Perpetual modernness is the measure of merit, in every work of art; since the author of it was not misled by anything short- livedor local, but abode by real and abiding traits.
In our definitions, we grope after the spiritual by describing it as invisible. The true meaning of spiritual is real; that law which executes itself, which works without means, and which cannot be conceived as not existing.
To give money to a sufferer is only a come-off. It is only a postponement of the real payment, a bribe paid for silence, a creditsystem in which a paper promise to pay answers for the time instead of liquidation. We owe to man higher succors than food and fire. We owe to man.
Pretension may sit still, but cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of real greatness. Pretension never wrote an Iliad, nordrove back Xerxes, nor christianized the world, nor abolished slavery.
The cheapness of man is every day’s tragedy. It is as real a loss that others should be low, as that we should be low; for we musthave a society.
You will think me very pedantic, gentlemen, but holiday though it may be, I have not the smallest interest in any holiday, except as it celebrates real and not pretended joys.
Real men don’t conform to the beliefs of others, even when society has concluded on what is good and true, but maintain the integrity of their own mind.
Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today. Let us treat men and women well; treat them as if they were real; perhaps they are.
There is no privacy that cannot be penetrated. No secret can be kept in the civilized world. Society is a masked ball where everyone hides his real character, then reveals it by hiding.
The finest and noblest ground on which people can live is truth; the real with the real; a ground on which nothing is assumed.
Every man passes his life in the search after friendship.
Delicious is a just and firm encounter of two in a thought, in a feeling.
Senators and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough, not because they think the place specially agreeable, but as an apology for real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in our eyes. This conspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being of a poor, cold, hard nature.
Real happiness lies in that which never comes nor goes, but simply is.
We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?
A reason I became a writer was to escape the hopelessness and despair of the real world and enter the world of hope I could create with my imagination.
The real fear isn’t rejection, but that there won’t be enough time in your life to write all the stories that you have in you.
I don’t write science fiction. I’ve only done one science fiction book and that’s Fahrenheit 451, based on reality. Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal.
How long has it been since you wrote a story where your real love or your real hatred somehow got onto the paper? When was the last time you dared release a cherished prejudice so it slammed the page like a lightning bolt?
All of the good, weird stories I’ve written are based on things I’ve dredged out of my subconscious. That’s the real stuff. Everything else is fake.