294 Quotes About Realism

Did it ever occur to you that when he told you he would come back he was lying? Many a man has done it. He probably meant no malice – he just did not want to see your tears and pleading. If you find him in Tarras you may not like what you discover. He won't thank you for crossing 'mountain and down' to find him. Life is not like the songs Avalon, tis far less pretty.

One cannot play fast and loose with what one knows to be true.

La Société ne fait-elle pas de l'homme, suivant les milieux où son action se déploie, autant d'hommes différents qu'il y a de variétés en zoologie ? [...] Il a donc existé, il existera donc de tout temps des Espèces Sociales comme il y a des Espèces Zoologiques.

Slavery is an element of the human heart...to our ruin.

Every man in the world is either a Realist or a Nominalist. Give yourself a test: if someone called you a gigger or a fell-picker, and you knew it wasn't true, would you hit him or smile? That's how easy it is to tell.

Fiction inhabits the zone between the real and the impossible. The tug of those two poles is what gives it motion, vitality. Tethering fiction too tightly to the real produces plodding, lifeless stories. Letting it float too far from that anchor produces stories that are arbitrary and unpersuasive.

Pentru ca viața-i scurtă,cu multă suferință,și fără caznă trai nu-i cu putințăconduși de pofte și dorinținoi ne petrecem și ne roadem anii;cin` la plăceri renunță doar strădaniigăsește, chin și suferinți;de-a lumii amăgireacela n-are știre,nici de-ntâmplări-i sucite, de ororice-apasă greu pe-atâția muritori.

Pentru ca viața-i scurtă,cu multă suferință,și fără caznă trai nu-i cu putințăconduși de pofte și dorinținoi ne petrecem și ne roadem anii;cin` la plăceri renunță doar strădaniigăsește, chin și suferinți;de-a lumii amăgireacela n-are știre,nici de-ntâmplări-i sucite, de ororice-apasă greu pe-atâția muritori.(Machiavelli, Mătrăguna, in Comedia Italiană din Renaștere, Humanitas, 2012, p9)

Reality hasn't really sunk in yet, I knew that. I didn't want to know what life was going to feel like when it finally did.