Quotes About Illusion

Left him delighted with the imaginary Audition of the phantasmal sea-surge

He had moved amid her phantasmagoria, Amid her galaxies

Reality is what trips you up when you walk around with your eyes closed.

And if you show me a mathematical formula, all you are showing me is a piece of paper with strange markings on it, and I have no way of knowing not only whether the markings are actually there, but whether the piece of paper exists.

Here's to alcohol, the rose colored glasses of life.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us.

Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father's business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty.

Here's to alcohol, the rose colored glasses of life.

on the outside, and all of

Men always fall for frigid women because they put on the best show.

Odd, some might think. Why someone would need to travel so far to find oneself. Surely a look in the mirror would suffice, and wouldn't that be cheaper too? But the mirror lies, and the eyes that do the looking conspire too.

Guess you play the part of God long enough, you begin to believe your own method acting.

Los hombres, de pequeños, jugaban a la guerra y se batían con armas de juguete. De grandes, seguían jugando a la guerra con armas verdaderas. El mundo estaba gobernado por niños que se creían adultos.

Adesso ella intravvedeva, più distintamente di prima, una cosa orribile: la morte di quell'amore... [...]. No; l'errore era stato suo, nell'aver prestato fede a quell'uomo. Scettico e ambizioso, declamatore e vano, ella lo vedeva qual era.

E che volete che venga a fare? Per vedere l'elefante di piazza del Duomo? Voialtri vi siete fitto in capo che questa sia una città, e non volete capire che invece è un miserabile paesuccio ignorato nel resto del mondo. Donn'Isabella, dite voi: quando mai l'avete udito nominare, fuori?...»

I even see the cinema itself as a woman, with its alternation of light and darkness, of appearing and disappearing images

Only a single bird is singing. The air is cloning it. We hear through mirrors.

La nostalgia terrible de una vida perdida, el fatal sentimiento de haber nacido tarde, o la ilusión inquieta de un mañana imposible con la inquietud cercana del dolor de la carne.

The labyrinths that time creates vanish. (Only the desert remains.) The heart, fountain of desire, vanishes. (Only the desert remains.) The illusion of dawn and kisses vanish. Only the desert remains. Undulating desert.

No nos salvan las solitarias en los vidrios, ni los herbolarios donde el metafísico encuentra las otras vertientes del cielo. Son mentira las formas. Sólo existe el círculo de bocas del oxígeno.

When writers and psychologists believe they've illuminated reality, they are referring to something else: they transform the dark reality into a bright reality and then it's no longer reality with its real color, quality, and condition--instead they set forth a reality of their own heads that has nothing to do with the events spontaneously occurring in the spirit.

I was in the situation of someone who has assumed, all his life, that madness was on eway, and suddenly in its grip, discovers that it is not only different from the way he'd imagined but that the person suffering from it is someone else, and that this someone else is not interested in finding out what madness is like: he is simply immersed in it, or it has descended on him, and that's that.

When enough people share a short-lived delusion, vast sums of money can be acquired overnight.

Getting rich is mostly sleight of hand, but if you acquire no audience but a mirror, then there is no illusion with which to get rich. Paper