41 Real Quotes From Famous Figures

In a world that often feels dominated by soundbites and fleeting media trends, there's something profoundly grounding about turning to the words of those who have shaped history, inspired generations, and influenced culture. These quotes are more than mere strings of words; they're powerful insights and reflections from some of the greatest minds and remarkable personalities in history. This collection of 41 real quotes from famous figures distills wisdom, humor, and timeless lessons, offering a glimpse into the minds of those who have left an indelible mark on our world. Whether you seek motivation, contemplation, or just a moment of connection to something larger, these authentic expressions are sure to resonate and inspire.

1. “It is foolish to wish for beauty. Sensible people never either desire it for themselves or care about it in others. If the mind be but well cultivated, and the heart well disposed, no one ever cares for the exterior.” - Anne Brontë

2. “It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded. It looks as if they were victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read, ideal by the necessity of selection, and the conversation of their elders, who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal life. They must discover for themselves that all they have read and all they have been told are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is another nail driven into the body on the cross of life.” - W. Somerset Maugham

3. “The stage is a magic circle where only the most real things happen, a neutral territory outside the jurisdiction of Fate where stars may be crossed with impunity. A truer and more real place does not exist in all the universe.” - P.S. Baber

4. “Fashion is a language that creates itself in clothes to interpret reality.” - Karl Lagerfeld

5. “Do whatever you like because life is short” - sujana

6. “Remain faithful to the earth, my brothers, with the power of your virtue. Let your gift-giving love and your knowledge serve the meaning of the earth. Thus I beg and beseech you. Do not let them fly away from earthly things and beat with their wings against eternal walls. Alas, there has always been so much virtue that has flown away. Lead back to the earth the virtue that flew away, as I do—back to the body, back to life, that it may give the earth a meaning, a human meaning.” - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

7. “The real question is, can you love the real me? Not the perfect person you want me to be, not that image you had of me, but who I really am.” - Christine Feehan

8. “as soon as we renounce fiction and illusion, we lose reality itself; the moment we subtract fictions from reality, reality itself loses its discursive-logical consistency.” - Slavoj Žižek

9. “A man who is not a father to his children can never be a real man,” - Mario Puzo

10. “When your mother is made out of your dreams, anything real is bound to disappoint you.” - Jodi Picoult

11. “I mean, it's impossible to fake anything if you've already seen the other person in a way they'd never choose for you to. You can't go back from that.” - Sarah Dessen

12. “The easiest way to gain someone's trust is to deserve it. This should be pretty easy, assuming you're just being you and being real. Minimal effort too.” - Ashly Lorenzana

13. “love is undying,of that I feel certain.I mean deep,abiding,cherishing love.The love that gives protection even as you,my guardian angel,gave me protection long after you had gone-and continue to give this very day...A love beyond Death-a love that makes Life alive!” - Ruskin Bond

14. “The difference between real life and a story is that life has significance, while a story must have meaning.The former is not always apparent, while the latter always has to be, before the end.” - Vera Nazarian

15. “I thought he wanted it, anyway," I say. "Not like this," Haymitch says. "He wanted it to be real.” - Suzanne Collins

16. “The God that we commonly know may be less sinister than the true God that we don't know for sure.” - Toba Beta

17. “She preferred imaginary heroes to real ones, because when tired of them, the former could be shut up in the tin kitchen till called for, and the latter were less manageable.” - Louisa May Alcott

18. “Real is better, The truth is better. Painful but better.” - Cath Crowley

19. “i realize you cant just throw real gems at ppl...because they think cubic zirconia is the real thing lol” - Fee Scott

20. “What you can't comprehend within your thoughts will be impossible to make real within your world.” - Steven Redhead

21. “There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about.” - Jean Rhys

22. “Real women don't love the richest guy in the world they love the guy who can make their world the richest.” - Jazz Feylynn

