Leo Tolstoy Quotes

When I turn the lights out, when I close my eyes, reality overcomes me, I'm living a lie.

Wishful thinking is one thing, and reality another.

It is only hope which is real, and reality is a bitterness and a deceit.

When I consider life, it is all a cheat. Yet fooled with hope, people favor this deceit.

Our experience is composed rather of illusions lost than of wisdom acquired.

The land of literature is a fairy land to those who view it at a distance, but, like all other landscapes, the charm fades on a nearer approach, and the thorns and briars become visible.

Hope is but the dream of those who wake.

Nothing pleases me more than when somebody who was awe-inspired to be working with me realizes I'm just another schmuck that they're bored of hanging out with on a set. I love that moment. I like it when that persistent illusion is smashed.

I don't think you should meet the people you most admire. I don't want reality to interfere with my image.

I've often stood silent at a party for hours listening to my movie idols turn into dull and little people.

We've always been a bit out of touch with reality.

Denial of death at some point becomes a delusion.

Things aren't always the fairy tale that you thought they were.

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.

Disillusion is the last illusion.

He reached for his pocket, and found there, only reality

What we gain by experience is not worth that we lose in illusion

In my youth I, too, entertained some illusions; but I soon recovered from them.

There is a flaw with words, they always force us to feel enlightened, but when we turn around to face the world they always fail us and we end up facing the world as we always have, without enlightenment

Drink promises you everything, but gives nothing.

But new love only lasts so long, and then you crash back into the real people you are, and from as high as we were, it's a very long fall, and we hit the ground with a thud.

There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion.

It had already occurred to him that books were stuff, and that life was stupid.

There is something truly restorative, finally comforting, in coming to the end of an illusion - a false hope.

Everything that happens is at least one dimension smaller than you've imagined it to be.