Joseph Roux Quotes

Experience comprises illusions lost, rather than wisdom gained.

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

What is experience? A poor little hut constructed from the ruins of the palace of gold and marble called our illusions.

An illusion dissipated is an experience gained.

The only people who become disillusioned are people who have illusions.

That's the trouble with stories. People start out fantastic. You think they're extraordinary, but it turns out as the work goes along, they're just average with a good education.

Great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.

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.

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

Back when I was an idealistic 18-year-old on my way to Chicago, I might have believed that being on the side of virtue would guarantee a good outcome. These many years later, I know better.

Illusions are bound to be shattered

How many persons fancy they have experience simply because they have grown old!

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.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

I think the 20s are a vastly overrated decade. We promise kids that once they get out of school, life will begin and their dreams will come true. But then comes the struggle.

Experience is what really happens to you in the long run; the truth that finally overtakes you.

Wishful thinking is one thing, and reality another.

When you're in your 20s, your 30s, even, you have - at least, I had - vast ambitions, and you sit around mooning about these things, and you're depressed, because you haven't done them. And it takes you a long time to come to the realization that if you can't be John Updike, well, then, you can't.

I had amazing stuff happen right off the top. I thought this was how it worked. Hollywood is awesome! Cut to three years later: What happened?

There are some famous people, and I've met them, who you might think are great, and then you meet them, and you discover that they not only have feet but heads of clay.

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

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

To fulfil a fantasy is the quickest way to destroy it.

People have the illusion that all over the world, all the time, all kinds of fantastic things are happening. When in fact, over most of the world, most of the time, nothing is happening.

Reality is the name we give to our disappointments.