Quotes about real
page 9

“I’ve always believed that the real measure of celebrity success is not just how famous he becomes, but what he does with that fame and fortune.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

“Unity is the great goal toward which humanity moves irresistibly. But it becomes fatal, destructive of the intelligence, the dignity, the well-being of individuals and peoples whenever it is formed without regard to liberty, either by violent means or under the authority of any theological, metaphysical, political, or even economic idea. That patriotism which tends toward unity without regard to liberty is an evil patriotism, always disastrous to the popular and real interests of the country it claims to exalt and serve. Often, without wishing to be so, it is a friend of reaction – an enemy of the revolution, i.e., the emancipation of nations and men.”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

Reasoned Proposal to the Central Committee of the League for Peace and Freedom (1867)

Men, People, Intelligence, Idea

“Use original detail in your writing. Life is so rich, if you can write down the real details of the way things were and are, you hardly need anything else.”

Natalie Goldberg book Writing Down the Bones

Essay, "Original detail". p.45
Writing Down the Bones (1986)

Life, Way

“We're not just athletes or entertainment -- we're human, too, and we have real emotions. Sometimes they don't realize that we have things going on behind the scenes that affects us whenever we go out and compete.”

Simone Biles (1997) American gymnast

"What's Next for Simone Biles? Gymnast Answers Questions on Future After Tokyo Games" in NBC Chicago (3 August 2021) https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/sports/tokyo-summer-olympics/simone-biles-whats-next-gymnast-answers-questions-on-future-after-tokyo-games/2578051/

“I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.”

Bertrand Russell book Why I Am Not a Christian

"The Emotional Factor"
1920s, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)

Men, People, Religion, Thinking

“I can see him. I know that God is real. I know it in my heart. You can only believe in what you know to be true. You know your own truth. I know mine. Everyone should be able to find that within themselves.”

Rachel Scott (1981–1999) American murder victim

Source: As quoted in No Easy Answers: The Truth Behind Death at Columbine https://books.google.com/books?id=kI4YwhBD7FgC&pg=PA149 (2002), by Brooks Brown and Rob Merritt, New York: Lantern Books, p. 149

God, Truth, Heart

“All I want to live in real for once, not just to exist.”

Kazeronnie Mak

Life, Exist, Wisdom

“The real cause I consider to be the one which was formerly most kept out of sight. The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired the Lacedaemon, made war inevitable.”

Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War

Book I, 1.23-[6]. (See: Thucydides Trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides%20Trap) <br class="br">History of the Peloponnesian War, Book I

War

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“Poets and priests were one in the beginning, and they only separated in later times. But the real poet is always a priest, just as the real priest always remains a poet.”

Novalis book Blüthenstaub

Fragment No. 71
Blüthenstaub (1798)

Time

“There is a great analogy between grace and genius, for genius is a grace. The real man of genius is the one who acts by grace or by impulsion, without ever contemplating himself and without ever saying to himself: Yes! It is by grace that I act.”

Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821) Savoyard philosopher, writer, lawyer, and diplomat

"Of Experiment and of the Genius of Discoveries," p. 37
An Examination of the Philosophy of Francis Bacon (1836)

“I am absolutely dumbfounded
by people
who feel they can spew out hatred and negativity like a violently sick Dragon…
but do not think of Retribution
nor the black soot that their filthy Karma is heavy with.
Karma is a real true Bitch!
She always comes to pay you a visit
when you least expect it.
I count on it…
because I work so hard to keep my side of the street clean.
The evil shan't ever win.
I'll stand there while you are burned to a crisp before me.
Good always prevails
in the End.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

People, Feeling, Thinking, Evil

“I love and hate technology.
Texting or emailing is one step away from true and real communication.
What happened to people and their communication skills?”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Love, Hate, People, Communication

“A good work of fiction is more real than the stories from which it was derived. Otherwise it has no staying power. It's distilled reality. And some would say "it never happened," but it depends on what you mean by "happened."”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

If it's a pattern that repeats in many, many places, with variation, you can abstract out the central pattern. So the pattern never purely existed in any specific form, but the fact that you pulled a pattern out from all those exemplars means that you've extracted something real. I think the reason that the story of Adam and Eve has been immune to being forgotten is because it says things about the nature of the human condition that are always true.
Other

Reality, Dependency

“For the dream chaser:
Everyone is a dream chaser. It never means every dream that can come true.
I always admire for the one who has dreams.
He follows it and he can make it real.”

