Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

The fundamental mistake I had always made - and that she had, in fairness, always led me to make - was this: Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl.

America to me is so varied and exciting. I always feel nostalgia for the place I'm not in, and then I get there and find myself in a traffic jam going into the Lincoln Tunnel, and I think, 'God, why was I romanticizing this part of the country?' I think it has to do with the romantic, unrealistic temperament.

Sometimes we fall in love with the idea of a person and have trouble seeing the real thing.

Imagination which comes into play in falling in love is different from any other. Certainly in my case, and I've fallen in love all my life, one imagines the person to be as you want them to be. They frequently turn out to be someone different, for better or worse.

It will always be a fact that the woman is the person one idealizes, also the person who wishes his idealization.

I saw that everything famous and beautiful in the world, if we judge by the descriptions and drawings of writers and artists, always loses when we go to see it and examine it closely.

As long as we love, we lend to the beloved object qualities of mind and heart which we deprive him of when the day of misunderstanding arrives.

Nothing that you want ever is what you think it is.

I like to dream about Portugal, and it's less easy when you are there.

I used to be a hopeless romantic - I fell in love with everyone I went out with.

I'm not really a believer in romantic, happily-ever-after love stories.

Romantic love is an illusion. Most of us discover this truth at the end of a love affair or else when the sweet emotions of love lead us into marriage and then turn down their flames.

It was quite a blow to have my perfect image of my father shattered, but that's something we all face before we come to full adulthood.

I heard London is nice, so maybe it is. But I've only been to the armpit of England.

I think one of the saving illusions of the film business is everything seems like it's about to happen. It's always about to happen. It's only looking back that you see the wasteland.

When you're younger, love is this magic thing where the heavens open up. You live 40 years past that, you realize sometimes the heavens close down.

When you romanticize something so extraordinarily in the hopes that it will divert you from agony, you're destined for a letdown.

I always thought that the U.S. was just amazing, and it was just a dream. I thought it was Heaven. Coming here a couple years ago, you know, the U.S. is still nice, but it's not like what I thought it was going to be.

Guys are great before you know who they are,' said Lucy. 'They're great when you're still with who they might be.

Travel is only glamorous in retrospect.

It was better for me when I could imagine greatness in others, even if it wasn't always there.

Men are always doomed to be duped, not so much by the arts of the other as by their own imagination. They are always wooing goddesses, and marrying mere mortals.

You can be disappointed but only if you thought [Barack Obama] was something that he said he wasn't!

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.

You are never in love with anyone. You're only in love with your prejudiced and hopeful idea of that person.