Quotes About Illusion

Soon finding, however, that either she or the image was unreal, she turned elsewhere for better pastime.

By thy first step awry thou didst plant the germ of evil; but since that moment, it has all been a dark necessity. Ye that have wronged me are not sinful, save in a kind of typical illusion; neither am I fiend-like, who have snatched a fiend's office from his hands. It is our fate. Let the black flower blossom as it may!

I find nothing so singular in life as that everything appears to lose its substance the instant one actually grapples with it.

Her simple, careless, childish flow of spirits often made me sad. She seemed to me like a butterfly at play in a flickering bit of sunshine, and mistaking it for broad and eternal summer. We sometimes hold mirth to stricter accountability than sorrow; it must show good cause, or the echo of its laughter comes back drearily.

They are unavoidable at this moment, standing, as you do, on the outer verge of your long seclusion, and peopling the world with ugly shapes, which you will soon find to be as unreal as the giants and ogres of a child's story-book. I find nothing so singular in life, as that everything appears to lose its substance the instant one actually grapples with it. So it will be with what you think so terrible.

Ninety-nine people out of a hundred, I suppose, would have been frightened out of their wits by the very first of his ugly shapes, and would have taken to their heels at once. For, one of the hardest things in this world is, to see the difference between real dangers and imaginary ones.

The young deemed themselves happy. The elder spirits, if they knew that mirth was but the counterfeit of happiness, yet followed the false shadow willfully, because at least her garments glittered brightest. Sworn triflers of a lifetime, they would not venture among the sober truths of life not even to be truly blest.

Había dicho la pura verdad y, sin embargo, la había transformado en la peor de las falsedades.

They looked neither older nor younger now; the beards of the aged were no whiter, nor could the creeping babe of yesterday walk on his feet today...

My poor, dear, pretty Feathertop! There are thousands upon thousands of coxcombs and charlatans in the world, made up of just such a jumble of wornout, forgotten, and good-for-nothing trash as he was! Yet they live in fair repute, and never see themselves for what they are. And why should my poor puppet be the only one to know himself and perish for it?

No encuentro nada tan singular en la vida como el hecho de que todo parece perder su substancia en el instante en que uno va a tocarlo.

My father and mother fed my sister and me on a diet of romantic dreams just as though they were giving us candy. Gradually the dreams wore thin, until in the end they wasted away to nothing.

the most powerful source of his appeal as well as his greatest legacy may be that Walt Disney, more than any other American artist, defined the terms of wish fulfillment and demonstrated on a grand scale to his fellow Americans, and ultimately to the entire world, how one could be empowered by fantasy—how one could learn, in effect, to live within one's own illusions and even to transform the world into those illusions.

Forget solar energy—if you could harness denial, it would power the world for generations.

The only thing you have for measuring what's real is your mind . . . so what happens when your mind becomes a pathological liar?

They all think medicine should be magic, and they become mad at me when it's not.

Don Quixote - the famous literary madman - fought windmills. People think he saw giants when he looked at them, but those of us who've been there know the truth. He saw windmills, just like everyone else - but he believed they were giants. The scariest thing of all is never knowing what you're suddenly going to believe.

But this isn't a perfect world. The problem is people who think it is. -Connor

Sometimes, though, you make a pact with yourself. I'll pretend there's nothing wrong if you pretend there's nothing wrong. It's called denial, and it's one of the strongest pacts in the world. Just ask all those people who were still drinking champagne while the Titanic went down.

Just as the airplane graveyard was Heaven disguised as Hell, harvest camp is Hell masquerading Heaven.

No, says Ariana. It was a dream. Reality got in the way, that's all.

There are two things you know. One: You were there. Two: You couldn't have been there.

The illusion of purpose is critical to a well-adjusted population.

You see demons in the eyes of the world, and the world sees bottomless pit in yours.