Kazeronnie Mak

Dreams

“The heart is the bridge between the mind and the soul. First get out of your mind and into your heart space. From there it is a quick jump into your soul. When you are in your heart space with another, that is when you can have a real soul talk. When you are in your heart space with yourself, that is when you can experience connecting with your soul at a very deep level. That is when you can experience communion with God.”

Neale Donald Walsch (1943) American writer

God, Soul, Heart

“Language is as old as consciousness, language is practical, real consciousness that exists for other men as well, and only therefore does it also exist for me; language, like consciousness, only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other men.”

Karl Marx book The German Ideology

Source: Karl Marx. The German Ideology. 1845

Men

“Nothing is so strong as gentleness. Nothing is so gentle as real strength.”

Francis de Sales (1567–1622) French bishop, saint, writer and Doctor of the Church j

Strong

“Perhaps only people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the universe. The others have a certain stickiness, they stick to the mass.”

D.H. Lawrence book Lady Chatterley's Lover

Source: Lady Chatterley's Lover

People, Universe

“Things in life have no real beginning, though our stories about them always do.”

Colum McCann Zoli

Source: Zoli

Life

“Bianca di Angelo shivered. "That explains Nico, you remember last summer, those guys
who tried to attack us in the alley in DC?"
"And that bus driver," Nico said. "The one with the ram's horns. I *told* you that was real.”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

Guy, Summer

“Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding. I am constantly filled with wonder at the number of things that other people do without any evident difficulty that are pretty much beyond me.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Source: I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away

People, World

“Just as real events are forgotten, some that never were can be in our memories as if they happened.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Source: Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Memory

“Desire sets our compass, but real life steers our course.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

The First Phone Call from Heaven

Life

“You can spend your whole life building a wall of facts between you and anything real.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

Life

“It could have been like a fairy tale. But fairy tales aren't real. Things don't work like that. There's a price for everything.”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Source: Girl at Sea

“So maybe it wasn't the fairy tale. But those stories weren't real anyway. Mine were.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

“I believe that the imagination is the passport we create to take us into the real world. I believe the imagination is another phrase for what is most uniquely us.”

John Guare Six Degrees of Separation

Source: Six Degrees of Separation

World, Imagination

“The true measurement of a person’s worth isn’t what they say they believe in, but what they do in defense of those beliefs,” he said. “If you’re not acting on your beliefs, then they probably aren’t real.”

Glenn Greenwald (1967) American journalist, lawyer and writer

Source: No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State

Personality

“I have a habitual feeling of my real life having past, and that I am now leading a posthumous existence.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Source: Selected Letters

Life, Feeling, Past

“Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It's about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

“We'll never have a true picture of reality; it just doesn't exist. But I'm real, and you're real, and those fiery balls of gas up there are real, and right now that's all I need to know.”

Wendy Mass (1967) American children's writer

Source: Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd

Reality

“I don't want to be somebody's crush. If somebody likes me, I want them to like the real me, not what they think I am.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Variant: If somebody likes me, I want them to like the real me, not what they think I am.
Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Thinking

“Real life doesn’t have many happy endings. Why shouldn’t books make up the difference?”

Scott Westerfeld book Afterworlds

Source: Afterworlds

Life, Happiness, Books

“Fighting evil by moonlight, winning love by daylight, never running from a real fight, she is the one named Sailor Moon!”

Naoko Takeuchi (1967) Japanese manga artist

Love, Evil, Fight

“Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality.”

Iris Murdoch (1919–1999) British writer and philosopher

"The Sublime and the Good", in the Chicago Review, Vol. 13 Issue 3 (Autumn 1959) p. 51.
Source: Existentialists and Mystics Writings on Philosophy and Literature

Love, Art, Reality

“I want something else. I'm not even sure what to call it anymore except I know it feels roomy and it's drenched in sunlight and it's weightless and I know it's not cheap. Probably not even real”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Variant: I want something else. I’m not even sure what to call it anymore except I know it feels roomy and it’s drenched in sunlight and it’s weightless and I know it’s not cheap. It’s probably not even real.
Source: House of Leaves

Feeling

“All you know is what you think you know, but that isn't always what's real.”

Carrie Vaughn (1973) American writer

Source: Kitty's Big Trouble

Thinking

“We have the choice of two identities: the external mask which seems to be real… and the hidden, inner person who seems to us to be nothing, but who can give himself eternally to the truth in whom he subsists. (295)”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Source: New Seeds of Contemplation

Truth, Personality

“… So please, be tolerant of those who describe a sporting moment as their best ever. We do not lack imagination, nor have we had sad and barren lives; it is just that real life is paler, duller, and contains less potential for unexpected delirium.”

Nick Hornby Fever Pitch

Source: Fever Pitch

Life, Sadness, Imagination, Sport

“The television is 'real'. It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn't time to protest, 'What nonsense!'.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Thinking, Time

“Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.”

Ralph Ellison book Shadow and Act

Shadow and Act (New York: Random House, 1964), Introduction, p. xix; in The Collected Essays, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 1995), p. 56.

Reality

“Nothing is as real as a dream. Responsibilities need not erase it. Duties need not obscure it. Because the dream is within you, no one can take it away.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

Dreams

“Sometimes," he sighed, "I think the things I remember are more real than the things I see.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Thinking

“Real or not real?”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

“The thread of will-they-or-won't-they was the real driver of every word and glance and shift of body.

So… this was a date, Blay thought. A subtextual negotiation slipcovered in talk of books read and music enjoyed.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Mine

Books, Music, Reading

“It didn’t matter, anyway. There was only one thing she could ask for, in the end, only one real choice.
She raised her eyes to the Angel’s.
"Jace," she said.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Angels

“She had reason to doubt him; he was real good at planning but real bad at doing.”

Junot Díaz book Drown

Source: Drown

“some soap opera, you know, real people pretending to be fake people with made-up problems being watched by real people to forget their real problems.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

People, Problem, Forgetting

“For six months I couldn't sleep. With insomnia, nothing's real. Everything is far away. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

Sleep

“… available people are the ones who are dangerous, because they confront us with the possibility of real intimacy.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

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

People

“Real reading is a lonely activity.”

Harold Bloom book The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages

Source: The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages

Reading

“But new love only lasts so long, and then you crash back into the real people you are, and from as high as we were, it's a very long fall, and we hit the ground with a thud.”

Marya Hornbacher (1974) American journalist

Source: Madness: A Bipolar Life

Love, People

“It may be that when we no longer know which way to go that we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Way, Singing

“The real is what resists symbolization absolutely.”

Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist

Source: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Freud's Papers on Technique

“It is not often that the real world conjures worse than what we can imagine.”

Alison Goodman (1966) Australian science-fiction writer

Source: Eona: The Last Dragoneye

World, Imagination

“Fiction, because it is not about somebody who actually lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

World

“Your nervous system cannot tell the difference between an imagined experience and a ‘real’ experience.”

Maxwell Maltz (1889–1975) Plastic surgeon, self-help author

Source: Psycho-Cybernetics, A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life

Imagination

“Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings”

David Sedaris book Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

Source: Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim

Love, Truth, Feeling, Hurt

“The only real limitation on your abilities is the level of your desires. If you
want it badly enough, there are no limits on what you can achieve.”

Brian Tracy (1944) American motivational speaker and writer

“Bye-bye. I'm off on a journey to the real world. 'Cause within this meta-reality what'sis this - my death.”

Natsuo Kirino book Real World

Source: Real World

Death, World, Reality

“I mean my characters are more like men than these real men are, see. They’re rough and rude, they got hands and they got bellies. They hate and they lust; break the skin of civilization and you find the ape, roaring and red-handed.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

From a letter to Harold Preece (c. January or February 1928)
Letters

Men, Hate

“I will tell you the story of how we found ourselves in a realm where dreams are formed, destiny is chosen, and magic is as real as a handprint in the snow.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

Dreams

“I can't tell if she's actually real, or if she's stopped caring if she's real or not. Or is not caring what makes a person real?”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

Personality

“A real gentleman is as polite to a little girl as to a woman.”

Louisa May Alcott book An Old-Fashioned Girl

Source: An Old-Fashioned Girl

Girl

“Men are not the enemy, but the fellow victims. The real enemy is women's denigration of themselves.”

Betty Friedan (1921–2006) American activist

Women, Men

“People in the real world would kill for a happily ever after, and you're willing to just throw it away?"
I look away from her. "It's hardly a happily ever after when you wind up right at the beginning.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Between the Lines

People, World

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work
and when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Standing by Words: Essays (2011), Poetry and Marriage: The Use of Old Forms (1982)
Context: It may be, then, that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Way, Singing

“Have you ever noticed how when you're happy, time seems to pass by fast, while when you're miserable it goes real slow? Life would have been a blink with you whether it lasted a millennium or a month.”

Lynsay Sands Canadian writer

Source: A Quick Bite

Life, Happiness, Time

“Real misanthropes are not found in solitude, but in the world; since it is experience of life, and not philosophy, which produces real hatred of mankind.”

