85 Reality Quotes To Ponder

In a world increasingly shaped by digital interactions and virtual experiences, the concept of reality can often feel elusive. It's no wonder that so many thinkers, writers, and artists have grappled with the essence of what's real. Our carefully selected compilation of the top 85 reality quotes invites you to pause and reflect on the nature of your existence and the fabric of your everyday life. These powerful insights aim to challenge your perceptions, spark thoughtful conversations, and offer deeper understanding in a fast-paced, ever-evolving world. Join us as we dive into these profound musings and explore the many dimensions of reality that influence our lives.

1. “It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.” - Philip K. Dick

2. “When the voice of your friend or the page of your book sinks into democratic equality with the pattern of the wallpaper, the feel of your clothes, your memory of last night, and the noises from the road, you are falling asleep. The highly selective consciousness enjoyed by fully alert men, with all its builded sentiments and consecrated ideals, has as much to be called real as the drowsy chaos, and more.” - C.S. Lewis

3. “The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.” - Rachel Carson

4. “I wished the dream were real, and this reality a dream. But that wasn't the case. And that was why, whenever I woke up, I'd be crying. It wasn't because I was sad. When you return from a happy dream to sad reality, there's a chasm you have to step across, and you can't cross it without shedding tears. It doesn't matter how many times you do it.” - kyoichi katayama

5. “He thought that the rose was to be found in its own eternity and not in his words; and that we may mention or allude to a thing, but not express it.” - Jorge Luis Borges

6. “[novan]: bassists are very good with their fingers[novan]: and some of us sing backup vocals, so that means we're good with our mouths too...(~ IM chat with Novan Chang, 18, bassist)” - Jess C. Scott

7. “Memory warps time, as it does the sights and sounds and smells of reality; for what shapes it is emotion, which can twist what seems clear, just as the surface of a pond seems to bend the stick thrust into the water.” - Sherwood Smith

8. “The thing about real life is, when you do something stupid, it normally costs you. In books the heroes can make as many mistakes as they like. It doesn't matter what they do, because everything works out in the end. They'll beat the bad guys and put things right and everything ends up cool.In real life, vacuum cleaners kill spiders. If you cross a busy road without looking, you get whacked by a car. If you fall from a tree, you break some bones. Real life's nasty. It's cruel. It doesn't care about heroes and happy endings and the way things should be. In real life, bad things happen. People die. Fights are lost. Evil often wins. I just wanted to make that clear before I begun.” - Darren Shan

9. “Last night I wept. I wept because the process by which I have become woman was painful. I wept because I was no longer a child with a child's blind faith. I wept because my eyes were opened to reality....I wept because I could not believe anymore and I love to believe. I can still love passionately without believing. That means I love humanly. I wept because I have lost my pain and I am not yet accustomed to its absence.” - Anais Nin

10. “Everything you invent is true: you can be sure of that. Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry.” - Julian Barnes

11. “Even if you fulfill your hearts desire, by sacrificing something important, you may not necessarily be happy. Happiness doesn’t come in one form, it determined by your own heart.” - Ai Yazawa

12. “I considered the case and realized that if something can exist in opinion without existing in reality, or exist in reality without existing in opinion, the conclusion is that of the two parallel lives, only opinion is necessary – not reality, which is only a secondary consideration.” - Machado de Assis

13. “Basically all the religions,sciences and powers of the world boil down to a simple truth. The Best Story Teller will win in the end!” - Stanley Victor Paskavich

14. “We're all pieces of the same ever-changing puzzle;some connected for mere seconds, some connected for life,some connected through knowledge, some through belief,some connected through wisdom, some through Love, and some connected with no explanation at all. Yet, as spiritual beings having a human experience, we're all here for the sensations this reality or illusion has to offer. The best anyone can hope for is the right to be able to Live, Learn, Love then Leave. After that, reap the benefits of their own chosen existence in the hereafter by virtue of simply believing in what they believe. As for here, it took me a while but this progression helped me with my life: "I like myself. I Love myself. I am myself.” - Stanley Victor Paskavich

15. “It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.” - Virginia Woolf

16. “The light of memory, or rather the light that memory lends to things, is the palest light of all. I am not quite sure whether I am dreaming or remembering, whether I have lived my life or dreamed it. Just as dreams do, memory makes me profoundly aware of the unreality, the evanescence of the world, a fleeting image in the moving water.” - Eugene Ionesco

