trade

Life

“Of all that I have possessed in my life, my memories are the only things remaining to me. Indeed, I believe that memories are the only real treasure any human can hope to hold always.”

Gary Jennings book Aztec

Source: Aztec

Life, Hope, Memory

“It's better not to know authors personally, because the real person never corresponds to the image you form of him from reading his books.”

Italo Calvino (1923–1985) Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels

Source: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Books, Reading, Personality

“She had wild eyes, slightly insane. She also carried an overload of compassion that was real enough and which obviously cost her something.”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Source: Women

“When you are writing laws you are testing words to find their utmost power. Like spells, they have to make things happen in the real world, and like spells, they only work if people believe in them.”

Hilary Mantel book Wolf Hall

Source: Wolf Hall

People, World, Law

“It is a do-it-yourself era: health care, real estate, police investigation. Go online and f*ing figure it out for yourself because everyone’s overworked and understaffed.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

Health

“I have defined poetry as a 'passionate pursuit of the Real.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

Passion

“Look into the eyes of a chicken and you will see real stupidity. It is a kind of bottomless stupidity, a fiendish stupidity. They are the most horrifying, cannibalistic and nightmarish creatures in the world.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Stupidity, World

“The only real laughter comes from despair.”

Groucho Marx book The Groucho Letters

Source: The Groucho Letters

Laughter, Despair

“The real wonders of life lie in the depths. Exploring the depths for truths is the real wonder which the child and the artist know: magic and power lie in truth.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947

Life, Truth, Lie

“Sex was never as neat as the movies made it. Real sex was messy. Good sex was messier.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Blue Moon

Source: Blue Moon

Sex

“I lived with the terrible knowledge that one day I would be an old man still waiting for my real life to start. Already, I pitied that old man.”

Pat Conroy book The Prince of Tides

Source: The Prince of Tides

Life, Knowledge, Waiting

“The key to seeing the world's soul, and in the process wakening our own, is to get over the confusion by which we think that fact is real and imagination is illusion.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Source: Original Self: Living with Paradox and Originality

World, Soul, Imagination, Thinking

“In the real world
as in dreams
nothing is quite
what it seems.
-The Book of Counted Sorrows”

Dean Koontz (1945) American author

Books, World, Dreams

“It's not like in the movies. It's better, because it's real.”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Romantic

“She couldnt let that happen again. She would have to be strong. Fearless. Gird
herself with righteous armor.
She jumped when the door clicked shut. Oh great, that was real fearless of her.”

Kerrelyn Sparks (1955) American writer

Source: Vampire Mine

Strong

“Friendship, like the immortality of the soul, is too good to be believed. When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost work but the solidest things we know.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Friendship, Soul

“Through her jacket, I could feel her heartbeat. It made me happy to know she was alive, was real, was there.”

Alex Flinn book Beastly

Source: Beastly

Happiness, Feeling

“Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

Peace, Time, Christmas, Season

“Real courage is not to give up hope, even in the most terrible darkness, and to carry on. That if courage and love is deep as despair, deeper, then light may come again”

David Clement-Davies book Fell

Source: Fell

Love, Hope, Courage, Light

“Any mind that is capable of a real sorrow is capable of good.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe book Uncle Tom's Cabin

Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Ch. 28 Reunion

“After all, is not a real Hell better than a manufactured Heaven?”

E.M. Forster book Maurice

Source: Maurice

Hell

“I'm not afraid of werewolves or vampires or haunted hotels, I'm afraid of what real human beings to do other real human beings.”

Walter Jon Williams (1953) American fiction writer

“The real marriage of true minds is for any two people to possess a sense of humor or irony pitched in exactly the same key, so that their joint glances on any subject cross like interarching searchlights.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

Source: A Backward Glance

Marriage, People, Sense

“How real is any of the past, being every moment revalued to make the present possible…”

William Gaddis book The Recognitions

Source: The Recognitions

Past

“Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to
self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt,
that's real power.”