Giacomo Leopardi (1798–1837) Italian poet, philosopher and writer

Life, World, Solitude

“Real intimacy is a sacred experience. It never exposes its secret trust and belonging to the voyeuristic eye of a neon culture. Real intimacy is of the soul, and the soul is reserved.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Secret, Soul

“There’s a lesson in real-life stalking cases that young women can benefit from learning: persistence only proves persistence—it does not prove love. The fact that a romantic pursuer is relentless doesn’t mean you are special—it means he is troubled.”

Gavin de Becker (1954) American engineer

Source: The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence

Love, Life, Women, Learning

“Billy squinted at me. "Why are you letting them go?"
"Because they're real."
"How do you know?"
"The one I was holding crapped on my hand.”

Jim Butcher book Summer Knight

Source: Summer Knight

“Do not, under any circumstances belittle a works of fiction by trying to turn it into a carbon copy of real life; what we search for in fiction is not so much reality but the epiphany of truth.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Source: Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)

Life, Truth, Search, Reality

“You know when I told you the joke about how a friend will help you move, but a real friend will help you move a body? I was only kidding.”

Brad Thor (1969) American writer

Source: Black List

Help

“A real writer learns from earlier writers the way a boy learns from an apple orchard -- by stealing what he has a taste for, and can carry off”

Archibald Macleish (1892–1982) American poet and Librarian of Congress

Way, Boy, Learning

“Believe me, I'm no romantic, and while I've heard all about love at first sight, I've never believed in it, and I still don't. But even so, there was something there, something recognizably real, and I couldn't look away.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Love

“Real life seeks the gentle slopes at the back of Mount Improbable, while creationists are blind to all but the daunting precipice at the front.”

Richard Dawkins book The God Delusion

Source: The God Delusion

Life

“They're Lares. House gods."
"House gods," Percy said. "Like… smaller than real gods, but larger than apartment gods?”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

God, Housing

“She means well, but she always manages to do the wrong thing. She has a real talent for it.”

Beverly Cleary book Fifteen

Source: Fifteen

“We are all in flight from the real reality. That is the basic definition of Homo Sapiens.”

John Fowles book The French Lieutenant's Woman

Source: The French Lieutenant's Woman

Reality

“There is no real direction here, neither lines of power nor cooperation. Decisions are never really made – at best they manage to emerge, from a chaos of peeves, whims, hallucinations and all around assholery.”

Thomas Pynchon book Gravity's Rainbow

Source: Gravity's Rainbow

Decision

“Figure out what is real for you. No use leaning on someone else's story all your life.”

Shannon Hale book Austenland

Source: Austenland

Life

“We are taught to treat a practice sword with all the respect of a real weapon, so no thoughtless mistakes are made"
"Oh… In Eddis, we learn to keep tack of the weapon we have in our hand.”

Megan Whalen Turner The King of Attolia

Source: The King of Attolia

Learning

“You've recognised a fundamental feature of an addict's life. Maintaining your habit is so important you've no real interest in anything else.”

Marian Keyes (1963) Irish writer

Source: Rachel's Holiday

Life

“Sometimes I think the only real division into two is between people who divide everything into two and those who don't.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

Source: My Life on the Road

People, Thinking

“Which of us has not felt that the character we are reading in the printed page is more real than the person standing beside us?”

Cornelia Funke (1958) author

Reading, Personality

“I am the truth, since I am part of what is real, but neither more nor less than those around me.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Source: The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination

Truth, Parting

“Science fiction is for real, space opera is for fun.”

Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author

Science

“Melbourne, I always knew you'd need to learn about this kind of thing. I 'd just kind of hoped you'd learn it on a real guy.”

Richelle Mead book The Fiery Heart

Source: The Fiery Heart

Hope, Guy, Learning

“All music should have no other end and aim than the glory of God and the soul's refreshment; where this is not remembered there is no real music but only a devilish hubbub.”

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) German late baroque era composer

Quoted in Ludwig Prautzsch Bibel und Symbol in den Werken Bachs, p. 7 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xaG9peANY9kC&pg=PA7&dq=teuflisches+%22Finis+und+Endursache+anders+nicht,+als+nur+zu+Gottes+Ehre+%22;translation from Albert Schweitzer (trans. Ernest Newman) J. S. Bach (New York: Dover, 1966), vol. 1, p. 167 <br class="br">Variant: Like all music, the figured bass should have no other end and aim than the glory of God and the recreation of the soul; where this is not kept in mind there is no true music, but only an infernal clamour and ranting.

God, Music, Soul