Quotes About Illusion

belief is to knowledge as shadow is to original

For he has found that even his senses deceive him, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once. He puts to himself the objection that only madmen (who say that they are dressed in purple when they are naked, or that their heads are made of earthenware, or that they are pumpkins or made of glass -- madmen were evidently pretty colorful in the seventeenth century) deny the very obvious evidence of their senses.

I was living life like in one of those Disney movies, where I genuinely believed nobody was ever going to die

A kite can't really fly free,that's just an expression. In order to soar high in the sky the string of a kite needs to be anchored. If the string breaks the kite drops back to the ground. The kite's freedom depends on it not being as free as he thinks it is.

Glamour could be defined as the lie you tell so well you believe it yourself, and make others believe it too.

counselling man to treat her as a slave while persuading her that she is a queen.

Mystery is never more than a mirage that vanishes as we draw near to look at it.

Mais le pire, quand on habite une prison sans barreaux, c'est qu'on n'a pas même conscience des écrans qui bouchent l'horizon; j'errais à travers un épais brouillard, et je le croyais transparent. Les choses qui m'échappaient, je n'en entrevoyais même pas la présence.

In those days we saw every sort of object as though it were one of those tiny handkerchiefs from which a conjuror can produce silk scarfs, streamers, flags, and yards of ribbon. A cup of coffee became a kaleidoscope in which we could spend ages watching the mutable reflections of ceiling or chandelier.

Pero, efectivamente, debo esforzarme. Y no sólo por táctica: por moral. He tenido exactamente la vida que quise: tengo que merecer ese privilegio. Si flaqueo ante el primer tropiezo, todo lo que pienso acerca de mi misma no es sino ilusión.

Many young couples give the impression of perfect equality. But as long as the man has economic responsibility for the couple, it is just an illusion.

An imaginary divinity has been given to man so that he may strip himself of it.

Desire is impossible: it destroys its object. Lovers cannot be one, nor can Narcissus be two. Don Juan, Narcissus. Because to desire something is impossible, we have to desire what is nothing

He who believes in God is in danger of a still greater illusion—that of attributing to grace what is simply an essentially mechanical effect of nature.

Les choses sensibles sont réelles en tant que choses sensibles, mais irréelles en tant que biens. L'apparence a la plénitude de la réalité, mais en tant qu'apparence. En tant qu'autre chose qu'apparence, elle est erreur. (...) Le temps, à proprement parler, n'existe pas (sinon le présent comme limite), et pourtant c'est à cela que nous sommes soumis. Telle est notre condition. Nous sommes soumis à ce qui n'existe pas.

we are always entertaining the delusion that we will go on forever in this world. The result is that the very things which ought to be of assistance to us in our pilgrimage through life, become chains which bind us.

But see here now! Do you actually mean to tell me, Fran, that you think that just moving from Zenith to Paris is going to change everything in your life and make you a kid again? Don't you realize that probably most people in Paris are about like most people here, or anywhere else?

He reflected that Fran had an unsurpassed show-window display but not much on the shelves inside.

I followed you.' I saw no one.' That is what you may expect to see when I follow you.

Evidência circunstancial é uma coisa ilusória - respondeu Holmes de modo pensativo; - pode demonstrar claramente determinado pormenor, mas se você alterar o seu ponto de vista, por pouco que seja, poderá notar que a evidência aponta de modo comprometedor noutra direcção completamente oposta.

you know a conjurer gets no credit when once he has explained his trick and if I show too much of my method of working, you will come to the conclusion that I am a very ordinary individual after all. -Sherlock Holmes

Lucy Ashton, in short, was involved in those mazes of the imagination which are most dangerous to the young and the sensitive. Time, it is true, absence, change of place and of face, might probably have destroyed the illusion in her instance as it has done in many others.

I saw the delicate, pink-mottled claw meat poking seductively through its blanket of mayonnaise and the bland yellow pear cup with its rim of alligator-green cradling the whole mess. Poison.

Devote the mind to confusion and we know only too well, if we´re honest, that it will become a dark master of confusion, adept in its addictions, subtle and perversely supple in its slaveries. Devote it in meditation to the task of freeing itself from illusion, and we will find that, with time, patience, discipline, and the right training, our mind will begin to unknot itself and know its essential bliss and clarity.