Top 100 Things As They Are Quotes
#1. There is a power in the human mind ... to see things as they are ... but there is equally a power to see things as they might be.
Henry Ward Beecher
#2. What keeps things as they are is our inability to comprehend how things can be.
Steven Redhead
#3. Human reason is beautiful and invincible.
No bars, no barbed wire, no pulping of books,
No sentence of banishment can prevail against it.
It puts what should be above things as they are.
It does not know Jew from Greek nor slave from master.
Czeslaw Milosz
#4. To know things as they are is better than to believe things as they seem.
Tom Wicker
#5. If we look at things as they are instead of giving them our own shape and colour, life will be less complicated
Santosh Joshi
#6. To think to keep things as they are, is to let them move unpredictably, since nothing but death will still the beat of the heart or keep the universe from its perpetual motion.
Freya Stark
#7. I've always had a passion for tearing the bandages from other people's eyes. I've always insisted that those round me should see things as they are. I suppose it is that I need companionship in despair. I can't understand not despairing.
Francois Mauriac
#8. What we need to do is recognize inner nature and work with things as they are. When we don't we get in trouble.
Benjamin Hoff
#9. The sage sees things as they are, And takes the middle path, Away from the extremes.
Ali Binazir
#10. When people can't abide things as they are, when they can't abide the present, they do one of two things ... either they ... either they turn to a contemplation of the past ... or they set about to ... alter the future. And when you want to change something ... YOU BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
Edward Albee
#11. I myself incline to drift, to accept a lesser situation rather than strive for a greater, and yet, I know that character in life and art is only made by an effort that is quite beyond one's ordinary everyday acceptance of things as they are.
Lawren Harris
#12. wanted to know." "It's better not to know. It's better never to know. Better to leave things as they are. Not push and pry and poke." "You want beauty," said Hercule Poirot. "Beauty at any price. For me, it is truth I want. Always truth." Michael
Agatha Christie
#13. They said, "You have a blue guitar, you do not play things as they are." The man replied, "Things as they are are changed upon the blue guitar.
Wallace Stevens
#14. The philosophers write about things as they are and as they appear to be, but as an artist I find that appearance is everything.
Gary Inbinder
#15. The bent of our time is towards science, towards knowing things as they are ...
Matthew Arnold
#17. It [Romanticism] is concerned - in the words of Aristotle - not with things as they are, but with things as they might be and ought to be.
Ayn Rand
#18. There is an art of seeing things as they are: without naming, without being caught in a network of words, without thinking interfering with perception.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#20. Samyak buddhi (right intellect) is that which shows things as they are.
Dada Bhagwan
#21. We need to expect to pay a price if we want to make our lives better, but more importantly, we need to expect to pay a price for just leaving things as they are.
Jane Powell
#22. Healing is a coming to terms with things as they are, rather than struggling to force them to be as they once were, or as we would like them to be, to feel secure or to have what we sometimes think of as our own way.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
#23. We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.
Anais Nin
#24. Observe things as they are and don't pay attention to other people.
Huangbo Xiyun
#25. I broke every barrier I could to see things as they are.
Lillian Smith
#26. The first business of philosophy is to account for things as they are; and till our theories will do this, they ought not to be the ground of any practical conclusion.
Thomas Malthus
#27. When you experience your wisdom and the power of things as they are, together, as one, then you have access to tremendous vision and power in the world. You find that you are inherently connected to your own being. That is discovering magic.
Chogyam Trungpa
#28. Let us learn this lesson from Nehemiah: you never lighten the load unless first you have felt the pressure in your own soul. You are never used of God to bring blessing until God has opened your eyes and made you see things as they are.
Alan Redpath
#29. I wish to reproduce things as they are or as they would be even if I myself did not exist.
Hippolyte Taine
#30. In what spirit is this explanation given? Without being caught up in signs, just according to things as they are, without agitation.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#31. A peculiar side of credulity is that it is often joined with a proneness to imposture. The association of believing and lying is not characteristic solely of children. They inability or unwillingness to see things as they are promotes both gullibility and charlatanism.
Eric Hoffer
#32. To know reality (or things as they are than to have not to know and to have few illusions as possible - train my will now
Marilyn Monroe
#33. Humility is not self deprecating, rather it is the quiet internal confidence allowing you to accept things as they are, especially yourself; that epiphany opens the way to personal greatness.
