Quotes About Illusion

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

There is but an inch of difference between the cushioned chamber and the padded cell.

'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view, and robes the mountain in its azure hue.

The things we see are the mind's best bet as to what is out front.

Time is an illusion-to orators.

To see a shadow and think it is a tree-that is a pity; but to see a tree and to think it a shadow can be fatal.

There is less in this than meets the eye.

He who leaves his house in search of happiness pursues a shadow.

We are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

The problem with beauty is that it's like being born rich and getting poorer.

In this fool's paradise, he drank delight

To be in love is merely to be in a state of perpetual anesthesia: To mistake an ordinary young man for a Greek god or an ordinary young woman for a goddess.

Gone - glimmering through the dream of things that were.

Perfection does not exist. To understand this is the triumph of human intelligence; to expect to possess it is the most dangerous kind of madness.

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see. Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be.

People are like birds - from a distance, beautiful: from close up, those sharp beaks, those beady little eyes.

It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

A blind man in a dark room - looking for a black hat which isn't there.

Instead of just recording reality, photographs have become the norm for the way things appear to us, thereby changing the very idea of reality and of realism.

Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting the bull not to attack you because you're a vegetarian.

There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.

You too must not count overmuch on your reality as you feel it today, since, like that of yesterday, it may prove an illusion for you tomorrow.

We do not fight for the real but for shadows we make A flag is a piece of cloth and a word is a sound, But we make them something neither cloth nor a sound Tokens of love and hate, black sorcery stones.

Ah, if the rich were rich as the poor fancy riches!