23. “For several years, I had been bored. Not a whining, restless child's boredom (although I was not above that) but a dense, blanketing malaise. It seemed to me that there was nothing new to be discovered ever again. Our society was utterly, ruinously derivative (although the word derivative as a criticism is itself derivative). We were the first human beings who would never see anything for the first time. We stare at the wonders of the world, dull-eyed, underwhelmed. Mona Lisa, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building. Jungle animals on attack, ancient icebergs collapsing, volcanoes erupting. I can't recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn't immediately reference to a movie or TV show. A fucking commercial. You know the awful singsong of the blasé: Seeeen it. I've literally seen it all, and the worst thing, the thing that makes me want to blow my brains out, is: The secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can't anymore. I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script.It's a very difficult era in which to be a person, just a real, actual person, instead of a collection of personality traits selected from an endless Automat of characters. And if all of us are play-acting, there can be no such thing as a soul mate, because we don't have genuine souls.It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I'm not a real person and neither is anyone else.I would have done anything to feel real again.” - Gillian Flynn

24. “Lo superfluo no es eterno. Lo banal tiene un final. Lo material no tiene fundamento y no todo lo que parece verdad es real.” - Dulce María

25. “Because it's kind of great, being an idea that everybody likes. But I could never be the idea to myself, not all the way. And Agloe is a place where a paper creation became real. A dot on the map became a real place, more real than the people who created the dot could never have imagined. I thought maybe the paper cutout of a girl could start becoming real here also. And it seemed like a way to tell that paper girl who cared about popularity and clothes and everything else: 'You are going to the paper towns. And you are never coming back.” - John Green

26. “Real MEN don't need a woman covering for him because a Real MAN IS a woman's covering!” - Sanjo Jendayi

27. “Acting is illusion, as much illusion as magic is, and not so much a matter of being real.” - Laurence Olivier

28. “Sometimes I wanted to peel away all of my skin and find a different me underneath.” - Francesca Lia Block

29. “What you call life is but a dream, and reality is relative.” - Wayne Gerard Trotman

30. “Sometimes it's better to show our vulnerability / pain / regrets so others don't think us impervious / unapproachable - be real / open” - jay woodman

31. “La traición nunca prospera, cual será la razón? Que si prospera, nadie osa llamarla traición.” - John Harrington

32. “...when you're broken, everything gets a little honester - you make mistakes and don't give a damn - you give up on perfection, but get real...” - John Geddes A Familiar Rain

33. “My belief is that when you're telling the truth, you're close to God. If you say to God, "I am exhausted and depressed beyond words, and I don't like You at all right now, and I recoil from most people who believe in You," that might be the most honest thing you've ever said. If you told me you had said to God, "It is all hopeless, and I don't have a clue if You exist, but I could use a hand," it would almost bring tears to my eyes, tears of pride in you, for the courage it takes to get real-really real. It would make me want to sit next to you at the dinner table.So prayer is our sometimes real selves trying to communicate with the Real, with Truth, with the Light. It is us reaching out to be heard, hoping to be found by a light and warmth in the world, instead of darkness and cold. Even mushrooms respond to light - I suppose they blink their mushroomy eyes, like the rest of us.Light reveals us to ourselves, which is not always so great if you find yourself in a big disgusting mess, possibly of your own creation. But like sunflowers we turn toward light. Light warms, and in most cases it draws us to itself. And in this light, we can see beyond our modest receptors, to what is way beyond us, and deep inside.” - Anne Lamott

34. “It had gotten to the point where it seemed like nothing matters, because I’m not a real person and neither is anyone else.” - Gillian Flynn

35. “Without stories, we’d have even more trouble recognizing what’s real.” - Amy Neftzger

36. “We dream and fight with demons real and imagined.” - Dejan Stojanovic

37. “Don Quixote is not an imaginary person; he is as real as Alexander the Great.” - Dejan Stojanovic

38. “Real love is the shared loneliness".” - A. Tomov - junior

39. “The Tone is the Message.” - Kevin T. McCarney

40. “Find your truth and make your existence real as you choose it. Your creation is your own greatest gift. (Neings of Light via Joules)” - jay woodman

41. “It's okay to love something a little too much,as long as it's real to you.” - Gerard Way