Quotes About Illusion

That's why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.

Says he, "I am a handsome man, but I'm a gay deceiver."

Fear is and has always been dead. It's how we picture it that makes fear come to life.

What difference is there, do you think, between those in Plato's cave who can only marvel at the shadows and images of various objects, provided they are content and don't know what they miss, and the philosopher who has emerged from the cave and sees the real things?

Love gilds us over and makes us show fine things to one another for a time, but soon the gold wears off, and then again the native brass appears.

Generally when there's a lot of smoke...there's just a whole lot more smoke.

There are those who wrap themselves in flags and blow the tinny trumpet of patriotism as a means of fooling the people.

Sentient beings are spectacular liars. We are gifted with an unparalleled ability to deny things that make our life unpleasant. We even pretend death isn't a certainty, because contemplating our own mortality drives us mad.

Christopher was right. We looked at the past with rose-colored glasses.

Sometimes, when you crave certain feelings, you'll trick yourself into thinking the other person is something other than what he appears.

He drew me like a damn magnet. I wanted him more than I'd ever wanted anybody before in my life. For those few moments, he'd made me feel safe, wanted, needed, desirable, but it was an illusion. I had to get a grip.

Why don't you just leave? Leave and live your life the way you want to. You're free to make your own choices." "No," he said. "Freedom is an illusion. We are bound by restraints on every turn. Family, clan, religion, morals, duties; all those are restraints. For someone on the crossroads of worlds, you're naive." "If you can't have your freedom, then what's the point of all this?" "Give

If I closed my eyes, I could almost convince myself it was Dad grilling outside rather than some werewolf with entitlement issues.

It wasn't even real. The thing between me and Curran. It wasn't real. I deluded myself. I had this aching need to be loved and it was screwing with my head. Sometimes, when you crave certain feelings, you'll trick yourself into thinking the other person is something other than what he appears.

I stared at him. He didn't look fazed. It took me a full ten seconds to realize he couldn't see my psycho stare through the vampire's eyes. Nice going there, champ.

Every convincing lie had some truth to it.

northern San Diego. The white stucco walls rose, interrupted by huge windows. The whole structure nearly floated off the pavement, sleek, modern, and somehow light, almost delicate. The salt-spiced wind blowing from the coast less than a mile away only strengthened the illusion. He'd

Okay," Juke said. "Your horse is a donkey, your poodle is a giant wolf breed, and your boyfriend is whatever the hell he is. You have problems.

it was the duty of philosophy to destroy the illusions which had their origin in misconceptions, whatever darling hopes and valued expectations may be ruined by its explanations.

It is the Land of Truth (enchanted name!), surrounded by a wide and stormy ocean, the true home of illusion, where many a fog bank and ice, that soon melts away, tempt us to believe in new lands, while constantly deceiving the adventurous mariner with vain hopes, and involving him in adventures which he can never leave, yet never bring to an end.

Hence we may at once dismiss as easily foreseen but futile objection, "that by our admitting the ideality of space and of time the whole sensible world would be turned into mere illusion.

For if we regard space and time as properties that must, as regards their possibility, be found in things in themselves, [...] then we really cannot blame the good Bishop Berkeley for degrading bodies to mere illusion. Nay, even our own existence, which would thus be made dependent on the self-subsistent reality of a non-entity such as time, would, along with this time, be changed into mere illusion - an absurdity of which hitherto no one has been guilty.

Things which we see are not by themselves what we see.

For with regard to nature, it is indeed experience which supplies us with the rule and is the source of truth; with regard to moral laws, however, experience is, alas!, but the mother of illusion; and it is altogether reprehensible either to derive or to try to limit the laws of what we ought to do from what is done.