Clint Eastwood (1930) actor and director from the United States

Effort

“A little boy who's discovered the monster under the bed is actually real, and it's screwing Mommy.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book The Killing Dance

Source: The Killing Dance

Boy

“I have to start my real life soon, before I die of boredom and frustration.”

William Boyd book Any Human Heart

Source: Any Human Heart

Life

“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”

Simone Weil book Gravity and Grace

p. 120 http://books.google.it/books?id=lpuZIgerNroC&pg=PA120 (1997 edition) <br class="br">Gravity and Grace (1947)

Evil

“You've always lived a life of pretense, not a real life-- a simulated existence, not a genuine existence. Everything about you, everything you are, has always been pretense, never genuine, never real.”

Thomas Bernhard book Woodcutters

Source: Woodcutters

Life

“Half of my heart's got a real good imagination, half of my heart's got you… Half of my hearts got a right mind to tell you that half of my heart won't do.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

Half of My Heart
Song lyrics, Battle Studies (2009)
Source: John Mayer - Battle Studies
Context: I was born in the arms of imaginary friends,
Free to roam, made a home out of everywhere I've been.
Then you come crashing in, like the realest thing,
Trying my best to understand all that your love can bring.Oh half of my heart's got a grip on the situation;
Half of my heart takes time.
Half of my heart's got a right mind to tell you
That I can't keep loving you (can't keep loving you)
Oh, with half of my heart.

Imagination, Heart

“Sometimes I get real lonely sleeping with you.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase

Sleep

“The real reason for not committing suicide is because you always know how swell life gets again after the hell is over.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Life, Hell, Suicide

“I have to admit, an unrequited love is so much better than a real one. I mean, it's perfect… As long as something is never even started, you never have to worry about it ending. It has endless potential.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Love, Perfection

“The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved.”

Marge Piercy (1936) American novelist and poet

Love

“Those who succeed in an outstanding way seldom do so before the age of 40. More often, they do not strike their real pace until they are well beyond the age of 50.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

Source: Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller - Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century

Age, Way

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
Context: I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.

Men, God, Hate, People

“A real relationship is two-way.”

Sophie Kinsella book Can You Keep a Secret?

Source: Can You Keep a Secret?

Way

“Nick: How? Are you a vampire or something? What made you immortal?
Acheron: Real good DNA.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

“I believe there's a calling for all of us. I know that every human being has value and purpose. The real work of our lives is to become aware. And awakened. To answer the call.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

“This feeling will pass. The fear is real but the danger is not.”

Cammie McGovern

Source: Say What You Will

Fear, Feeling

“Did you ever wonder if the person in the puddle is real, and you're just a reflection of him?”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Personality

“This is what terrorism is occupied with as well: making real, palpable violence surface in opposition to the invisible violence of security.”

Jean Baudrillard book Simulacra and Simulation

Source: Simulacra and Simulation

“The real poetry and beauty in life comes from an intense relationship with reality in all its aspects. Realism is in fact the ideal we must aspire to, the highest point of human rationality.”

Robert Greene book The 50th Law

Source: The 50th Law

Life, Beauty, Reality

“Every thought of yours is a real thing – a force.”

Rhonda Byrne book The Secret

Variant: Every idea from your thoughts is the real thing it's strength
Source: The Secret

“We're hallucinating. And that's what this world is: a mass hallucination, where fear seems more real than love. Fear is an illusion. Our craziness, paranoia, anxiety and trauma are literally all imagined.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Source: A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

Love, World, Fear, Imagination

“The imaginary is what tends to become real.”

André Breton (1896–1966) French writer

“You can always die. It's living that takes real courage." - Himura Kenshin”

Nobuhiro Watsuki (1970) Japanese manga artist

Courage

“Oh, I used to lie all the time as a kid." I didn't think of it as lying, though. I thought of it as playing make-believe. I told Kitty she was adopted and her real family was in a traveling circus. It's why she took up gymnastics.”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Lie, Family, Travel, Lying

“I shouldn't think even millionaires could eat anything nicer than new bread and real butter and honey for tea.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

Thinking, Tea

“there are things you do because they feel right and they may make no sense and they may make no money and it may be the real reason we are here: to love each other and to eat each other's cooking and say it was good.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Variant: Real Reason:
There are things you do because they feel right & they may make no sense & they may make no money & it may be the real reason we are here: to love each other & to eat each other's cooking & say it was good.

