Quotes About Illusion

One of the more sophisticated dramas that consciousness produces is "me" trying to step out of "my story," the character trying to free itself from itself. This is like a mirage trying to eliminate a mirage, or a phantom trying to pull itself up by its own imaginary bootstraps, or a dog chasing its own tail.

Unlike some who claim that a line in the sand was forever crossed on a particular date in time, no such final event has happened in Joan's story. And, in fact, true enlightenment is not concerned at all with "me" being enlightened.

Nobody else can see us, because we have no objective existence whatsoever, and we cannot see anybody else because they have none.

Only the mirage-like separate fragment, the character in the movie, is concerned about being perfect and not being fooled again. The wholeness of being doesn't mind being fooled. Awareness has no self-image to protect, no self to defend against death. For life itself, there is no end to being fooled and no end to waking up. It is all happening to no one. It's not personal.

Until you learn better, you think that a landscaped world can't hurt you or please you, you needn't bother about its soul, you needn't be wary of its good looks. Until you learn better.

Because I swear to you, sometimes the nastiest shit happens behind the prettiest doors, while everyone laughs and smiles and pretends everything's okay.

Ä°nsanlar yeni kuramlara, yeni deneylere inanm?? gibi görünüyorlard?, ama inançlar? çoÄŸun, biraz kaz?y?nca alt?ndan on binlerce kuÅŸa??n korkular?n?n ve düÅŸlemlerinin bir uzant?s? olan, kat?ks?z ve içten bir dehÅŸetin ortaya ç?kt??? bir yald?zdan baÅŸka bir ÅŸey deÄŸildi.

I never promised you a rose garden.  I never promised you perfect justice…and I never promised you peace or happiness... I never promise lies, and the rose-garden world of perfection is a lie…

The rose-garden world of perfection is a lie... and a bore, too!

Repito que… es mentira el cristal con que me miras; es mentira que dude de dudar; es mentira que más de cien mentiras no digan la verdad.

I bit Tiger Lily, as hard as I could. I don't know how I thought it would help. Fairie bites are worse than wasp stings - they pierce and burn and ache all at the same time. As best, I knew, I'd be swatted away, and at worst she might crush me by accident in her reaction to the pain. But what happened was worse. She didn't seem to notice it at all. It was like Tiger Lily herself wasn't even really there.

The truth doesn't always set you free; people prefer to believe prettier, neatley wrapped lies

The truth doesn't always set you free; people prefer to believe prettier, neatley wrapped lies

Maybe illusion and artifice—lies, even—are a necessary part of romance.

Proof is boring. Proof is tiresome. Proof is an irrelevance. People would far rather be handed an easy lie than search for a difficult truth, especially if it suits their own purposes.

Chose? If you believe that I chose any part of the pitiful shadow of a life you see before you, you are very much mistaken. I chose glory and success. The box did not contain what was written on the lid.

The lowly have small ambitions, and are satisfied with small indulgences. They need not get fair treatment. They need only think that they do...

lies. The hardest kind to see through. The kind you tell yourself.

She also knew that the story you made up in your mind was rarely the real story.

Rose-colored glasses are never made in bifocals because nobody wants to read the small print in dreams.

Heroin is a stand-in, a stop-gap, a mask, for what we believe is missing. Like the "objects" seen by Plato's man in a cave, dope is the shadow cast by cultural movements we can't see directly.

Heroin offers safety, and the illusion of immortality, but it robs you of the possibilities that make holding onto life worthwhile in the first place. And since death will take us all, addicts and never-addicts and former addicts and future addicts, writing about heroin suggests that while we are here, we ought to live, which means, alas, that we allow ourselves to age and to die.

Her mind, long harassed by distress, now yielded to imaginary terrors.

You can put lipstick and earrings on a hog and call it Monique, but it's still a pig.