Quotes About Illusion

I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions; I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, location are functions. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain.

Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see, but it is impossible. Humans hide their secrets too well....

This is not a pipe.

Mr. Happiness is an illusion created by pharmaceutical companies.

Maya, Indian goddess of illusions. Siren of shipwrecked sailors. If only you lactated Pinot Noir, you'd be perfect.

At first, yes. But a long intimacy frees you of that illusion, and it also acquaints you with their scantiness of character. The effect they have produced on you is only their bluff. There is not such a thing as too much beauty.

Subtlety chases the obvious up a never-ending spiral and never quite catches it.

Such is the ability of man to believe in what at any time he finds it convenient to believe, they may actually have convinced themselves that they were speaking the truth.

On the other side, apartment blocks—intact except for the fronts, which had been completely blown off, revealing the rooms and furniture within—stood like giant doll's houses.

Every problem perceived to be 'out there' is really nothing more than a misperception within your own thinking." Byron Katie, from Loving What Is

While we are subjected to the night dream, everything seems to be real. If we see a tiger, we are afraid because we don't know that we are creating the tiger. If we knew that we couldn't possibly be afraid, could we? This demonstrates that an illusion can seem to be quite real while we are subjected to it, even though, when we become aware of its illusory nature, we understand that it was we who were creating it all along." Francis Lucille, from Truth Love Beauty

Clearly the world wasn't as natural as we had always assumed. Someone or something had designed it, a joker perhaps, or if geology really was responsible, then blind physical forces had no less a sense of humour than the gods, which is not implausible.

Ratones arriba, que todo lo blanco no es harina.

Estoy convencido de que nunca nos sucede nada que no hayamos previsto, nada para lo que no estemos preparados. Nos han tocado malos tiempos, como a todos los hombres, y hay que aprender a vivir sin ilusiones

El tiempo no existe —anota en las hojas de papel periódico que siempre ha usado— porque no sólo es una ficción, sino que le ha estado sucediendo a cada cual». Sin embargo, son las 8:30 p.m.

Every word was a cheat. Every thought and feeling was false. I played the game. Everything I touched, I cheapened.

She pulled him through the door. As he passed the jamb from the dingy hallway it was like stepping into a Gilbert Morosco party. Lines wavered, planes warped, colors blended and changed and formed unfathomable patterns; odors penetrated his head, drove openings through passages

Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it.

You know how you let yourself think that everything will be all right if you can only get to a certain place or do a certain thing. But when you get there you find it's not that simple.

All photos are accurate. None of them is the truth.

There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.

As great-grandchildren of the Enlightenment, we like to think of ourselves as free moral agents, choosing rationally among possible actions, but Scripture unmasks that cheerful illusion and teaches us that we are deeply infected by the tendency to self-deception.

When the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov visited Washington in 1942, he'd been invited to sleep at the White House. "I think," Roosevelt told Churchill in 1942 referring to Stalin, "that if I give him everything I can and ask him for nothing in return, noblesse oblige, he won't try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace." The American president clung to that illusion until his death in April 1945.

Alexander then placed two extra mirrors either side of the original mirror that he had been using. He quickly noticed that, although he had been convinced that he was putting his head forward, he was in fact pulling his head back with even more tension than before. He realised that he was a victim of what he termed faulty sensory appreciation. In other words, he felt that he was doing one thing when, in fact, he was really doing the opposite.