Disenchantment Quotes

A blaze first pleases and then tires the sight. ~ Samuel Johnson

Did not at first give vague disappointment, a confounding of reality, a disenchantment of contrast with what the mind had conceived. ~ Zane Grey

People always seemed to think that you stopped believing things in a single, lightning-bolt moment, an instantaneous revelation of loss. For her, at least, the process of disenchantment had been achingly slow. ~ Zoe Heller

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

Love that sets forth the soul like springtime and ripens it like summer. Love as rarely exists in reality, as if a master alchemist has taken it and distilled out all the impurities, every petty disenchantment, every unworthy thought, into a perfect elixir, sweet and deep and all-consuming. ~ Laini Taylor

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

When you were twenty, you accepted yourself, flaws and all. Then disenchantment set in. By the time you were thirty your tolerance was wearing thin. You weren't entirely trustworthy, and you knew you were prone to compromise. Already the future was receding, the bright dreams were slipping below the horizon. By now you're a stage set, one push and the whole thing could collapse at your feet. At times you feel like you're living someone else's life, in a strange house you've rented by accident. The 'you' you've become isn't your real self. ~ J.G. Ballard

Blessedness is within us all
It lies upon the long scaffold
Patrols the vaporous hall
In our pursuits, though still, we venture forth
Hoping to grasp a handful of cloud and return
Unscathed, cloud in hand. We encounter
Space, fist, violin, or this - an immaculate face
Of a boy, somewhat wild, smiling in the sun.
He raises his hand, as if in carefree salute
Shading eyes that contain the thread of God.
Soon they will gather power, disenchantment
They will reflect enlightenment, agony
They will reveal the process of love
They will, in an hour alone, shed tears.
His mouth a circlet, a baptismal font
Opening wide as the lips of a damsel
Sounding the dizzying extremes.
The relativity of vein, the hip of unrest
For the sake of wing there is shoulder.
For symmetry there is blade.
He kneels, humiliates, he pierces her side.
Offering spleen to the wolves of the forest.
He races across the tiles, the human board.
Virility, coquetry all a game - well played.
Immersed in luminous disgrace, he lifts
As a slave, a nymph, a fabulous hood
As a rose, a thief of life, he will parade
Nude crowned with leaves, immortal.
He will sing of the body, his truth
He will increase the shining neck
Pluck airs toward our delight
Of the waning
The blossoming
The violent charade
But who will sing of him?
Who will sing of his blessedn ~ Patti Smith

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

Mexico has proven by now that it's a strong electoral democracy. Now we have to build a democracy that produces better results; if not, then you get a democracy of disenchantment. ~ Enrique Pena Nieto

Surely some revelation is at hand. ~ W.B.Yeats

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

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

My disenchantment? Oh no, my dear, there are no disenchantments, merely progressions and styles of possession. To exist is to be spellbound. ~ Robert Coover

Discovering that one is loved in return really ought to disenchant the lover with the beloved. 'What? this person is modest enough to love even you? Or stupid enough? Or-or- ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Men don't like to step abruptly out of the security of familiar experience; they need a bridge to cross from their own experience to a new way. A revolutionary organizer must shake up the prevailing patterns of their lives agitate, create disenchantment and discontent with the current values, to produce, if not a passion for change, at least a passive, affirmative, non-challenging climate. ~ Saul Alinsky

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

As the style of Faulkner grew out of his rage
out of the impotence of his rage
the style of Hemingway grew out of the depth andnuance of his disenchantment. ~ Wright Morris

If democracy is ever to be threatened, it will not be by revolutionary groups burning government offices and occupying the broadcasting and newspaper offices of the world. It will come from disenchantment, cynicism and despair caused by the realisation that the New World Order means we are all to be managed and not represented. ~ Tony Benn

Instead, we have found ourselves gasping for air in a sea of corruption, dysfunction, environmental degradation, waste, disenchantment and inequality - and the harder we compete, the more unequal we become. ~ Margaret Heffernan