17. “Dreams are manifestation of the reality.” - Santosh Kalwar

18. “Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you've lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that's good.” - Elizabeth Edwards

19. “Farewells can be shattering, but returns are surely worse. Solid flesh can never live up to the bright shadow cast by its absence. Time and distance blur the edges; then suddenly the beloved has arrived, and it's noon with its merciless light, and every spot and pore and wrinkle and bristle stands clear.” - Margaret Atwood

20. “The world is 3 days: As for yesterday, it has vanished along with all that was in it. As for tomorrow, you may never see it. As for today, it is yours, so work on it.” - Hasan Al-Basri

21. “If we knew everything would change we would have turned back but we didn't know. Thats how things happen. Especially sunny days hide dark moments in their pockets.” - Karen Foxlee

22. “beauty’ is related not to ‘loveliness’ but to a state in which reality plays a part.” - William Carlos Williams

23. “[...] I grew up out of that strange, dreamy childhood of mine and went into the world of reality. I met with experiences that bruised my spirit - but they never harmed my ideal world. That was always mine to retreat into at will. I learned that that world and the real world clashed hopelessly and irreconcilably; and I learned to keep them apart so that the former might remain for me unspoiled. I learned to meet other people on their own ground since there seemed to be no meeting place on mine. I learned to hide the thoughts and dreams and fancies that had no place in the strife and clash of the market place. I found that it was useless to look for kindred souls in the multitude; one might stumble on such here and there, but as a rule it seemed to me that the majority of people lived for the things of time and sense alone and could not understand my other life. So I piped and danced to other people's piping - and held fast to my own soul as best I could.” - L.M. Montgomery

24. “Life has to go on...............” - Ruby

25. “Its like reproaching someone who has no ear for music because he's bored at a symphony concert. Is it fair to blame me because you ascribed to me qualities that I hadn't got? I never tried to deceive you by pretending I was anything I wasn't. I was just pretty and gay. You don't ask for a pearl necklace or a sable coat at a booth in a fair; you ask for a tin trumpet and a toy balloon.” - W. Somerset Maugham

26. “Real things in the darkness seem no realer than dreams.” - Murasaki Shikibu

27. “I REMEMBER WHEN ALL THIS WILL BE AGAIN.” - Terry Pratchett

28. “Maybe you could be mine / or maybe we’ll be entwined / aimless in this sexless foreplay.” - Jess C. Scott

29. “It is ourselves we encounter whenever we invent fictions.” - Frank Kermode

30. “There are going to be times when you learn more about the world you’re entering and feel defeated when you see the gap between the ideal and the reality… But that’s something we’ll all face. The people that face those obstacles and overcome them are people whose dreams come true.” - Tsugumi Ohba

31. “Only happy people have nightmares, from overeating. For those who live a nightmare reality, sleep is a black hole, lost in time, like death.” - Guy Sajer

32. “What I am in search of is not so much the gratification of a curiosity or a passion for worldly life, but something far less conditional. I do not wish to go out into the world with an insurance policy in my pocket guaranteeing my return in the event of a disappointment, like some cautious traveller who would be content with a brief glimpse of the world. On the contrary, I desire that there should be hazards, difficulties and dangers to face; I am hungry for reality, for tasks and deeds, and also for privation and suffering.” - Hermann Hesse

33. “Reality is infinitely diverse, compared with even the subtlest conclusions of abstract thought, and does not allow of clear-cut and sweeping distinctions. Reality resists classification.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

34. “إن جرائد الصباح تثير أعصابى...هذا صحيح.و لكن لا مانع عندى أن تثور كل يوم.إنها جهزت و أعدت لهذا الغرض وحده,لأن تتوتر,و تثور,و تتحفز,و تتوثب..تنتبه.” - مصطفى محمود

35. “But I still feel like I lost.We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It's easy. The first girl I ever loved was someone I knew in the sixth grade. Her name was Missy; we talked about horses. The last girl I love will be someone I haven't even met yet. probably. They all count. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and you'll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But there's still one more tier to all this; there is always one person you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it always happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of those lovable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. You will remember having conversations with this person that never actually happened. You will recall sexual trysts with this person that never technically occurred. This is because the individual who embodies your personal definition of love does not really exist. The person is real, and the feelings are real-but you create the context. And context is everything. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they're often just the person you happen to meet first time you really, really want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else.” - Chuck Klosterman