Casar Jacobson
#34. Common sense is seeing things as they are; and doing things as they ought to be.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
#35. Stoicism and silence does not serve us nor our communities, only the forces of things as they are.
Audre Lorde
#36. Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
Thomas Paine
#37. I've got a peculiar weakness for criminals and artists. Neither takes life as it is. Any tragic story has to be in conflict with things as they are.
Stanley Kubrick
#38. To be a writer you need to see things as they are, and to see things as they are you need a certain basic innocence.
Tobias Wolff
#39. I think that after all it might be better to leave things as they are
Jose Saramago
#40. Radical acceptance rests on letting go of the illusion of control and a willingness to notice and accept things as they are right now, without judging.
Marsha M. Linehan
#41. It is only through a wholesome discontent with things as they are, that we ever try to make them any better.
Susan B. Anthony
#42. The true purpose is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes.
Shunryu Suzuki
#44. This is the art of courage: to see things as they are and still believe that the victory lies not with those who avoid the bad, but those who taste, in living awareness, every drop of the good.
Victoria Lincoln
#45. To find inner bliss and happiness through yoga, learn to accept things as they are by changing your thoughts.
Debasish Mridha
#47. Seeing clearly means that you're smart enough to know when a project is doomed, or brave enough to persevere when your colleagues are fleeing for the hills. Abandoning your worldview in order to try on someone else's is the first step in being able to see things as they are.
Seth Godin
#48. I guess my tendency to say things as they are, without filtering, puts girls off. If you ask me how you look, and I think your dress makes your arse look fat, I'll tell you.
R.J. Prescott
#49. You need to see things as they are, not worse than they are, than see them better than they are, and make them that way.
Jordan Belfort
#50. We have had, alas, and still have, the doubtful habit of reverence. Above all, we respect things as they are.
Cynthia Ozick
#51. In this world we do not see things as they are. We see them as we are, because what we see depends mainly on what we are looking for.
John Lubbock
#52. Human beings have illusions. The enlightened don't have illusions. They see things as they are, and in that seeing, they see ecstasy and joy. They see the play of life.
Frederick Lenz
#53. Satire is the antidote to Pollyanna and Dr. Pangloss. It focuses our gaze sharply upon the the contrast between things as they are and as they should be.
Edgar Johnson
#54. To take a picture is to have an interest in things as they are, in the status quo remaining unchanged, to be in complicity with whatever makes a subject interesting, worth photographing-including, when that is the interest, another person's pain or misfortune.
Susan Sontag
#55. When our emotions are engaged, we often have trouble seeing things as they are.
Robert Greene
#56. Life as it unfolds in front of the camera is full of so much complexity, wonder and surprise that I find it unnecessary to create new realities. There is more pleasure, for me, in things as-they-are.
David Hurn
#57. If God would concede me His omnipotence for 24 hours, you would see how many changes I would make in the world. But if He gave me His wisdom too, I would leave things as they are.
J.M.L. Monsabre
#58. Science teaches us, in effect, to submit our reason to the truth and to know and judge of things as they are-that is to say, as they themselves choose to be and not as we would have them to be.
Miguel De Unamuno
#59. We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.
George Bernard Shaw
#60. The brain does not manufacture thoughts unless we stimulate it with habitual verbalizing. When we train ourselves by constant practice to stop verbalizing, the brain can experience things as they are.
Henepola Gunaratana
#61. HOPE AND EXPECTATION ARE NOT THE SAME THING, THOUGH BOTH WILL LEAD TO DISAPPOINTMENT. EXIST IN THE MOMENT, ACCEPTING ALL THINGS AS THEY ARE, NOT AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM BE.
Mark T. Barnes
#62. Fear is unnatural. Lightning and thunder are unnatural. Pain, death, reality, these are all unnatural. We can't bear these things as they are. We know too much. So we resort to repression, compromise and disguise. This is how we survive the universe. This is the natural language of the species.
Don DeLillo
#63. I do not believe that any writer has ever exposed this bovarysme, the human will to see things as they are not, more clearly than Shakespeare.
T. S. Eliot
#64. The true purpose [of Zen] is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes ... Zen practice is to open up our small mind.
Shunryu Suzuki
#65. ROMANCE, n. Fiction that owes no allegiance to the God of Things as They Are. In the novel the writer's thought is tethered to probability, but in romance it ranges at will over the entire region of the imagination ...