With the rationalization of culture, and the corresponding disenchantment of religious ideas and beliefs, the modern world is ordered increasingly upon instrumentally rational grounds, and hence organizes itself less and less according to value-rational principles. This leads in turn to a world in which social action is separated increasingly from the sphere of (ethical) meaning, as particular (often technical) means are employed to realize specific ends regardless of the ethical significance or meaning of such action. ~ Nicholas Gane

The working class of England take their deracination completely for granted. Disenchantment is the happy code that informs every byway of the underclass: service jobs, celebrity dreams, Lotto wins, leisured poverty on pre-crunch credit cards, it's all there, part of the story of an English people whose grandparents never had it so good. ~ Andrew O'Hagan

Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

To have loved and lost, either by that total disenchantment which leaves compassion as the sole substitute for love which can exist no more, or by the slow torment which is obliged to let go day by day all that constitutes the diviner part of love namely, reverence, belief, and trust, yet clings desperately to the only thing left it, a long-suffering apologetic tenderness this lot is probably the hardest any woman can have to bear. ~ Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

All sorts of allowances are made for the illusions of youth, and none, or almost none for the disenchantment of age. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

She felt the abyss of disenchantment. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Her copy of the photograph had been lost, and Hildebranda's was almost invisible, but they could both recognize themselves through the mists of disenchantment: young and beautiful as they would never be again. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

But one of the unintended consequences of the Protestant Reformation, Taylor argues, was a disenchantment of the world. Critical of the ways such an enchanted, sacramental understanding of the world had lapsed into sheer superstition, the later Reformers emphasized the simple hearing of the Word, the message of the gospel, and the arid simplicity of Christian worship. The result was a process of excarnation - of disembodying the Christian faith, turning it into a "heady" affair that could be boiled down to a message and grasped with the mind. To use a phrase that we considered above, this was Christianity reduced to something for brains-on-a-stick. The ~ James K.A. Smith

The author explores the contours of a restless mind racked with fear and doubt and questions the origins of his personal disenchantment and cynical bitterness. Do other people share similar feelings of disquiet and despair, and how does a person escape a vortex of suffering? Perchance he can marshal human beings' innate gifts of memory, language, and consciousness to transform his vile existence. Perhaps by studiously examining the self and seeking to unite all disparate parts of a fragmented psyche, he will become a thoughtful, considerate, and affectionate man who lives joyfully without pangs of pain, shame, and misgivings. The goal of this vision quest is to attain personal harmony with the world and enjoy an admirable state of attentive mindfulness after investigating and expressing all that is sayable pertaining the meaning of existence and the unique features of being human. The author aspires to discard frivolous attachments, pierce mental delusions, and attain a peaceful state of serenity by accepting reality and appreciating the incomparable beauty of this magnificent world and the little pleasures that each unfolding day affords. Perhaps writing of his struggles to transcend his own pain and develop the wisdom and serenity of the mind that comes from living an examined life might even provide a template for other people explore their own life story. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

In any event people rarely see each other again
these days, even in cases where the relationship begins in an atmosphere of
enthusiasm. Sometimes breathless conversations take place, touching on the general
aspects of life; sometimes, too, a carnal embrace comes about. Sure, you exchange
telephone numbers but, generally speaking, you rarely call again. And even when
you do call and meet up, disillusionment and disenchantment rapidly take over from
the initial enthusiasm. Believe me, I know life; it's all perfectly cut and dried. ~ Michel Houellebecq

Unlike memory, which confirms and reinforces itself, history contributes to the disenchantment of the world. ~ Tony Judt

Although Travels with Charley is replete with whimsical vignettes, charming dialogue, and lyrical descriptions of the natural landscape that often rise to the level of poetry, there is beneath its surface a sense of disenchantment that turns, eventually, into barely suppressed anger. Steinbeck seems never quite able to bring himself to say that he was truly and often disgusted by what he saw on his journey, but the reader is left with that impression. One puts down this book aware of how remarkably prophetic it really was, and how America continues to wrestle with the problems raised in its pages. ~ John Steinbeck

