Quotes About Illusion

The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

There are more nasty things in pretty packages in the world than most people would believe.

often, one can be in love with who they think someone is, while being blinded by their own desires. And just as often, instead of being in love with a lover, one is in love with love.

Or until one side or another found some weapon so vile, so destructive, that it would sweep from the Western Front to the Eastern Front in a path of lunatic carnage, leaving nothing alive on the entire continent . . . and he no longer had the illusion that such a weapon, if found, would not be used.

And when it comes down to cases, everything written is at least in part a fantasy. Except maybe for the national budget. That's horror.

No eye may see dispassionately. There is no comprehension at a glance. Only the recognition of damsel, horse or fly and the assumption of damsel, horse or fly; and so with dreams and beyond, for what haunts the heart will, when it is found, leap foremost, blinding the eye and leaving the main of Life in darkness.

who can tell in which direction the minds of phantoms move?)

The flâneur turned out to be a first signal of reaction – not a figure of self- realization, mastery, celebration of the modern – but a dupe who was so thrilled to be part of the crowd of consumers, who yielded to appearance, to pure illusion, and failed ultimately to gain self-understanding, let alone class-consciousness. In this regard, at least, the prostitute has a clearer consciousness, for it is not possible for her to be recuperated so easily.

To the outside world, of course, this job is a cinch: 9 to 3, five days a week, two months' summer vacation with pay, all legal holidays, prestige and respect. My mother, for example, has the pleasant notion that my day consists of nodding graciously to the rustle of starched curtsies and a chorus of respectful voices bidding me good morning.

Since we live in a society that promotes faddism and temporary superficial adaptation of different values, we are easily convinced that changes have occurred in arenas where there has been little or no change.

Heightened awareness often gives the illusion that a problem is lessening. This is most often not the case. It may mean simply that a problem has become so widespread it can no longer remain hidden or be ignored.

The rhetoric of feminism with its emphasis on resistance, rebellion, and revolution created an illusion of militancy and radicalism that masked the fact that feminism was in no way a challenge or a threat to capitalist patriarchy.

male fantasy is seen as something that can create reality, whereas female fantasy is regarded as pure escape

Las Vegas might be easier to take if I understood it not as a city but as a dream the desert is dreaming about itself. I found the thought reassuring even if it means, as it must, that I am a part of the dream too, and it will soon transmute into another dream, as dreams always do, and then disappear and fade quickly from the recollections of the dreamer, whoever that may be.

everybody thought that if only they could get in front of a camera they could show people the real them. Had they learned nothing from watching the very shows they aspired to be on? Could they not see that between them and the public whom they wished to influence stood the edit? And the edit would make of them what it pleased. It would not necessarily be brutal, it might as easily create a hero as a villain, but what it would never ever do was show anybody as they genuinely were.

CORV: Honour! tut, a breath: There's no such thing, in nature: a mere term Invented to awe fools.

But soft: I hear Some vicious fool draw near, That cries, we dream, and swears there's no such thing...

If you roll the dice often enough you always get the numbers you want. If I tell you the sun will shine tomorrow and that it will rain and there will be snow and that clouds will cover the sky and that wind will blow and that it will be a calm day and that thunder will deafen us, then one of those things will turn out to be true and you'll forget the rest because you want to believe that I really can tell the future.

Acho que o Santo Graal é um sonho que os homens têm, um sonho de que é possível tornar o mundo perfeito. Se ele existisse, todos nós teríamos sabido que o sonho não pode se transformar em realidade.

In the dark, lord, all cats are black.

Lust is the deceiver. Lust wrenches our lives until nothing matters except the one we think we love, and under that deceptive spell we kill for them, give all for them, and then, when we have what we have wanted, we discover that it is all an illusion and nothing is there. Lust is a voyage to nowhere, to an empty land, but some men just love such voyages and never care about the destination.

Wonderboy flashed in the sun. It caught the sphere where it was biggest. A noise like a twenty-one gun salute cracked the sky. There was a straining, ripping sound and a few drops of rain spattered to the ground. The ball screamed toward the pitcher and seemed suddenly to dive down at his feet. He grabbed it to throw to first and realized to his horror that he held only the cover. The rest of it, unraveling cotton thread as it rode, was headed into the outfield.

TREVES: Plato believed this was all a world of illusion and that artists made illusions of illusions of heaven. MERRICK: You mean we are all just copies? Of originals? TREVES: That's it. MERRICK: Who made the copies? TREVES: God. The Demi-urge. MERRICK (goes back to work): He should have used both hands shouldn't he?

Ils ont découvert le principe de la «lettre volée» d'Edgar Allan Poe : le meilleur cachette est celle qui crève les yeux, car on pense toujours à aller chercher plus loin ce qui se trouve tout près.