{"quotes":[{"text":"We must help men and women see the epic in the ordinary details of life.","author":"Matt Chandler","tags":["boredom","discipleship","disillusionment","evangelism","inspiration","spiritual-leadership"],"id":2278,"author_id":"Matt+Chandler"},{"text":"I’ve drawn this as a circle because the seasons will come and go. Joy always leads to another season of romance . . . Which always leads to another season of trouble . . . Which always leads to disillusionment . . . Which always leads to more joy— if you hang in there.","author":"Kurt Bubna","tags":["circle-of-love","disillusionment","joy","relationships","romance","trouble"],"id":9916,"author_id":"Kurt+Bubna"},{"text":"My hopes were all dead --- struck with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt. I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid corpses that could never revive. I looked at my love: that feeling which had been my master's --- which he had created; it shivered in my heart, like a suffering child in a cold cradle; sickness and anguish had seized it; it could not seek Mr Rochester's arms --- it could not derive warmth from his breast. Oh, never more could it turn to him; for faith was blighted -- confidence destroyed!","author":"Charlotte Brontë","tags":["destroyed-love","disappointment","disillusionment","hopes"],"id":10379,"author_id":"Charlotte+Bront%C3%AB"},{"text":"This is not the 'relativism of truth' presented by journalistic takes on postmodernism. Rather, the ironist's cage is a state of irony by way of powerlessness and inactivity: In a world where terrorism makes cultural relativism harder and harder to defend against its critics, marauding international corporations follow fair-trade practices, increasing right-wing demagoguery and violence can't be answered in kind, and the first black U.S. President turns out to lean right of center, the intelligentsia can see no clear path of action. Irony dominates as a 'mockery of the promise and fitness of things,' to return to the OED definition of irony.This thinking is appropriate to Wes Anderson, whose central characters are so deeply locked in ironist cages that his films become two-hour documents of them rattling their ironist bars. Without the irony dilemma Roth describes, we would find it hard to explain figures like Max Fischer, Steve Zissou, Royal Tenenbaum, Mr. Fox, and Peter Whitman. I'm not speaking here of specific political beliefs. The characters in question aren't liberals; they may in fact, along with Anderson himself, have no particular political or philosophical interests. But they are certainly involved in a frustrated and digressive kind of irony that suggests a certain political situation. Though intensely self-absorbed and central to their films, Anderson's protagonists are neither heroes nor antiheroes. These characters are not lovable eccentrics. They are not flawed protagonists either, but are driven at least as much by their unsavory characteristics as by any moral sense. They aren't flawed figures who try to do the right thing; they don't necessarily learn from their mistakes; and we aren't asked to like them in spite of their obvious faults. Though they usually aren't interested in making good, they do set themselves some kind of mission--Anderson's films are mostly quest movies in an age that no longer believes in quests, and this gives them both an old-fashioned flavor and an air of disillusionment and futility.","author":"Arved Mark Ashby","tags":["disillusionment","fantastic-mr-fox","film-criticism","ironist","irony","pomo","postmodernism","rushmore","the-royal-tenenbaums","wes-anderson"],"id":17726,"author_id":"Arved+Mark+Ashby"},{"text":"Wisdom comes by disillusionment.","author":"George Santayana","tags":["disillusionment "],"id":19736,"author_id":"George+Santayana"},{"text":"Strike said 'Huh' again, thinking about betrayal, about how everything and everybody were just so much smoke.","author":"Richard Price","tags":["betrayal","disillusionment"],"id":28238,"author_id":"Richard+Price"},{"text":"How can any of us even know what to believe anymore? Our culture’s full of so much phoniness and deception. Companies advertise products to make us believe that we will be more beautiful, more healthy, or live longer by consuming their products. We are seduced by lovers who feed their porn addictions when we’re asleep. We’re taught to believe that if we work hard and take risks, that we can achieve our dreams, yet youth unemployment is the highest it’s been in decades. Fairytales tell us that true love exists, but half of all marriages end in divorce.","author":"Shannon Mullen","tags":["culture","deceptions-in-life","disappointment","disillusionment","dreams","fairytales","relationships"],"id":28998,"author_id":"Shannon+Mullen"},{"text":"In many instances, the failures of my greatest schemes ultimately lead to the fulfillment of my greatest successes. Therefore, God will allow our most cherished dreams to perish so that we might turn and seek out His most cherished plans.","author":"Craig D. Lounsbrough","tags":["bible","biblical","christian","christianity","disappointment","disillusionment","dreams","fail","failure","god","ill-fated","perish","plans","strategies","strategy","succeed","successes"],"id":29293,"author_id":"Craig+D.+Lounsbrough"},{"text":"We must steel ourselves against utopias and be content with a slightly better state.","author":"Will Durant","tags":["disillusionment","fallibility","humility","realism"],"id":31607,"author_id":"Will+Durant"},{"text":"Elisabeth had not had her future and her parents had not had theirs, there was nothing to this so-called future which was always promised to the young.","author":"Ingeborg Bachmann","tags":["disillusionment","future"],"id":32411,"author_id":"Ingeborg+Bachmann"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":91,"pages":10,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}