Disillusionment Quotes - Page 5

• The process of illusion & disillusionment is part of life and goes on endlessly.

  Nelson Mandela

  Life, Goes On, Illusion

  Nelson Mandela (2011). “Conversations With Myself”, p.43, Pan Macmillan

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• We remain in the Romantic cycle initiated by Rousseau: liberal idealism canceled by violence, barbarism, disillusionment and cynicism.

  Camille Paglia

  Violence, Cynicism, Barbarism

  Camille Paglia (1990). “Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson”, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• We live in a very special time right now. At no other time in history has there been such mass disillusionment in terms of reliance on governing functions. Most people don’t want to come to terms with that. It’s been proven over and over again that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes, but most people don’t like to look at naked emperors. In the process of turning around to avert their eyes, they saw the discotheques and a few other things and latched onto them.

  Frank Zappa

  Eye, Clothes, People

  Oui interview, 1979.

  35 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nagging questions remain: Where is the line between making the most of one's potential and reaching for the unattainable? Where is the line between education as a tool and education as a kind of magic? The line is blurred and that is why when education fails, disillusionment is so bitter.

  Henry Anatole Grunwald

  Education, Teaching, Failure

  6 Copy quote

• We spoke of ourselves as "emancipated" when we got the vote. Yet we are still slaves to the superficial and the superfluous. We are concerned with the length of our skirts, with the latest lipstick, with the newest thrill in hats. We are impressed by advertisements that insist we must be alluring; we must adopt a time-consuming coiffure, we must spend hours with the "beautician," we must attend fashion shows. As long as women are preoccupied with nonessentials we shall be afflicted with infantilism, passivity, and the eventual disillusionment that results from trivial, unproductive lives.

  Mary Barnett Gilson

  Fashion, Long, Thrill

  7 Copy quote

• Illusions are hazardous, and so are disillusions.

  Mason Cooley

  Illusion, Disillusion

  6 Copy quote

• Disillusionment is not truth.

  Mason Cooley

  Truth

  5 Copy quote

• Why did I desert Labour? Total bloody disillusionment. The party was a corpse. It had no ideology, it became detached, old, spineless and needed to go.

  John le Carre

  Party, Desert, Needed

  8 Copy quote

• No perfect solution is, not merely in practice, but in principle, possible in human affairs, and any determined attempt to produce it is likely to lead to suffering, disillusionment and failure.

  Isaiah Berlin

  Practice, Perfect, Suffering

  1978 The Crooked Timber of Humanity,'The Decline of Utopian Ideals in the West'.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Aid my disillusionment, my friend!

  Herman Melville

  Sad, Aids, My Friends

  16 Copy quote

• In middle age we are apt to reach the horrifying conclusion that all sorrow, all pain, all passionate regret and loss and bitter disillusionment are self-made

  Kathleen Norris

  Pain, Regret, Loss

  Kathleen Thompson Norris (1931). “Hands Full of Living: Talks with American Women”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Cynicism, disillusionment, and a dispiriting sense of purposeless has cast a shadow over American society seriously draining it of any language or vision that might imagine a different sort of society from the dysfunctional, militarizing, and deeply unequal social order that marked the current historical period.

  Henry Giroux

  Order, Historical, Vision

  "Higher Education Under Attack: An Interview With Henry A. Giroux". Interview with C. Cryn Johannsen, www.truth-out.org. April 22, 2011.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• something can only become an illusion after disillusionment. before that, it is something real. what caused the disillusionment? no one told me the print on the wall was just ink and paper and had no life of its own. at some point the cat stopped blinking, and i stopped thinking it could.

  Lynda Barry

  Wall, Real, Cat

  6 Copy quote

• He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment.

  Henry Miller

  Writing, Trying, Viruses

  Henry Miller (1964). “Henry Miller on Writing”, New Directions Publishing

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• This was the kiss I had waited for so long - a kiss born by the river of our childhood, when we didn't yet know what love meant. A kiss that had been suspended in the air as we grew, that had traveled in the world in the sovenier of a medal, and that had remained hidden behind piles of books. A kiss that had been lost and now was found. In the moment of that kiss were years of searching, disillusionment and impossible dreams.

  Paulo Coelho

  Dream, Book, Kissing

  8 Copy quote

• Belief in one's identity as a poet or writer prior to the acid test of publication is as naive and harmless as the youthful belief in one's immortality... and the inevitable disillusionment is just as painful.

  Dan Simmons

  Identity, Tests, Acid

  Dan Simmons (2014). “The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle: Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, The Rise of Endymion”, p.231, Spectra

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• And Grace calls out, 'You are not just a disillusioned old man who may die soon, a middle-aged woman stuck in a job and desperately wanting to get out, a young person feeling the fire in the belly begin to grow cold. You may be insecure, inadequate, mistaken or potbellied. Death, panic, depression, and disillusionment may be near you. But you are not just that. You are accepted.' Never confuse your perception of yourself with the mystery that you really are accepted.

  Brennan Manning

  Jobs, Insecure, Men

  Brennan Manning (2008). “The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out”, p.19, Multnomah

  49 Copy quote

  Show source

• Hope is essential to any political struggle for radical change when the overall social climate promotes disillusionment and despair.

  Bell Hooks

  Struggle, Political, Despair

  116 Copy quote

• Nicholas wanted to believe in fairy tales. She'd read her share, hoping for miracles, but in the end, there was no hundred acre wood to play in with her little stuffed animals. There was pain and crushing disillusionment and betrayal.

  Christine Feehan

  Crush, Pain, Betrayal

  4 Copy quote

• I was in misery, and misery is the state of every soul overcome by friendship with mortal things and lacerated when they are lost. Then the soul becomes aware of the misery which is its actual condition even before it loses them.

  Saint Augustine

  Soul, Overcoming, Misery

  Saint Augustine, Henry Chadwick (2008). “The Confessions”, p.58, Oxford Paperbacks

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Immersion in the scriptures is essential for spiritual nourishment. The word of God inspires commitment and acts as a healing balm for hurt feelings, anger, or disillusionment . When our commitment is diminished for any reason, part of the solution is repentance. Commitment and repentance are closely intertwined.

  Quentin L. Cook

  Spiritual, Hurt, Healing

  50 Copy quote

• To one who has led a virtuous life, to sin is the easiest thing in the world. No experience of unpleasant consequences grits that smooth sliding fall, no recollection of disillusionment blurs that pure desire.

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Fall, Desire, World

  Sylvia Townsend Warner (1988). “Selected stories of Sylvia Townsend Warner”, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Most loverspicture to themselves, in their mistresses, a secret reality, beyond and different from what they see every day. They are in love with somebody else--their own invention. And sometimes there is a secret reality; and sometimes reality and appearance are the same. The discovery, in either case, is likely to cause a shock.

  Aldous Huxley

  Love, Reality, Discovery

  5 Copy quote

• I have nothing but the embittered sun;
  Banished heroic mother moon and vanished,
  And now that I have come to fifty years
  I must endure the timid sun.

  William Butler Yeats

  Mother, Moon, Reality

  William Butler Yeats (1931). “Later Poems”, p.109, Library of Alexandria

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Maybe the bride-bed brings despair,
  For each an imagined image brings
  And finds a real image there...

  William Butler Yeats

  Marriage, Real, Despair

  William Butler Yeats (1931). “Later Poems”, p.132, Library of Alexandria

  7 Copy quote

  Show source