Love, Money, Feeling, Sense

“Once you've recognized your own limits, you've raised yourself to a higher level of being, since you're closer to the real you…”

Banana Yoshimoto (1964) Japanese writer

“Real writers are those who want to write, need to write, have to write.”

Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989) American poet, novelist, and literary critic

“I want to touch you in real time
not find you on YouTube,
I want to walk next to you in the mountains
not friend you on Facebook.”

Eve Ensler (1953) American playwright, performer, feminist, activist and artist

Source: I am an Emotional Creature

Mountain, Time

“But some characters in books are really real--Jane Austen's are; and I know those five Bennets at the opening of Pride and Prejudice, simply waiting to raven the young men at Netherfield Park, are not giving one thought to the real facts of marriage.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

Men, Marriage, Books, Waiting

“What was it to love someone, what was love exactly, and why did it end or not end? Those were the real questions, and who could answer them?”

Patricia Highsmith book The Price of Salt

Source: The Price of Salt

Love, Question

“Be authentic. Don't try to be someone you aren't. You'll hate yourself for it & the effort to maintain the facade will exhaust you. BE REAL! Many won't like the real you but that's better than having people adore the person that isn't you at all”

Larry Winget (1952) American motivational speaker

Hate, People, Effort, Personality

“The real hell of life is everyone has his reasons.”

Jean Renoir (1894–1979) French film director and screenwriter

Variant: The truly terrible thing is that everybody has their reasons.

Life, Hell

“But in real life, happily-ever-after is just the beginning. It's where life starts.”

Kay Hooper (1957) American writer

Source: If There Be Dragons

Life

“Yes, vanity is a weakness indeed. But pride - where there is a real superiority of mind, pride will be always under good regulation.”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

Source: Pride and Prejudice

“The most basic and somehow forgettable thing is this: Love is not pain. Love is goodness. And real love--it's less shiny than solid and simple.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Secret Life of Prince Charming

Love, Pain

“Like Robin Hood…. Not real, but true.”

Janette Rallison (1966) American writer

“On an incredibly simplistic level, you can think of depression as occurring when your cortex thinks an abstract thought and manages to convince the rest of the brain that this is as real as a physical stressor.”

Robert M. Sapolsky book Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

Source: Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

Thinking

“That's the thing about being the product of happily marries parents, You grow up thinking the fairy tale is real, and more than that, you think you're entitled to live it. So far, though, it wasn't working out as planned.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Choice

Source: The Choice

Thinking, Parent

“If I could grow wings, I could fly. Only people can't grow wings," he say's. "Real or not real?"
"Real," I say. "But people don't need wings to survive."
"Mockingjays do.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

People, Flying

“When you lose someone and it still hurts, that's when you know the love was real.”

Jenny Han book P.S. I Still Love You

Source: P.S. I Still Love You

Love, Hurt

“Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the 'environmentalist' view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside the mainstream of human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view.”

Edward O. Wilson (1929) American biologist

World, Effort, Time

“a man doesn't prove he's a man by getting an erection. He's only a real man if he can pleasure a woman. And if he can pleasure a prostitute, he'll think he's the best lover on the block" -Nyah”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

Pleasure, Lovers, Thinking

“In fairy tales, the princesses kiss the frogs, and the frogs become princes. In real life, the pricesses kiss princes, and the princes turn into frogs.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)
Variant: There's nothing deeper than love. In fairy tales, the princesses kiss the frogs, and the frogs become princes. In real life, the princesses kiss princes, and the princes turn into frogs.
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Life, Kiss, Princess

“Inside each of us resides the truth, I began, the absolute truth. But sometimes the truth is hidden in a hall of mirrors. Sometimes we believe we are viewing the real thing, when in fact we are viewing a facsimile, a distortion.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Truth