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Disillusion Quotes

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Disillusion Quotes

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The best recipe for happiness and contentment I've seen is this: dig a big hole in the garden of your thoughts and put into it all your disillusions, disappointments, regrets, worries, troubles, doubts, and fears. Cover well with the earth of fruitfulness. Water it from the well of contentment. Sow on top the seeds of hope, courage, strength, patience, and love. Then when the time for gathering comes, may your harvest be a rich and fruitful one.”

“Youth is the season of tragedy and despair. Youth is the time when one's whole life is entangled in a web of identity, in a perpetual maze of seeking and of finding, of passion and of disillusion, of vague longings and of nameless griefs, of pity that is a blade in the heart, and of 'all the little emptiness of love.”

“But the true evil of drink lies in the disillusion: that the initial pleasure very soon evaporates, leaving a demoralizing craving for more, which is not even temporarily pleasurable. Which then leads to deterioration of the faculties of both body and mind; plus a bewildering lack of co-operation between the two.”

“For sex to be wholly satisfying, we must have at least as much concern for a partner as for self - a requirement that doesn't live comfortably alongside the exhortation to 'do your own thing.' In the end, we are left with an extraordinarily heightened set of expectations about the possibilities in human relationships that lives side by side with disillusion that, for many, borders on despair.”