36. “We open our eyes and we think we're seeing the whole world out there. But what has become clear—and really just in the last few centuries—is that when you look at the electro-magnetic spectrum we are seeing less than 1/10 Billionth of the information that's riding on there. So we call that visible light. But everything else passing through our bodies is completely invisible to us.Even though we accept the reality that's presented to us, we're really only seeing a little window of what's happening.” - David Eagleman

37. “All individuals have moral deficiencies, and when introducing these to reality one not only strengthens himself but also the confidence of others in the human exigency for Christ due to a reflection throughout the body of Christ.” - Criss Jami

38. “Hope and reality lie in inverse proportions.” - Jodi Picoult

39. “Upset by two nostalgias facing each other like two mirrors, he lost his marvelous sense of unreality and he ended up recommending to all of them that they leave Macondo, that they forget everything he had taught them about the world and the human heart, that they shit on Horace, and that wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

40. “In my terms, I settled for the realities of life, and submitted to its necessities: if this, then that, and so the years passed. In Adrian's terms, I gave up on life, gave up on examining it, took it as it came. And so, for the first time, I began to feel a more general remorse - a feeling somewhere between self-pity and self-hatred - about my whole life. All of it. I had lost the friends of my youth. I had lost the love of my wife. I had abandoned the ambitions I had entertained. I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded - and how pitiful that was.” - Julian Barnes

41. “Adults...struggle desperately with fiction, demanding constantly that it conform to the rules of everyday life. Adults foolishly demand to know how Superman can possibly fly, or how Batman can possibly run a multibillion-dollar business empire during the day and fight crime at night, when the answer is obvious even to the smallest child: because it's not real.” - Grant Morrison

42. “Fiction is written with reality and reality is written with fiction. We can write fiction because there is reality and we can write reality because there is fiction; everything we consider today to be myth and legend, our ancestors believed to be history and everything in our history includes myths and legends. Before the splendid modern-day mind was formed our cultures and civilizations were conceived in the wombs of, and born of, what we identify today as "fiction, unreality, myth, legend, fantasy, folklore, imaginations, fabrications and tall tales." And in our suddenly realized glory of all our modern-day "advancements" we somehow fail to ask ourselves the question "Who designated myths and legends as unreality? " But I ask myself this question because who decided that he was spectacular enough to stand up and say to our ancestors "You were all stupid and disillusioned and imagining things" and then why did we all decide to believe this person? There are many realities not just one. There is a truth that goes far beyond what we are told today to believe in. And we find that truth when we are brave enough to break away from what keeps everybody else feeling comfortable. Your reality is what you believe in. And nobody should be able to tell you to believe otherwise.” - C. JoyBell C.

43. “The liturgy of the Eucharist is best understood as a journey or procession. It is the journey of the Church into the dimension of the Kingdom. We use the word 'dimension' because it seems the best way to indicate the manner of our sacramental entrance into the risen life of Christ. Color transparencies 'come alive' when viewed in three dimensions instead of two. The presence of the added dimension allows us to see much better the actual reality of what has been photographed. In very much the same way, though of course any analogy is condemned to fail, our entrance into the presence of Christ is an entrance into a fourth dimension which allows us to see the ultimate reality of life. It is not an escape from the world, rather it is the arrival at a vantage point from which we can see more deeply into the reality of the world.” - Alexander Schmemann

44. “All we know is what we're told.” - Ashly Lorenzana

45. “what is love? love is you!” - Sonia Dea Octalia

46. “Faith is the poetry of our dreams; action is the builder of our reality.” - Steve Maraboli

47. “[R]eality and real people are too subtle and complicated for anybody's typewriter, even Tolstoy's, even yours, even mine.” - Edward Abbey

48. “But what a feeling can come over a man just from seeing the things he believes in and hopes for symbolized in the concrete form of a man. In something that gives a focus to all the other things he knows to be real. Something that makes unseen things manifest and allows him to come to his hopes and dreams through his outer eye and through the touch and feel of his natural hand.” - Ralph Ellison

49. “What I aim to do is not so much learn the names of the shreds of creation that flourish in this valley, but to keep myself open to their meanings, which is to try to impress myself at all times with the fullest possible force of their very reality. I want to have things as multiply and intricately as possible present and visible in my mind. Then I might be able to sit on the hill by the burnt books where the starlings fly over, and see not only the starlings, the grass field, the quarried rock, the viney woods, Hollins pond, and the mountains beyond, but also, and simultaneously, feathers’ barbs, springtails in the soil, crystal in rock, chloroplasts streaming, rotifers pulsing, and the shape of the air in the pines. And, if I try to keep my eye on quantum physics, if I try to keep up with astronomy and cosmology, and really believe it all, I might ultimately be able to make out the landscape of the universe. Why not?” - Annie Dillard

50. “Take the word for it of a man who has made his way inch by inch, and does not believe that we'll wake up to find our work done because we've lain all night a-dreaming of it; anything worth doing is devilish hard to do!” - Henry James

51. “Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.” - John Gardner

52. “Everyone knew that if you divided reality by expectation, you got a happiness quotient. But when you invert the equation - expectation divided by reality - you didn't get the opposite of happiness. What you got, Lewis realized, was hope.” - Jodi Picoult

53. “Notice, when looking at quotes of each person - you'll never agree with every single quote of anybody's. We all have a different view of reality, of what is meaningful. This is why we can never argue, or there would be no man left alive - we have to agree to disagree, and just get on with it maybe laugh a little too. It's wonderful really - delightful - the infinte variety of wisdom and beauty! Let's accept it gladly” - jay woodman

54. “As though sensing her heightening alarm, Pinfeathers halted his advance."I can’t help it that I’m susceptible to you," he whispered. "You know that. It’s just that you’re so...unreal...and so I have to touch you. If only to be certain that I’m not the one who’s dreaming. You see, I hear that sort of thing is going around.” - Kelly Creagh

55. “We should tackle reality in a slightly jokey way, otherwise we miss its point.” - Lawrence Durrell

56. “το πιθανό είναι πιο αληθινό απ' την πραγματικότητα” - Κοσμάς Πολίτης

57. “I'll tell you what's real. Real is that I was in jail for the past year, rooming with drug dealers and eating crap food your dog wouldn't touch. Real is not being able to wear your own frickin' underwear and showering with twenty-five other dicks every day while guards watch. Real is my next-door neighbor who walks like she's balancing on stilts because her leg is so fucked up from the accident. Brian, your perception of reality is totally off.” - Simone Elkeles

58. “Sometimes I scare myself at how easily I slip inside my mind and live vicariously through these characters.” - Teresa Mummert

59. “If you're waiting for me to declare my undying love for you, I can't do that yet, blood-bond or no blood-bond. If you think I'm the swoony type of heroine you find in romance novels, who'll fall into your arms just because you saved me from an alternate reality or whatever, get ready to leave empty handed, because I don't want to be caught.” - Dianna Hardy

60. “What's the point of obsessing over cholesterol or bike helmets or even cigarettes when the biggest threats to our children are being released back into society every day? Yes, maybe 'some' of them have reformed, but what about the ones who haven't? Doesn't anyone realize that one 'touch', one 'time' will destroy a child's life ten times faster than a pack-a-day habit?” - Laura Wiess

61. “Does your reality match your expectations? If not it's time to change either your expectations or your reality.” - Steven Redhead

62. “I think it simply comes down to fantasy being the language I speak. While I cannot get into epic sword and sorcery, I see the world as having the potential to be slightly off-kilter. I have run into people who do not quite seem human – though of course they are – and have been privy to coincidences that almost make me believe in magic. Fantasy is sometimes just asking yourself, “Well, what if you are wrong? What if the world doesn’t work the way you think? What would that mean?” - Thomm Quackenbush

63. “Whatever is a reality today, whatever you touch and believe in and that seems real for you today, is going to be, like the reality of yesterday, an illusion tomorrow.” - Luigi Pirandello

64. “Fantasies are absolutely safe, as long as you never try to make them a reality.” - Jane Green