Marriage remains the most efficient engine of disenchantment yet invented. ~ Caitlin Flanagan

Disenchantment, like any other fashion, having started off among the elite had now been passed down to finish its days among the lower orders. ~ Mikhail Lermontov

Lyotard develops and extends Weber's argument regarding the disenchantment of art to suggest the Western culture increasingly obeys an instrumental logic of performance and control, one that imposes order on the free play of the imagination and subordinates creative thought to the demands of the capitalist market. And, for Lyotard, the effects of this process are consistent with those outlined in Weber's work, namely the progressive elimination of ritual or religious forms of art, the restriction of creative forms by an instrumental (capitalist) rationality, and with this the denigration of value-rational artistic practice. ~ Nicholas Gane

This litany of disenchantment notwithstanding, I believe there's an additional layer to our libidinal demise that has to do with our culture's deep ambivalence around sexuality. While we recognize the importance of sex, we nonetheless vacillate between extremes of excessive license and repressive tactics: "Don't do it till you're married." "Just do it when you feel like it." "It's no big deal." "It's a huge deal." "You need love." "What's love got to do with it?" It's an all-or-nothing approach to sex. Porn ~ Esther Perel

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. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

As soon as Don Quixote had read the inscription on the parchment he perceived clearly that it referred to the disenchantment of Dulcinea, and returning hearty thanks to heaven that he ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Disenchantment is the blessing of becoming yourself. ~ Rebecca Solnit

Many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. ~ Max Ehrmann

We also happen to have had two superpowers that came into existence after a series of world-consuming conflicts. Through a terrible act of disenchantment, one world leader was killed, and his policy of racing to the Moon became a nation's policy, which drove members of our species to create space programs around the world. As a result, when an asteroid that could once again destroy the dominant form of life comes along, that dominant species (you and me) is ready to do something about that rock or block of ice. ~ Bill Nye

The limits of science have always been the source of bitter disappointment when people expected something from science that it was not able to provide. Take the following examples: a man without faith seeking to find in science a substitute for his faith on which to build his life; a man unsatisfied by philosophy seeking an all-embracing universal truth in science; a spiritually shallow person growing aware of his own futility in the course of engaging in the endless reflections imposed by science. In every one of these cases, science begins as an object of blind idolatry and ends up as an object of hatred and
contempt. Disenchantment inevitably follows upon these and similar misconceptions. One question remains: What value can science possibly have when its limitations have become so painfully clear? ~ Karl Jaspers

The de-eroticization of the world, a companion to its disenchantment ... seems to result from a combination of causes our democratic regime and its tendencies toward leveling and self-protection, a reductionist-materialist science that inevitably interprets eros as sex, and the atmosphere generated by "the death of God" and of the subordinate god, Eros. ~ Allan Bloom

I've had occasional dark hours, dreary fits, when my life, laid out before me, has seemed bitter and hollow and insignificant ... I forgot the many modest successes of my career and instead saw every failure ... the missed opportunities, the moments of cowardice and disappointment ... I had been very much in love ... [and had been thrown over] for another ... I had rather turned my back on romance after that disenchantment, and the few affairs I had had since then had been very half-hearted things. Now the passionless embraces came back to me ... in all their dry mechanical detail. I felt a wave of disgust for myself, and a pity for the [others] involved. ~ Sarah Waters

You know, there's a growing level of disenchantment with governing institutions in Brazil. And in a sense, it's a healthy development because you have investigators and prosecutors going to work and finding out these things and revealing them to the public. But as a result, you have a lot of growing distrust in the way that government functions in Brazil. ~ Simon Romero

Fundamentalist movements in all faiths share certain characteristics. They reveal a deep disappointment and disenchantment with the modern experiment, which has not fulfilled all that it promised. They also express real fear. Every single fundamentalist movement that I have studied is convinced that the secular establishment is determined to wipe religion out. This is not always a paranoid reaction. We have seen that secularism has often been imposed very aggressively in the Muslim world. Fundamentalists look back to a "golden age" before the irruption of modernity for inspiration, but they are not atavistically returning to the Middle Ages. All are intrinsically modern movements and could have appeared at no time other than our own. All are innovative and often radical in their reinterpretation of religion. As such, fundamentalism is an essential part of the modern scene. Wherever modernity takes root, a fundamentalist movement is likely to rise up alongside it in conscious reaction. Fundamentalists will often express their discontent with a modern development by overstressing those elements in their tradition that militate against it. ~ Karen Armstrong

