James Salter Quotes

Littera scripta manet - 'The written word will remain'. That's true, but it won't be that much comfort to me.

I don't want to be something that just comes and goes.

The world, life and human beings are only an illusion, a phantom, a dream image.

Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear-the earth remains, slightly modified. The earth remains, and the heartbreaking beauty where there are no hearts to break....I sometimes choose to think, no doubt perversely, that man is a dream, thought an illusion, and only rock is real. Rock and sun.

Nothing that was real ever died, only names, forms, and illusions.

It's hard to tell that the world we live in is either a reality or a dream.

What a horror it would have been if the world was real, because if the world was real, it would be immortal.

I feel like I've dreamed half of my life that hasn't happened yet, so a lot of times I'm going along, and I do stuff, and I know that I've done it. I have deja vus more than I have regular experiences. If half of your day is a deja vu, then you start to wonder, 'What is real and what isn't?'

What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough; for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.

For all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.

Things written, remain.

Everything is only a dream.

Life and death are nothing but the mind. Years, months, days, and hours are nothing but the mind. Dreams, illusions, and mirages are nothing but the mind. The bubbles of water and the flames of fire are nothing but the mind. The flowers of the spring and the moon of the autumn are nothing but the mind. Confusions and dangers are nothing but the mind.

Your harshest truths are dreams, and your gentlest dreams are true.

Life is a stream On which we strew Petal by petal the flower of our heart; The end lost in dream, They float past our view, We only watch their glad, early start. Freighted with hope, Crimsoned with joy, We scatter the leaves of our opening rose; Their widening scope, Their distant employ, We never shall know. And the stream as it flows Sweeps them away, Each one is gone Ever beyond into infinite ways. We alone stay While years hurry on, The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.

Our treasures trifles seem, and all our life is dreaming, and the dreams themselves are dreams.

Life, what is it but a dream?

Everything is substance plus name and form. Name and form come and go, but substance remains ever the same.

These are but dreaming men. Breathe, and they fade.

Life is but a dream, a grotesque and foolish dream.

The whole series of my life appeared to me as a dream; I sometimes doubted if indeed it were all true, for it never presented itself to my mind with the force of reality.

It's not realistic to imagine that any poem will last forever. Our species won't last forever! We try to capture and preserve our impressions of reality because it's all going away: everything we think and remember, everything we've ever felt, everyone we love.

You are not wrong who deem That my days have been a dream; Yet if hope has flown away In a night, or in a day, In a vision, or in none, Is it therefore the less gone? All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.

Is all our Life, then but a dream Seen faintly in the golden gleam Athwart Time's dark resistless stream?