94 Disillusionment Quotes

So, what's it like in the real world? Well, the food is better, but beyond that, I don't recommend it.

It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won't save us any more than love did.

At any rate, let us love for a while, for a year or so, you and me. That's a form of divine drunkenness that we can all try. There are only diamonds in the whole world, diamonds and perhaps the shabby gift of disillusion.

Disillusionment in living is finding that no one can really ever be agreeing with you completely in anything.

My professional life has been a constant record of disillusion, and many things that seem wonderful to most men are the every-day commonplaces of my business.

The massive, frustrated energies of a mainly young, disillusioned electorate that has long since abandoned the idea that we all have a duty to vote. This is like being told you have a duty to buy a new car, but you have to choose immediately between a Ford and a Chevy.

We thought being offered the M.B.E. [Member of the Order of the British Empire] was as funny as everybody else thought it was. Why? What for? We didn't believe it. It was a part we didn't want. We all met and agreed it was daft.

This is unfortunately a world in which things find it difficult, frequently impossible, to live up to their names.

O but we dreamed to mend Whatever mischief seemed To afflict mankind, but now That winds of winter blow Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.

In one sense, I have always felt glad to have had the war [World War II] in my childhood, because, as a result, nothing that has happened in the world since then has ever seemed quite so bad. On the other hand, I never entirely got over my feeling of being cheated when the promised era of peace in a wonderful 'post-war world' failed to materialize. I could not understand how, after all that, people could ever even think of fighting again. And I still can't.

Here was a new generation, shouting the old cries, learning the old creeds, through a revery of long days and nights; destined finally to go out into that dirty gray turmoil to follow love and pride; a new generation dedicated more than the last to the fear of poverty and the worship of success; grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken. . . .

I wondered a little why God was such a useless thing. It seemed a waste of time to have him. After that he became less and less, until he was: nothingness.

Before her marriage she had thought that she had love within her grasp but since the happiness which she had expected this love to bring her hadn't come, she supposed she must have been mistaken. And Emma tried to imagine just what was meant, in life, by the words 'bliss,' 'passion,' and 'rapture' -- words that had seemed so beautiful to her in books.

I pledge impertinence to the flag waving, of the unindicted co-conspirators of America, and to the republicans for which I can't stand, one abomination, underhanded fraud, indefensible, with Liberty and Justice... Forget it.

Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in.

I don't like animals. It's a strange thing, I don't like men and I don't like animals. As for God, he is beginning to disgust me.

Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow; attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.

In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him.

Society triumphs over many. They wish to regenerate the world with their institutions, with their moral philosophy, with their love. Then they sink to living from breakfast till dinner, from dinner till tea, with a little worsted work, and to looking forward to nothing but bed. When shall we see a life full of steady enthusiasm, walking straight to its aim, flying home, as that bird is now, against the wind - with the calmness and the confidence of one who knows the laws of God and can apply them?

The fact is there is nothing that you can trust; and that is a terrible fact, whether you like it or not. Psychologically, there is nothing in the world that you can put your faith, your trust, or your belief in. Neither your gods, nor your science can save you, can bring you psychological certainty; and you have to accept that you can trust in absolutely nothing. That is a scientific fact, as well as a psychological fact. Because, your leaders-religious and political-and your books-sacred and profane-have all failed, and you are still confused, in misery, in conflict. So, that is an absolute, undeniable fact.

Now that I can see it's the queen's new clothes Now that I can hear all your poison prose Now that I can talk with my tongue unfroze I'm not so sure of Santa or the buck tooth fairy There are no words for me inside your dictionary

I was raised on the good book Jesus Till I read between the lines Now I don't believe I ever wanna see the morning

There is more selfishness and less principle among members of Congress, as well as others, than I had any conception [of], before I became President of the U.S.

Rows and flows of angel hair, And ice cream castles in the air, And feather canyons ev'rywhere, I've looked at clouds that way. But now they only block the sun, They rain and snow on ev'ryone, So many things I would have done But clouds got in my way.

My son - and what's a son? A thing begot Within a pair of minutes, thereabout: A lump bred up in darkness.

There was no use in pretending, no magic left to hear. All the music gave me was a craving for light beer.

There are times, however, and this is one of them, when even being right feels wrong. What do you say, for instance, about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death? If making love might be fatal and if a cool spring breeze on any summer afternoon can turn a crystal blue lake into a puddle of black poison right in front of your eyes, there is not much left except TV and relentless masturbation. It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die. Who knows? If there is in fact, a heaven and a hell, all we know for sure is that hell will be a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix - a clean well lighted place full of sunshine and bromides and fast cars where almost everybody seems vaguely happy, except those who know in their hearts what is missing... And being driven slowly and quietly into the kind of terminal craziness that comes with finally understanding that the one thing you want is not there. Missing. Back-ordered. No tengo. Vaya con dios. Grow up! Small is better. Take what you can get...

Please don't disillusion me. I haven't had breakfast yet. -Children of the Mind

Adultery, Emma was discovering, could be as banal as marriage.

I was the dreamweaver, but now I'm reborn I was the Walrus, but now I'm John And so dear friends, you'll just have to carry on The dream is over.

Vanity: 'Architects of grandeur are often the master builders of disillusionment.'

Quelle est cette ile triste et noire? - C'est Cythere, Nous dit-on, un pays fameux dans les chansons Eldorado banal de tous les vieux garcons. Regardez, apres tout, c'est une pauvre terre.

He had one illusion - France; and one disillusion - mankind, including Frenchmen.

Friendship is but a name.

It is no use telling me there are bad aunts and good aunts. At the core, they are all alike. Sooner or later, out pops the cloven hoof.

The bitterest creature under heaven is the wife who discovers that her husband's bravery is only bravado, that his strength is only a uniform, that his power is but a gun in the hands of a fool.

God, from whose territory I had withdrawn my ambassadors at the age of fourteen. It had become obvious that he was never going to do a thing I said.

A fool there was and he made his prayer (Even as you and I!) To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair We called her the woman who did not care), But the fool he called her his lady fair (Even as you and I!)

We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth, We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung, And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth. God help us, for we knew the worst too young!

For tho' I know he loves me, To-night my heart is sad; His kiss was not so wonderful As all the dreams I had.

Grandstanding leaders never deliver, their fury mounts and mounts, and nevertheless they turn out every two years to return their right-wing heroes to office for a second, a third, a twentieth try. The trick never ages; the illusion never wears off. Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors; receive electricity deregulation. Vote to get government off our backs; receive conglomeration and monopoly everywhere from media to meatpacking. Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization. Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated then ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs are rewarded in a manner beyond imagining.

We have discovered that what a year ago seemed to be a neglected house is essentially a ruin. This is not a pleasant fact, and it is not surprising that all of us are rather annoyed and disappointed about it.

First melted off the hope of youth Then Fancy's rainbow fast withdrew And then experience told me truth In mortal bosoms never grew 'Twas grief enough to think mankind All hollow servile insincere But worse to trust to my own mind And find the same corruption there

So the great affair is over/ but whoever would have guessed/ it would leave us all so vacant/ and so deeply unimpressed/ It's like our visit to the moon/ or to that other star/ I guess you go for nothing/ if you really want to go that far