Disenchantment Quotes

• Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Dream, Art, Truth

  Les Mots (The Words, 1964) "crire"

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• The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world.

  Max Weber

  Fate, World, Disenchanted

  Max Weber (2013). “From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology”, p.155, Routledge

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• Disenchantment, whether it is a minor disappointment or a major shock, is the signal that things are moving into transition in our lives.

  William Throsby Bridges

  Disappointment, Moving, Transition

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• A blaze first pleases and then tires the sight.

  Samuel Johnson

  Sight, Firsts, Tire

  Samuel Johnson, William Hazlitt (1854). “Johnson's Lives of the British Poets”, p.155

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• She felt the abyss of disenchantment.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Cholera, Abyss, Felt

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• Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.
  
  Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.

  Max Ehrmann

  Being Yourself, Exercise, Cynical

  Max Ehrmann (2003). “Desiderata: A Survival Guide for Life”, p.9, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• In the beginning was the dream, and the work of disenchantment never ends.

  Kim Stanley

  Dream, Ends

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• Year by year, more and more of the world gets disenchanted. Even the icy privacy of the arctic and antarctic circles is invaded. We have played Jack Horner with our earth, till there is never a plum left in it.

  James Russell Lowell

  Circles, Years, Earth

  James Russell Lowell (1864). “Fireside Travels”, p.181

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• The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the 'disenchantment of the world.' Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations. It is not accidental that our greatest art is intimate and not monumental.

  Max Weber

  Art, Philosophy, Fate

  Max Weber (2013). “From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology”, p.155, Routledge

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• And who shall say--whatever disenchantment follows--that we ever forget magic; or that we can ever betray, on this leaden earth, the apple-tree, the singing, and the gold?

  Thomas Wolfe

  Apples, Tree, Magic

  Thomas Wolfe (2006). “Look Homeward, Angel”, p.372, Simon and Schuster

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• I wrote The Philosophy of Disenchantment, which is, I think, the gloomiest and worst book ever published. Out of sheer laziness, I then produced a history of atheism, The Anatomy of Negation, which has been honored by international dislike. Need I state that of all my children it is the one that I prefer?

  Edgar Saltus

  Children, Philosophy, Book

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• We dream, we wake on a cold hillside, we pursue the dream again. In the beginning was the dream, and the work of disenchantment never ends.

  Kim Stanley Robinson

  Dream, Cold, Ends

  Kim Stanley Robinson (2014). “Icehenge”, p.287, Macmillan

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• All sorts of allowances are made for the illusions of youth, and none, or almost none for the disenchantment of age.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Age, Youth, Illusion

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• I have heard from my father and mother all the answers that faith in God could offer to those who doubt and search for the truth. In our home and in many other homes the eternal questions were more actual than the latest news in the Yiddish newspaper. In spite of all the disenchantments and all my skepticism I believe that the nations can learn much from those Jews, their way of thinking, their way of bringing up children, their finding happiness where others see nothing but misery and humiliation.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Mother, Children, Father

  Isaac Bashevis Singer, Joseph C. Landis (1986). “Aspects of I.B. Singer”

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• Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity & disenchantment it is perennial as the grass.

  Max Ehrmann

  Love, Cynical, Faces

  Max Ehrmann (2003). “Desiderata: A Survival Guide for Life”, p.9, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• Even as I'm shoveling up my hooter, I realize the sad truth. Coke bores me, It bores us all. We're jaded cunts, in a scene we hate, a city we hate, pretending that we're at the center of the universe, trashing ourselves with crap drugs to stave off the feeling that real life is happening somewhere else, aware that all we're doing is feeding that paranoia and disenchantment, yet somehow we're too apathetic to stop. Cause, sadly, there's nothing else of interest to stop for.

  Irvine Welsh

  Hate, Real, Somewhere Else

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• As far as love is concerned, possession, power, fusion and disenchantment are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

  Zygmunt Bauman

  Love Is, Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse, Fusion

  Zygmunt Bauman (2013). “Liquid Love: On the Frailty of Human Bonds”, p.16, John Wiley & Sons

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• In the event of a violent revolution, we would be sorely outnumbered. And when it was all over, the Negro would face the same unchanged conditions, the same squalor and deprivation-the only difference being that his bitterness would be even more intense, his disenchantment even more abject. Thus, in purely practical as well as moral terms, the American Negro has no rational alternative to nonviolence.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Differences, Revolution, Events

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• If I had influence with the good fairy... I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.

  Rachel Carson

  Children, Creativity, Awe And Wonder

  Rachel Carson (2011). “The Sense of Wonder”, p.20, Open Road Media

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• ... many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

  Max Ehrmann

  Heroism, Life Is, Strive

  Max Ehrmann (2003). “Desiderata: A Survival Guide for Life”, p.9, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.

  Rachel Carson

  Nature, Children, Years

  Rachel Carson (2011). “The Sense of Wonder”, p.20, Open Road Media

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• Self-love is as protective as the Deity; Disenchantment is as perspicacious as a surgeon; Experience is as provident as a mother. Such are the theologic virtues of marriage.

  Honore de Balzac

  Mother, Love Is, Self

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• If you search within your heart, you will find something there that will make it possible for you to understand: a spark of disenchantment and discontent, which if fanned into flame will become a raging forest fire that will burn up the whole of the illusory world you are living in, thereby unveiling to your wondering eyes the kingdom that you have always lived in unsuspectingly.

  Anthony de Mello

  Heart, Eye, Fire

  Anthony De Mello (2011). “The Way to Love: Meditations for Life”, p.121, Image

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• As we have seen, the first public expression of disenchantment with nonviolence arose around the question of 'self-defense.' In a sense this is a false issue, for the right to defend one's home and one's person when attacked has been guaranteed through the ages by common law.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Home, Self, Expression

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• Joining a radical movement when one is young is very much like falling in love when one is young. The girl may turn out to be rotten, but the the experience of love is so valuable it can never be entirely undone by the ultimate disenchantment.

  Irving Kristol

  Girl, Falling In Love, Love Is

  Irving Kristol (1995). “Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea”, p.470, Simon and Schuster

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