Disillusion Quotes

“Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.”
― Toni Morrison

“No one gives up on something until it turns on them, whether or not that thing is real or unreal.”
― Thomas Ligotti, Teatro Grottesco

“(On getting married at 19)
We told ourselves we had forever and we never looked back. The problem was that we never really looked ahead.”
― Crystal Woods, Write like no one is reading

“I think about it quite a bit, actually, that look on his face. I think about a lot of things. I think about the first time I ever saw a birch tree; about the last time I saw Julian; about the first sentence that I ever learned in Greak. χαλεπὰ τὰ καλά... Beauty is harsh...”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“LAST WORD

You made me laugh,
And I forgot all the tears.
You helped me up,
And I forgot the times
You let me down.
You were hatred,
Just as surely as
You were love.
You were everything right
And everything wrong—
Humility and
Defiance,
Cruelty
And kindness,
Approval and
Contempt.
You were everything
And nothing.
I had to let you go,
And it freed me.
Still, I’m sad,
For I know
Who you might have been.
I know you so well…
But you do not know me.”
― Kyrian Lyndon, Remnants of Severed Chains

“I think about it quite a bit, actually, that look on his face. I think about a lot of things. I think about the first time I ever saw a birch tree; about the last time I saw Julian; about the first sentence that I ever learned in Greak. χαλεπὰ τὰ καλά. Beauty is harsh.


― Donna Tartt, The Secret History”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

“There is only one sure means in life," Deasey said, "of ensuring that you are not ground into paste by disappointment, futility, and disillusion. And that is always to ensure, to the utmost of your ability, that you are doing it solely for the money.”
― Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

“I was no longer capable of either enthusiasm or fear. Once an ecstatic idealist […], I had now passed - like the rest of my contemporaries who had survived thus far - into a permanent state of numb disillusion.

Whatever part of my brief adulthood I chose to look back upon — the restless pre-War months at home, the naïve activities of a college student, the tutelage to horror and death as a V.A.D. nurse, the ever-deepening night of fear and suspense and agony in a provincial town, in a university city, in London, in the Mediterranean, in France — it all seemed to have meant one thing, and one thing only, ‘a striving, and a striving, and an ending in nothing.’

Now there were no more disasters to dread and no friends left to wait for; with the ending of apprehension had come a deep, nullifying blankness, a sense of walking in a thick mist which hid all sights and muffled all sounds. I had no further experience to gain from the War; nothing remained except to endure it.”
― Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth

“Personal disillusionment accompanied by self-pity and self-loathing are the Achilles’ heel of modern humankind, representing the weakness of the human spirit.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Disillusion in an ache that eats into the dreams of goodness, of love, of any value that matters - even to the very belief in life.”
― Anne Perry

“There is endless happiness in this world, but provided one knows the science behind it! ‘Science’ can give happiness. You have become disillusioned; the wrong belief has set in and that is why you are unhappy. When the wrong belief leaves and the ‘right belief’ sets in, there is nothing but happiness.”
― Dada Bhagwan

“We must adjust our emotive outlook before drowning in bitterness and choking on despair. We must periodically weed out pangs of disenchantment and scour disillusionment from our hearts in order to console and replenish the depleted resolve of our spirit. Finding ourselves crippled by physical injury, weakened by illness, or left stranded in a vulnerable emotional condition brought on by grief, disappointment, and other physiological or psychological crisis, we must each examine our values and update our mythological mental maps in order to generate a source of stirred concentrate steeling a rejuvenated march onward. Perhaps our sources of revitalizing energy will stem from gaining a new perspective on ancient challenges, by establishing new hopes and dreams, or by delving a lofty purpose behind our efforts. Alternatively, perhaps we only develop the resolve to resume our scrupulous assault on the important issues of life by orchestrating a fundamental transformation of the self, a complete restructuring of our values and goals.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“To a friend, in an unguarded moment, he [Maxim Gorky, 1932] declared his ambition: simply to portray the world and man as they were, without the myth of love, ‘repudiating noting, praising nothing’; repudiation was unjust, while praise was premature—‘for we live in chaos and ourselves are fragments of chaos.’ He compared his desire with Einstein, ‘trying to alter radically our representation of the universe.”
― Dan Levin, Stormy Petrel: The Life and Work of Maxim Gorky

“And the time was also coming when the great purges, long in blueprint, could no longer be postponed. The whole subject of the slaughter by a revolution of its children is mysterious. But it is clear that the group warfare, by the ‘logic of things,’ had opened into the next stage: the fanatical idealists of the 1880's and 1890's needed to be destroyed by the realists now in control of the Party, their younger fanatics of the apparatus, and their Calibans (a new breed). Some of the original revolutionaries had become disillusioned, and there is nothing worse than an ex-believer. Some were haunted by old romantic notions of ‘freedom,’ and therefore opposed the rough measures needed to forge a modern totalitarian state. Some probably still dreamed they could change the balance, and leadership, of the Party.”
― Dan Levin, Stormy Petrel: The Life and Work of Maxim Gorky

“Niente ferisce, avvelena, ammala, quanto la delusione. Perché la delusione è un dolore che deriva sempre da una speranza svanita, una sconfitta che nasce sempre da una fiducia tradita cioè dal voltafaccia di qualcuno o qualcosa in cui credevamo. E a subirla ti senti ingannato, beffato, umiliato. La vittima d’una ingiustizia che non t’aspettavi, d’un fallimento che non meritavi. Ti senti anche offeso, ridicolo, sicché a volte cerchi la vendetta. Scelta che può dare un po’ di sollievo, ammettiamolo, ma che di rado s’accompagna alla gioia e che spesso costa più del perdono.”
― Oriana Fallaci, Un cappello pieno di ciliege