An argument ensued about abundance, leisure, work, nature, and what a second girl kept calling 'the American way.' When I asked her what she meant by 'the American way,' she said, 'Basically the destruction of everything
the world, your happiness, your soul, everything. The complete package. Evil and war. That's who we are, Mr. Countryman.' ~ David Guterson

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.

Sometimes the planning and the work is not the most difficult aspect of an endeavor; it's the waiting - waiting to see if the preparation, the implementation, and the bait, will land a catch - waiting, that time in between the effort and the result, the source of so much hope, frustration, doubt, anxiety, and perhaps, disenchantment. It can try those with even the firmest resolve. ~ Paul J. Bartusiak

Those evangelicals who have been raised and shaped by forms of Christianity that are roughly "fundamentalist" will either: a. become taken with the modern moral order and thus sort of replay the excarnational development of modernity, just now a few centuries later, sort of catching up with the wider culture; so under the guise of the "emerging church" or "progressive" evangelicalism, we'll be set on a path to something like Protestant liberalism, a new deism; or b. recognize the disenchantment and excarnation of evangelical Protestantism, and also reject the Christianized subtraction stories of liberal Christianity, and feel the pull of more incarnational spiritualities, and thus move toward more "Catholic" expressions of faith - and these expressions of faith will actually exert more pull on those who have doubts about their "closed" take on the immanent frame. ~ James K.A. Smith

I became a communist because later on I was going to become a Christian. ~ Joy Davidman

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

I think we can end the divisions within the United States. What I think is quite clear is that we can work together in the last analysis. And that what has been going on with the United States over the period of that last three years, the divisions, the violence, the disenchantment with our society, the divisions - whether it's between blacks and whites, between the poor and the more affluent, or between age groups, or in the war in Vietnam - that we can work together. We are a great country, an unselfish country and a compassionate country. And I intend to make that my basis for running. ~ Robert Kennedy

Above all, don't overestimate your own power as an individual. Founders are important not because they are the only ones whose work has value, but rather because a great founder can bring out the best work from everybody at his company. That we need individual founders in all their peculiarity does not mean that we are called to worship Ayn Randian "prime movers" who claim to be independent of everybody around them. In this respect Rand was a merely half-great writer: her villains were real, but her heroes were fake. There is no Galt's Gulch. There is no secession from society. To believe yourself invested with divine self-sufficiency is not the mark of a strong individual, but of a person who has mistaken the crowd's worship - or jeering - for the truth. The single greatest danger for a founder is to become so certain of his own myth that he loses his mind. But an equally insidious danger for every business is to lose all sense of myth and mistake disenchantment for wisdom. ~ Anonymous

This gesture is one of the motifs of modernity's turn against the principle of imitating nature, that is to say, imitating predefined morphological expectations. It is still capable of perceiving message-totalities and autonomous thing-signals when no morphologically intact figures are left - indeed, precisely then. The sense for perfection withdraws from the forms of nature - probably because nature itself is in the process of losing its ontological authority. The popularization of photography also increasingly devalues the standard views of things. As the first edition of the visible, nature comes into discredit. It can no longer assert its authority as the sender of binding messages - for reasons that ultimately come from its disenchantment through being scientifically explored and technically outdone. After this shift, 'being perfect' takes on an altered meaning: it means having something to say that is more meaningful than the chatter of conventional totalities. Now the torsos and their ilk have their turn: the hour of those forms that do not remind us of anything has come. Fragments, cripples and hybrids formulate something that cannot be conveyed by the common whole forms and happy integrities; intensity beats standard perfection. ~ Peter Sloterdijk