Alan Bennett Quotes

As I live and am a man, this is an unexaggerated tale - my dreams become the substances of my life.

Don't worry about the little factual details. Get to the heart of it.

... the ordinary is simply the universal observed from the surface, that the direct approach to reality is not without, but within. Touch life anywhereand you will touch universality wherever you touch the earth.

I think there are times when human beings open our psychic field: when they're in love, when they're with another person that they resonate with, when they're having a wonderful experience of any kind. We feel the essence of life in a different way that allows us to experience the presence of God as, I would call it, a functioning, physical reality and not just a mental construct or conceptualization.

That which we call substance and reality is shadow and illusion, and that which we call shadow and illusion is substance and reality.

It does not pay to cherish symbols when the substance lies so close at hand.

What is generally termed reality is, to be precise, a frothy nothing.

Coleridge wrote, "Dreams are no shadows, but the very substances and calamities of my life.

You think the shadow is the substance.

If all be a Dream, then he doth but dream that he makes the Question; and so it is not much matter that a waking Man should answer him.

Either there are no corporeal substances, and bodies are merely phenomena which are true or consistent with each other, such as a rainbow or a perfectly coherent dream, or there is in all corporeal substances something analogous to the soul.

I'm absolutely convinced that this is a world of appearances, not reality. There's one reality and that's Light and Love. When some say, we create our own reality, I always demur and say, "Please, would you mind adjusting that a little bit? We create our own appearances." We become master of appearances and as we change our thought, we will see the appearances around us change. That gives us this huge sense of dominion and power and control over our world.

You don't have to be a Christian to recognize that materialism does not match reality. Materialism is not true to universal human experience - what we all know about ourselves.

All names and forms are the garbs and covers under which the one life is hidden.

The basic truth of all things, as nearly as we may ever dream of determining and knowing this truth, is form, that which is, as it is. The way and shape of the thing no less than the thing itself.

We create our own reality because of our inner emotional - our subconscious - reality draws us into those situations from which we learn. We experience it as strange things happening to us (and) we meet the people in our lives that we need to learn from. And so we create these circumstances at a very deep metaphysical and subconscious level.

You create your thoughts, your thoughts create your intentions, and your intentions create your reality.

Time is the horizontal dimension of life, the surface layer of reality. Then there is the vertical dimension of depth, accessible only through the portal of the present moment.

And so artistic creation is the metamorphosis of the external physical aspects of a thing into a self-sustaining spiritual reality .

The only reality is the one we have inside us. What makes most people’s lives so artificial and unworthy is that they falsely regard outside images as reality and they never allow their own inner world to speak.

The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought and sold and bartered away.

Words are small shapes in the gorgeous chaos of the world.

Truth is a necessary phantom.

We live merely on the crust or rind of things.

True knowledge consists in knowing things, not words.