“«Eres demasiado seria, Amy, eres demasiado rígida, Amy, le das demasiadas vueltas a las cosas, lo analizas todo demasiado, has dejado de ser divertida, me haces sentir inútil, Amy, haces que me sienta mal, Amy». Me fue arrancando cachos a golpe de indiferencia: mi independencia, mi orgullo, mi autoestima. Yo di y él tomó y tomó y tomó. Me eliminó de la existencia.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“No estás saliendo con una mujer, estás saliendo con una mujer que ha visto demasiadas películas escritas por hombres socialmente inadaptados a los que les gustaría creer que este tipo de mujer existe y podría besarles.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“Las Chicas Enrolladas nunca se enfadan; solo sonríen de manera disgustada pero cariñosa y dejan que sus hombres hagan lo que ellos quieran.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“It appeared the more religious and older men got, the more insatiable their appetite grew for teenage hymens; a short sighted, selfish, entitled and wicked appetite at that by the kind of men who were disillusioned enough to believe that the world revolved around their poles.”
― Mawuena Addo, Roses in the Rainbow

“Love letters to the depressed and the future heart
broken
I’m leaving the light on in my old street
Hoping I see some surrender on the other side of
town
Blink twice if you can see me. Blink thrice if you need me.
We’ve been walking alone for too long, putting all our rotten eggs in the same basket
Skipping in the dark, singing do rei (forget) me.”
― Renee Ruin, Wounds: Volume 1

“A cynic and an ideologist share a common pod of unrealized hopes, expectations, and beliefs. Just as an idealist metamorphoses into a crank right before turning into a full-fledged crackpot, I was bound to be disillusioned when the real world did not match my winged thoughts.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Life is the enjoyment of delusion. Death is the zenith of disillusion.”
― Anoir Ou-Chad

“Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.”
― Brad Bird via Anton Ego

“Age will provide you with less experience and more disillusions.”
― Mantaranjot Mangat, Plotless

“To a friend, in an unguarded moment, he [Maxim Gorky, 1932] declared his ambition: simply to portray the world and man as they were, without the myth of love, ‘repudiating nothing, praising nothing’; repudiation was unjust, while praise was premature—‘for we live in chaos and ourselves are fragments of chaos.’ He compared his desire with Einstein, ‘trying to alter radically our representation of the universe.”
― Dan Levin, Stormy Petrel: The Life and Work of Maxim Gorky

“Tolstoy was not associated with any revolutionary group but his writings had a tremendous influence. A continuous stream of Utopians, rebels and cranks passed in and out of his doors. When I was a guest at Yasnaya Polyana, his country estate, I was shocked by the depth of his despondency, and after he had forecast, with a foresight given only to genius, the bloody upheavals to come, I left his presence deeply regretting that age, moral distress and spiritual loneliness rendered him incapable of looking joyfully forward to what many believed would be the birth of a great and enduring democratic Russian Republic.”
― Robert Hunter, Revolution Why, How, When?

“While making studies of the revolutionary movement, I was aided for a time by Angelica Balabanoff. This restless, diminutive Russian knew almost everyone engaged in socialist and communist activities. Aflame with the spirit of revolt, she spared no effort to infect others with her hatred for the capitalist regime. She was very useful as she not only brought me in contact with everyone I wished to meet, but she also spoke fluently many of the European languages. She would often sit beside me at conferences and in restaurants, translating into my ear, in a soft and to others almost inaudible voice, everything of interest said by the various speakers, no matter from what country they came. She was afterward one of Mussolini's chief aids and became his assistant editor when he took control of *Avanti*. In 1917 she went back to Russia with Lenin and other communists in the train so kindly provided by the German government, which expected them to augment the chaos already paralyzing its enemies on the East.

Revolutionists talk fast and are often well educated. In some groups at dinner three or four languages would be spoken and, of course, at all the socialists and labor conferences delegates from many countries delivered their addresses in their native tongues. These different languages were laboriously translated by official interpreters. It was unnecessary to follow these dreary repetitions when Balabanoff sat beside me. She was often the official interpreter at the larger gatherings and her translations were never questioned — although she often excelled the orator in eloquence when he was expressing some of her cherished and more violently revolutionary views. Although she was a valued aid to both Mussolini and Lenin — I believe she brought them together at one time — and the most impassioned revolutionist I have ever met, she left Russia in 1921, ill and thoroughly disillusioned by the Reign of Terror.”
― Robert Hunter, Revolution Why, How, When?

“La déception était un risque chaque fois encouru, sa seule possibilité me causait un étourdissement durable. Elle provoquait dans mon être un vertige qui menaçait à tout instant de faire basculer l'ensemble. Pourtant, je tentais toujours de nouvelles accroches, quitte à me laisser martyriser.”
― Pia Malaussène, L'Aurore

“it’s precisely the infinite that casts light upon how the brain thinks, and how clever it is in showing us something that seems real when it’s merely an abstraction, namely that brain introduced or employed to great effect those methods of distortion, that dislocation”
― László Krasznahorkai, Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming

“Naivety can lead to disillusionment. But disillusionment can lead to learning.”
― Anna Moore Bradfield