Quotes About Illusion

It is for such reasons that a whole generation of social psychologists recommended "positive illusions" as the only reliable route to mental health.69 Their credo? Let a lie be your umbrella. A more dismal, wretched, pessimistic philosophy can hardly be imagined: things are so terrible that only delusion can save you.

The human capacity for imagination makes us capable of dreaming up and creating alternative worlds. This is the ultimate source of our creativity. With that singular capacity, however, comes the counterpart, the opposite side of the coin: we can deceive ourselves and others into believing and acting as if things are other than we know they are.

Now I knew how women felt when they thought they were going to get a diamond ring and ended up with an onion ring

knowing often felt preferable to not knowing. It provided the illusion of control.

They're running the con on themselves.

Hal Yakzuby le enseñó algo, no directamente, pero si indirectamente que los humanos quieren ser engañados. A veces tienen la verdad ante sus ojos y la ignoran, la desprecian, la desprecian, no la aceptan.

Decía que la vida era igual que una película, pero sin Rita Hayworth.

Los poetas levantan castillos en el aire, los locos los habitan, y alguien, en la vida real, cobra el alquiler».

Tem certas flores, você já reparou?, que são belas e perfumadas enquanto estão nos galhos, nos jardins. Levadas pros jarros, mesmo jarros de prata, ficam murchas e morrem.

She was a glass snake. She wasn't poisonous but she sowed affliction just by going among men-mysteriously, like a miracle" (385)

Lá iniciara Inês sua plantação de chifres e podia afirmar, com pleno conhecimento de causa, existirem condições propícias ao exercício da boa lavoura com seguro penhor de colheita farta. Discretíssimos castelos, bangalôs ocultos entre coqueiros em praias selvagens, com a brisa e o mar, um sonho. Quanto a rapazes, havia cada um!

Hay ciertas flores, ¿ya lo ha notado?, que son hermosas y perfumadas mientras están en los tallos, en los jardines. Cuando se las pone en jarrones, aunque sean de plata, se marchitan y mueren.

Ese árbol que ves allí —me dijo, señalando un eucalipto— es un cedro.

The image of the Lord had been replaced by a mirror.

The mind was dreaming. The world was its dream.

escribo porque me gusta vivir las vidas vicarias que se multiplican en mis tramas y porque, aun reconociendo la vacuidad de la empresa, finjo así que el mundo importa

Om te overleven moet je jezelf wijsmaken dat de werkelijkheid anders is dan-ie is. Dat lukt en je overleeft. Maar hoe kom je er dan nog achter wat die werkelijkheid was? En is?

since it needs a singularly large dose of goodwill to believe that the governing classes are respectable and that the lower classes are worthy of assistance or compassion, it seems to me,' des Esseintes concluded, 'to be neither ridiculous nor insane to ask of my fellow man a sum total of illusion barely equal to that which he spends each day on his idiotic purposes,

Movement, after all, seemed futile to him. He felt that imagination could easily be substituted for the vulgar realities of things.

Mme. Chantelouve would never realize the ideal he had fashioned for himself, the tantalizing features, the agile, wild animal body, the melancholy and ardent bearing, which he had dreamed. Indeed, the mere fact of knowing the unknown rendered her less desirable, more vulgar. Accessibility killed the chimera.

Indeed, the mere fact of knowing the unknown rendered her less desirable, more vulgar. Accessibility killed the chimera.

Supuso, entonces, que ya había muerto, y que iba subiendo entre tanta y tanta estrella, subiendo muy suavemente camino directo del cielo. Después cerró los ojos. Estaba tan agotada que no se dio cuenta de que sólo en ese instante moría, y no antes, cuando creyó ver a todas las constelaciones rodeándola.

I once asked the servants why none of them had blue eyes like my aunts. They replied that only the ladies could afford to buy the blue glass cups in which they kept their eyes at night to make them more blue and beautiful, and furthermore, if we went on asking silly questions, the rats that steal the faces of inquisitive children in order to wear them as masks would come to take us to live in the twilit world between the ceiling and the roof where no one ever dared to go.

Y porque se comenzaba a aburrir de comprobar que esas elegancias no eran más que subterfugios, Jerónimo regresó a su tierra americana, burda y primitiva, en busca de obligaciones que dieran nobleza a su libertad. ¿Pero cómo tomar la resolución de incorporarse a un mundo cuyas verdades más altas son decretadas por un guiso de congrio en escabeche?