Disillusioned Quotes

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

“[T]he useful idiots, the leftists who are idealistically believing in the beauty of the Soviet socialist or Communist or whatever system, when they get disillusioned, they become the worst enemies. That’s why my KGB instructors specifically made the point: never bother with leftists. Forget about these political prostitutes. Aim higher. [...] They serve a purpose only at the stage of destabilization of a nation. For example, your leftists in the United States: all these professors and all these beautiful civil rights defenders. They are instrumental in the process of the subversion only to destabilize a nation. When their job is completed, they are not needed any more. They know too much. Some of them, when they get disillusioned, when they see that Marxist-Leninists come to power—obviously they get offended—they think that they will come to power. That will never happen, of course. They will be lined up against the wall and shot.”
― Yuri Bezmenov

“It seemed to her as though everything that was good and true had been blasted out of the world. All those things had been crushed destroyed made to disappear.”
― Anna Godbersen, Rumors

“Life when one first arrives is a continual mortification as one's romantic illusions are successively shattered and the musical treasure-house of one's imagination crumbles before the hopelessness of the reality. Every day fresh experiences bring fresh disappointments.”
― Hector Berlioz, The Memoirs

“Abundant living is realizing that life is a privilege whether it’s adhering to our scripts or not.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“People have disappointed me and deceived me and let me down.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Nice and the Good

“It was days like this when I felt it more than ever: I wasn’t a real human.”
― Melanie Cusick-Jones, The Rainbow Maker's Tale

“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

“I have seen much of human beings over a long period, and I have learnt how little good to expect from them.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“He had no faith in love's capacity to cause him anything but pain.”
― Kristen Roupenian, You Know You Want This

“The inaugural morning at Merston High was officially over. It was no longer a mysterious place in Melody's imagination, filled with endless possibilities and hooks on which to hang hopes for a better tomorrow. It was completely - boringly - normal. Like meeting an online crush after months of e-flirting, the reality didn't live up to the fantasy. It was dull, predictable, and way more attractive in the photos.”
― Lisi Harrison, Monster High

“Disillusioned, people simply carried out their work as intended, drinking away sobriety at the end of each hard shift and repeating the process until death.”
― Christopher Byford, Den of Shadows

“Every so often, over the next day or so, she would find herself in a gray, daydreamy mood, missing something, and she'd realize that it was Robert she missed, not the real Robert but the Robert she'd imagined on the other end of all those text messages during break.”
― Kristen Roupenian, You Know You Want This

“Too often it’s about what stands before us, not what stands within us.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“The trouble with you, Charles, is that basically you despise women, whereas I, in spite of some appearances to the contrary, do not."

"I don't despise women. I was in love with all Shakespeare's heroines before I was twelve."

"But they don't exist, dear man, that's the point. They live in the never-never land of art, all tricked out in Shakespeare's wit and wisdom, and mock us from there, filling us with false hopes and empty dreams. The real thing is spite and lies and arguments about money.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea

“Isabel, as she herself grew older, became acquainted with revulsions, with disgusts; there were days when the world looked black and she asked herself with some sharpness what it was that she was pretending to live for.”
― Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

“...all my life I prayed to a star – Later discovered it was Venus – I was praying to Aphrodite and wondering why she was sending me you -sad...”
― John Geddes, A Familiar Rain

“I used to be so dreamy about a man's love as a girl, and think that, for good or evil, love must be the great thing. But it hasn't been; it has been itself a dream.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“She was a part, an evidence, of some pure uncracked unfissured confidence in the good which was never there for me again.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea

“I don't think she's had much of a life."

"Well, a life is a life."

"What does that mean?"

"One never knows. I daresay most lives are rotten. It's only when one's young one expects otherwise.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea

“But space shrinks when you get old, and things lose their wonder, and the wisest thing to do then is to try your best to sleep.”
― Dexter Palmer, The Dream of Perpetual Motion

“He wasn't the sort of person you interacted with and fluttered away from; he was the type of man you fell for. People got hurt when they got attached to other people, because people always left or were taken away. Falling in love, therefore, was just a set-up for inevitable failure.

She knew all this. But logic is fallacy when it spars with instinct. So she fell anyway.”
― Angela Panayotopulos, The Wake Up

“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

“Such was life. Everything bright and dazzling turned cold and grey in the end.”
― Caroline Mitchell

“There was a time when love filled his heart, but no more. Once Sam had sought enlightenment and thought he'd found its path on an Ashram outside Los Angeles. Once Sam had a teacher in whom he believed without reservation, who had helped him discover the inner resonances of the divine within himself. Sam had read that one could become a completely God-realized being and was awed and inspired by this perfection he saw in his teacher. As Sam progressed, his guru became more than his teacher, he became his beloved friend. Sam grew in stature and recognition in the community of spiritual seekers gathered about the guru. Sam's utter admiration made the truth more painful still when he discovered that advancement within the order was not by merit alone but that several of the higher ranking members had been conferred their status in exchange for sexual favors and that the donations made to the center went first and foremost toward the material enrichment of the leader. Life for Sam then lost its reason. He had no faith in any human being not even himself. He certainly had no faith left for the merciful and benevolent God that allowed his loving devotee to fall into the hands of such a charlatan. Sam was deeply disillusioned and heartbroken. He walked out of the center that day with no possessions, no money, no beliefs. His great spiritual quest had brought him here to New York, a homeless man living in a makeshift shanty under the overpass of the Long Island Expressway. Sam was numb inside. He did not think about his guru; he could not bear to think about the guru. Therefore, he hid his great pain deep inside himself.”
― Laurence Galian, The Sun at Midnight: The Revealed Mysteries of the Ahlul Bayt Sufis

“How I hated her and how drawn I was to her at that moment!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

“All singers were half mad. In songs the hero always saved the maiden from the monster's castle. But life was not a song... And there are no heroes here; only whores.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons