Realism Quotes - Page 14

• The physical world is meaningless tonight
  And there is no other.

  Wallace Stevens

  Reality, Tonight, World

  Wallace Stevens (1997). “Collected Poetry and Prose”

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• Of what is real I say,
  Is it the old, the roseate parent or
  The bride come jingling, kissed and cupped, or else
  The spirit and all ensigns of the self?

  Wallace Stevens

  Real, Self, Parent

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p.308, Vintage

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• What is a novel? I say: an invented story. At the same time a story which, though invented has the power to ring true. True to what? True to life as the reader knows life to be or, it may be, feels life to be. And I mean the adult, the grown-up reader. Such a reader has outgrown fairy tales, and we do not want the fantastic and the impossible. So I say to you that a novel must stand up to the adult tests of reality.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Truth, Mean, Reality

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• Sometimes the only way to become grounded is to hit bottom.

  Mason Cooley

  Reality, Way, Sometimes

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• Realism: the wealth of detail guarantees the truth of the tale.

  Mason Cooley

  Reality, Details, Guarantees

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• The real reality is always just around the corner.

  Mason Cooley

  Real, Corners, Around The Corner

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• Realism absorbs the ideal by adding a few small imperfections. Example: it paints a few specks of mud on the white gown of the Lady in the Garden.

  Mason Cooley

  Reality, Garden, White

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• The facts, even the real ones, must be imagined before they can be stated.

  Mason Cooley

  Real, Facts, Reality

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• Placing the extraordinary at the center of the ordinary, as realism does, is a great comfort to us stay-at-homes.

  Mason Cooley

  Home, Reality, Comfort

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• The absolute has moved into the fortress of the absurd.

  Mason Cooley

  Reality, Absurd, Fortresses

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• In even the happiest love story, the World wins at last.

  Mason Cooley

  Winning, Reality, Stories

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• If we dreamed the same thing every night, it would affect us much as the objects we see every day. And if a common workman were sure to dream every night for twelve hours that he was a king, I believe he would be almost as happy as a king who should dream every night for twelve hours on end that he was a common workman.

  Blaise Pascal

  Dream, Kings, Believe

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• The question of "unreality"is a very important one. Misled by grammar, the great majority of those logicians who have dealt with this question have dealt with it on mistaken lines. They have regarded grammatical form as a surer guide in analysis than, in fact, it is. And they have not known what differences in grammatical form are important.

  Bertrand Russell

  Reality, Differences, Important

  Bertrand Russell (1993). “Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy”, p.168, Courier Corporation

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• ... there is no point in being realistic about here and now, no use at all not any, and so it is not the nineteenth but the twentieth century, there is no realism now, life is not real it is not earnest, it is strange which is an entirely different matter.

  Gertrude Stein

  Real, Different, Use

  Gertrude Stein (2013). “Wars I Have Seen”, p.52, Random House

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• ... the ordinary is simply the universal observed from the surface, that the direct approach to reality is not without, but within. Touch life anywhereand you will touch universality wherever you touch the earth.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Life, Reality, Earth

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• I had the idea that there were two worlds. There was a real world as I called it, a world of wars and boxing clubs and children'shomes on back streets, and this real world was a world where orphans burned orphans.... I liked the other world in which almost everyone lived. The imaginary world.

  Norman Mailer

  Children, Real, War

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• All that is active, all that is enveloped in time and space, is endowed with what might be described as an abstract, ideal and absolute impermeability.

  Samuel Beckett

  Reality, Space, Might

  Samuel Beckett (1970). “The collected works of Samuel Beckett”

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• Watt's concern, deep as it appeared, was not after all what the figure was, in reality, but with what the figure appeared to be, in reality.

  Samuel Beckett

  Reality, Figures, Concern

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• All the followers of science are fully persuaded that the processes of investigation, if only pushed far enough, will give one certain solution to each question to which they can be applied.... This great law is embodied in the conception of truth and reality. The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Truth, Real, Mean

  Charles Sanders Peirce, Morris Raphael Cohen, John Dewey (1968). “Chance, love, and logic philosophical essays”, p.306, Charles Sander Peirce

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• The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. That is the way I would explain reality.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Real, Mean, Fate

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1991). “Peirce on Signs: Writings on Semiotic”, p.177, UNC Press Books

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• Over against any cognition, there is an unknown but knowable reality; but over against all possible cognition, there is only the self-contradictory. In short, cognizability (in its widest sense) and being are not merely metaphysically the same, but are synonymous terms.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Reality, Self, Cognition

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1991). “Peirce on Signs: Writings on Semiotic”, p.50, UNC Press Books

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• The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Real, Independent, Community

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1958). “Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance)”, p.69, Courier Corporation

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• All seemingly profound thinking which passes for realism, because it conveniently does away with all troublesome principles, has agreat attraction for the adolescent mind.

  Johan Huizinga

  Faith, Thinking, Profound

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• Every work of art depicts an aspect of reality.

  Friedrich Durrenmatt

  Art, Work, Reality

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• No poetic phantasy
  but a biological reality,
  a fact: I am an entity
  like bird, insect, plant
  or sea-plant cell;
  I live; I am alive.

  Hilda Doolittle

  Life, Reality, Cells

  Hilda Doolittle (1988). “Selected Poems”, p.172, New Directions Publishing

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