Quotes About Illusion

Or -- and this she knew was a far more accurate way of looking at it -- the book was true and reality was lying.

It was amazing, this mystic business. You tell them a lie, and then when you don't need it anymore you tell them another lie and tell them they're progressing along the road to wisdom. Then instead of laughing they follow you even more, hoping that at the heart of all the lies they'll find the truth. And bit by bit they accept the unacceptable. Amazing.

Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed anymore.

Just because something is a metaphor doesn't mean it can't be real.

Twoflower didn't just look at the world through rose-tinted spectacles, Rincewind knew--he looked at it through a rose-tinted brain, too, and heard it through rose-tinted ears.

And that's what I don't like about magic, Captain. 'cos it's *magic*. You can't ask questions, it's magic. It doesn't explain anything, it's magic. You don't know where it comes from, it's magic! That's what I don't like about magic, it does everything by magic!

When he was a boy he'd read books about great military campaigns, and visited the museums and looked with patriotic pride at the paintings of famous cavalry charges, last stands and glorious victories. It had come as rather a shock, when he later began to participate in some of these, to find that the painters had unaccountably left out the intestines. Perhaps they just weren't very good at them.

There's a kind of magic in masks. Masks conceal one face, but they reveal another. The one that only comes out in darkness. I bet you could do just what you liked, behind a mask ... ?

And then she woke up and it was all a dream.' It was just about the worst ending you could have to any story.

He was certain he was anorectic, because every time he looked in a mirror he saw a fat man. It was the Archchancellor, standing behind him and shouting at him.

The young man is also an idealist. He has yet to find out that what's in the public interest is not what the public is interested in.

Everything is magic when you don't know what it is. Your sliding rule is a magic wand to most people.

Interesting thing, these fellows never seem to get the idea of perspective-' The Bursar thought, or received the thought: that's because perspective is a lie. If I know a pond is round then why should I draw it oval? I will draw it round because round is true. Why should my brush lie to you just because my eye lies to me?

She wore so much thick white makeup in order to conceal her naturally rosy complexion that if she turned around suddenly her face would probably end up on the back of her head.

Hah! said Granny Weatherwax. I should just say it is a folk song! I knows all about folk songs. Hah! You think you're listenin' to a nice song about...cuckoos and fiddlers and nightingales and whatnot, and then it turns out to be about...something else entirely, she added darkly.

Don't be ridiculous, man, said Ridcully, there's no such thing as dwarf smuggling. Yeah? Then what's that you've got there? I'm a giant, said Casanunda. Giants are a lot bigger. I've been ill.

Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things. Well-known fact," said Granny. "But I don't hold with encouraging it.

Behind him the Master of Ceremonies cleared his throat. His eyes took on a distant, glazed look. The Stealer of Souls, he said in the faraway voice of one whose ears aren't hearing what his mouth is saying, "Defeater of Empires, Swallower of Oceans, Thief of Years, The Ultimate Reality, Harvester of Mankind, the— ALL RIGHT, ALL RIGHT. I CAN SEE MYSELF IN.

What was it they said about the gods? They wouldn't exist if there weren't people to believe in them? And that applied to everything. Reality was what went on inside people's heads.

Believe it. That was the way. Never stop believing. Fool the eye, fool the brain.

La luz cree que viaja más deprisa que nada, pero se equivoca. Por muy rápido que vaya la luz, siempre se encuentra con que la oscuridad ha llegado antes y la está esperando.

That was how it worked. No magic at all. But that time it had been magic. And it didn't stop being magic just because you found out how it was done.

A horse's skull always looks scary, even if someone has put lipstick on it.

A unicorn is nothing more than a big horse that comes to a point, anyway. Nothing to get so excited about.