Quotes About Illusion

Ist es Zauberei, wenn dein Auge zu langsam ist, meiner Hand zu folgen?" "Kein Mensch kann sich ohne Zauberei so schnell bewegen", beharrte Mandred. Der Anflug eines Lächelns spielte um Ollowains Lippen. "Ganz recht, Mandred. Kein Mensch.

why does what was beautiful shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths?

I knew none of it then - if indeed I know any of it now and am not just making patterns in the air.

Why does what was beautiful suddenly shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths?

A life made up of advances that were actually frantic retreats and victories that were concealed defeats.

Por qué? ¿Por qué lo que fue hermoso, cuando miramos atrás, se nos vuelve quebradizo al saber que ocultaba verdades amargas?

If we were all given by magic the power to read each other's thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be almost all friendships would be dissolved; the second effect, however, might be excellent, for a world without any friends would be felt to be intolerable, and we should learn to like each other without needing a veil of illusion to conceal from ourselves that we did not think each other absolutely perfect.

Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.

Man is essentially a dreamer, wakened sometimes for a moment by some peculiarly obtrusive element in the outer world, but lapsing again quickly into the happy somnolence of imagination.

The lunatic who thinks he is a crowned head may be, in a sense, happy, but his happiness is not of a kind that any sane person would envy.

A victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.

We all start from "naive realism," i.e., the doctrine that things are what they seem. We think that grass is green, that stones are hard, and that snow is cold. But physics assures us that the greenness of grass, the hardness of stones, and the coldness of snow are not the greenness of grass, the hardness of stones, and the coldness of snow that we know in our own experience, but something very different

Wealth can often purchase not only the semblance of love but its reality. This is unjust and undesirable but nonetheless a fact.

But if the reality is not what appears, have we any means of knowing whether there is any reality at all? And if so, have we any means of finding out what it is like?

Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows naive realism to be false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false; therefore it is false.

The discovery of geometry had intoxicated them, and its a priori deductive method appeared capable of universal application. They would prove, for instance, that all reality is one, that there is no such thing as change, that the world of sense is a world of mere illusion; and the strangeness of their results gave them no qualms because they believed in the correctness of their reasoning.

It seems that sin is geographical. From this conclusion, it is only a small step to the further conclusion that the notion of 'sin' is illusory, and that the cruelty habitually practised in punishing it is unnecessary.

Although personal survival after death is an illusion, there is nevertheless something in the human mind that is eternal

The drunkard who sees snakes does not imagine, afterwards, that he has had a revelation of a reality hidden from others […]. From a scientific point of view, we can make no distinction between the man who eats little and sees heaven and the man who drinks much and sees snakes.

Thinking that you know when in fact you don't is a fatal mistake, to which we are all prone.

It seemed that the printers of the African maps had a slightly malicious habit of including, in large letters, the names of towns, junctions, and villages which, while most of them did exist in fact, as a group of thatched huts may exist or a water hole, they were usually so inconsequential as completely to escape discovery from the cockpit.

Of this I'm certain: If in our pursuit of greater knowledge God seems to have gotten smaller, we have been deceived.

If in our pursuit of knowledge God seems to have gotten smaller, we have been deceived.

Delusion never delivers.