Quotes About Illusion

An illusion can never be destroyed directly, and only by indirect means can it be radically removed... That is, one must approach from behind the person who is under an illusion.

Behind the world we live in, in the distant background, lies another world standing in roughly the same relation to the former as the stage one sometimes sees in the theatre behind the real stage stands to the latter.

Wenn man die Philosophen von der Wirklichkeit reden hört, so ist das oft ebenso irreführend, wie wenn man im Schaufenster eines Trödlers auf einem Schild die Worte liest: Hier wird gerollt. Wollte man mit seiner Wäsche kommen und sie rollen lassen, so wäre man angeführt. Der Schild hängt nur zum Verkauf da.

Numbers are the most dangerous of all illusions

Ei ajattelu ole yhtään sen arvokkaampaa kuin mielikuvitus tai tunne, vaan niihin rinnastettavaa. Ajattelun ylivalta johtaa harhaan.

Are we so thoroughly convinced that we have attained the highest point that there is nothing left for us but to piously make ourselves believe that we have not got so far — just for the sake of having something left to occupy our time? Is it such a self-deception the present generation has need of, does it need to be trained to virtuosity in self-deception, or is it not rather sufficiently perfected already in the art of deceiving itself?

The act of concealing truth is known as 'aavarana', and that of projecting untruth is called 'vikshepa'. When these occur at the level of an individual, it is known as 'avidya' and when they occur at the level of a group or the world, it is known as 'maya'.

You are a king, she whispered from behind her veils, but you are also a man. Men burn but women smolder; always we are the stronger, and your subjugation of us is an illusion.

No one in life can ever match fiction

When I look through your eyes, I see a disguise, and in that disguise, I see love, and in that love, you are fabulous.

It's funny how you imagine loving someone is enough to make them believe you love them. Thomas to Elizabeth, The Other Side of You

How to forgive the world for its beauty, which merely disguises its ugliness; for its gentleness, which merely cloaks its cruelty; for its illusion of continuity, seamlessly, as the night follows the day, so to speak- whereas in reality life is a series of brutal raptures, falling upon your defenseless hands, like the blows of a woodman's axe?

Only the foolish, blinded by language's conventions, think of fire as red or gold. Fire is blue at its melancholy rim, green in its envious heart. It may burn white, or even, in its greatest rages, black.

I fell victim to the temptation of every autobiographer, to the illusion that since the past exists only in one's memories and the words which strive vainly to encapsulate them, it is possible to create past events simply by saying they occurred.

The inevitable triumph of illusion over reality that was the single most obvious truth about the history of the human race.

People think they are all sort of things they aren't' he had sad. 'They think they are talented when they're not; they think they're powerful when they're actually just bullies; they think they're good when they're bad. People fools themselves all the time, and they don't know that they're fools

America had left reality behind and entered the comic-book universe.

He was the child of a father who was not his father; but also the child of a time which damaged reality so badly that nobody ever managed to put it together again;

this is our tragedy, she said in his words, our fictions are killing us, but if we didn't have those fictions, maybe that would kill us too.

Naught but love makes magic real.

So the film was a kind of lie, because by existing it said: 'Observe the lengths we'll go to for your security. We'll even make you a movie about it.' Style instead of substance, the image instead of the reality

Africa, have you seen it? No? Then is it truly there?...And the past, did it happen? And the future, will it come? Believe in your own eyes and you'll get into a lot of trouble'.

Reality can have metaphorical content; that does not make it less real.

There is no bitterness like that of man who finds out he has been believing in a ghost.