65. “Two ideas are opposed — not concepts or abstractions, but Ideas which were in the blood of men before they were formulated by the minds of men. The Resurgence of Authority stands opposed to the Rule of Money; Order to Social Chaos, Hierarchy to Equality, socio-economico-political Stability to constant Flux; glad assumption of Duties to whining for Rights; Socialism to Capitalism, ethically, economically, politically; the Rebirth of Religion to Materialism; Fertility to Sterility; the spirit of Heroism to the spirit of Trade; the principle of Responsibility to Parliamentarism; the idea of Polarity of Man and Woman to Feminism; the idea of the individual task to the ideal of ‘happiness’; Discipline to Propaganda-compulsion; the higher unities of family, society, State to social atomism; Marriage to the Communistic ideal of free love; economic self-sufficiency to senseless trade as an end in itself; the inner imperative to Rationalism.” - Francis Parker Yockey

66. “Physical reality is one of the biggest horror movies of all, and you know how we love horror movies.” - Thaddeus Golas

67. “The revelation that there was nothing "special" about humanity didn't shock her. Not specifically. She'd always been cynical about that sort of thing. The idea that reality was all too big to even quantify in any meaningful way didn't disturb her much either. Except, deep down, she'd assumed there was some inherent logic at work. Like ricocheting molecules congealing into planets and stars, dogs and cats. At least the made sense, even if it wasn't very comforting. At least it put things in neat little boxes with neat little labels that she didn't always understand but could rely on in terms of familiarity.” - A. Lee Martinez

68. “I've always been puzzled, and am still at this moment in a state of confusion, between the imaginative world and the real world. It is perfectly true to say that I have at some times in my life found that the imaginative world had pushed the real world right out of the way, and was literally more real.” - William Golding

69. “We are an oasis in the desert, beautiful but doomed!” - Clifford lafrenier

70. “I’ve read about this in books, imagined it in my mind countless times since I’ve been here, but to actually witness it is something entirely different. I thought I was prepared, but nothing—no amount of book learning or supposed life experience or bravado—can make you invulnerable to the sight of a vampire drinking blood.” - Melika Dannese Lux

71. “I'm fighting a long term disease it's called Death and I will have it until I take my last breath” - Stanley Victor Paskavich

72. “Dreams can twist your emotions like no reality can.” - Neal Shusterman

73. “The epitome of culture is the search for truth, or at least a reasonable approximation of reality, most notably the need to know ourselves and the world around us.” - Eric Chaisson

74. “But when reality was hopeless, fantasy became more and more necessary.” - Michael Grant

75. “Biology includes the study of the human death which began when you took your first breath” - Stanley Victor Paskavich

76. “When you view your world exclusively through the lens of science, your prescription will never be strong enough.” - Jay Nichols

77. “Más realidades hay en la experiencia que en la mejor de las teorías.” - Fernando Araya

78. “God made the world like a knife. We have the choice to take it by the handle or the blade.” - C.J. Langenhoven

79. “…If one who slays one is a murderer then he who slays a thousand is not a hero,' said Lalu.” - Mulk Raj Anand

80. “We must set aside our wishes and give heed to reality. Nobody can accept the truth while hiding from it. When a decision matters, we have to stare at the truth unflinchingly. Only then can we find peace in our choices.” - Brandon Mull

81. “Reality Sucks, I want my dreams back.” - Sandra Chami Kassis

82. “I wish I could do whatever I liked behind the curtain of “madness”. Then: I’d arrange flowers, all day long, I’d paint; pain, love and tenderness, I would laugh as much as I feel like at the stupidity of others, and they would all say: “Poor thing, she’s crazy!” (Above all I would laugh at my own stupidity.) I would build my world which while I lived, would be in agreement with all the worlds. The day, or the hour, or the minute that I lived would be mine and everyone else’s - my madness would not be an escape from “reality”.” - Frida Kahlo

83. “Kropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration of war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena the ministers and generals of the two countries, dressed in bathing-drawers and armed with clubs, can have it out on themselves. Whoever survives the country wins. That would be much simpler and more than just this arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting” - Enrich Maria Remarque

84. “We live in an incredibly dynamic universe that gives us what we wish for, like a waking dream” - Cynthia Sue Larson

85. “There's nowhere else to escape to ... Except in a wooden box, that is.” - H.M. Forester