Ambrose Bierce
#66. We cannot be satisfied with things as they are. We cannot be satisfied to drift, to rest on our oars, to glide over a sea whose depths are shaken by subterranean upheavals.
John F. Kennedy
#67. The gods know, happiness is a precious and rare commodity, and indeed it seems that the more intelligent and perceptive the individual, the less happy they generally are. The cost of seeing things as they are, I expect.
Steven Erikson
#68. Sometimes, it is easier to leave things as they are, rather than to fight, go against the flow.
Renita D'Silva
#69. I am sick of the disparity between things as they are and as they should be. I'm tired.I'm tired of the truth and I'm tired of lying about the truth.
Edward Albee
#70. Poetry is an affair of sanity, of seeing things as they are.
Philip Larkin
#71. Self-honesty is not putting yourself down or feeling sorry for yourself. Self-honesty is looking at things as they are and then being compelled to make changes.
Frederick Lenz
#73. Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done.
Josh Billings
#74. After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.
Oscar Wilde
#75. Science deals exclusively with things as they are in themselves; and art exclusively with things as they affect the human sense and human soul.
John Ruskin
#76. To paint things as they are requires a minute attention, and employs the memory rather than the fancy.
Samuel Johnson
#77. It's called enlightenment. It's nothing more or less than seeing things as they are rather than as we wish or believe them to be.
Steve Hagen
#78. Elegance means appreciating things as they are. There is a sense of delight and of fearlessness. You are not fearful of dark corners ...
Chogyam Trungpa
#79. Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick.
Bruce Lee
#80. The inventor ... looks upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees, he wants to benefit the world; he is haunted by an idea.
Alexander Graham Bell
#81. You should not be surprised at whatever you see or hear ... If you are ready to accept things as they are, you will receive them as old friends.
Shunryu Suzuki
#83. I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.
Henry David Thoreau
#84. Give up grasping and see things as they are. THE SEVENTH DALAI LAMA
Lama Surya Das
#85. I think art is the ability to change people with your work, to see things as they are and then create stories, images, and interactions that change the marketplace.
Seth Godin
#86. Take things as they come. Take things as they are. What does it matter? There's one end to everything.
Patricia Wentworth
#87. We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are. Anais Nin
Debbie Hampton
#88. Uniqueness Leads To Great Success Some men see things as they are and say 'why?' I dream things that never were, and say, 'why not?' --George Bernard Shaw English Dramatist (1856-1950)
John Paul Carinci
#89. Everything you want in life has a price connected to it. There's a price to pay if you want to make things better, a price to pay just for leaving things as they are, a price for everything.
Harry Browne
#90. The desire to change things must begin with accepting things as they are.
Marty Rubin
#91. Every day that you attempt to see things as they are in truth Is a supremely successful day.
Vernon Howard
#92. He's got to have the ability, and it seems to be fairly rare, to see things as they are and at the same time as they might have been. What we mean is the eye of an artist.
Jack Finney
#93. All those who love Nature she loves in return, and will richly reward, not perhaps with the good things, as they are commonly called, but with the best things of this world-not with money and titles, horses and carriages, but with bright and happy thoughts, contentment and peace of mind.
John Lubbock
#94. A mind full of preconceived ideas, subjective intentions, or habits it not open to things as they are.
Shunryu Suzuki
#95. How many times have answers been so simple and yet someone is determined to take the path of thorns instead of roses?" "It's not earned." "That's a very human thing to say." "An inclination I can't help." "It's not about things that are earned, but just things as they are.
Roshani Chokshi
#96. I've found that people who look at things as they are, and not as they wish them to be, are the ones who succeed.
Sarah Orne Jewett
#97. You don't have to be one of those people that accepts things as they are. Every day, take responsibility for changing them right where you are.
Cory Booker
#98. Originally, I had planned to study tourism and revolution, which seemed to me to name the two poles of modern consciousness--a willingness to accept, even venerate, things as they are on the one hand, a desire to transform things on the other.
Dean MacCannell
#99. As a writer, I've tried to avoid strong opinions about morality. You just want to present things as they are and let the viewer come to their own conclusion.
Terence Winter
#100. The poet sees better than other mortals. I do not see things as they are, but according to my own subjective impression, and this makes life easier and simpler.
Robert Schumann
