Quotes About Illusion

Reality has a way of summoning the shadows," I tell him. Fareem laughs his worldly laugh. "Is that the

We are unhappy, he explained, because we are slaves to our desires. Extinguish desire and suffering goes with it. If people could be taught that the physical or phenomenal world is illusion, then they would cease their attachment to it, thereby finding release from their self-destructive mental bondage.

the ignorant and the simple minded, not knowing that the world is what is seen of Mind itself, cling to the multitudinousness of external objects, cling to the notions of being and non-being, oneness and otherness, bothness and not-bothness, existence and non-existence, eternity and non-eternity. . .

Many people who live in expensive homes and drive luxury cars do not actually have much wealth. Then, we discovered something even odder: Many people who have a great deal of wealth do not even live in upscale neighborhoods.

Man is fed with fables through life, and leaves it in the belief he knows something of what has been passing, when in truth he has known nothing but what has passed under his own eye.

St. Teresa of Avila wrote: 'All difficulties in prayer can be traced to one cause: praying as if God were absent.' This is the conviction that we bring with us from early childhood and apply to everyday life and to our lives in general. It gets stronger as we grow up, unless we are touched by the Gospel and begin the spiritual journey. This journey is a process of dismantling the monumental illusion that God is distant or absent.

Closure is a greasy little word which, moreover, describes a nonexistent condition.

Under feigned jest Are things conceal'd that else would breed unrest.

It has always seemed to me that my existence consisted purely and exclusively of nothing but the most outrageous nonsense.

The human phenomenon is but the sum Of densely coiled layers of illusion Each of which winds itself on the supreme insanity That there are persons of any kind When all there can be is mindless mirrors Laughing and screaming as they parade about in an endless dream

No one gives up on something until it turns on them, whether or not that thing is real or unreal.

Look at your body— A painted puppet, a poor toy Of jointed parts ready to collapse, A diseased and suffering thing With a head full of false imaginings. —The Dhammapada

The only value of this world lay in its power - at certain times - to suggest another world.

People get the biggest kick out of seeing the features of their faces plastered onto one head.

In plain language, we cannot live except as self-deceivers who must lie to ourselves about ourselves, as well as about our unwinnable situation in this world.

There is no nature to things,' you wrote in the book. 'There are no faces except masks held tight against the pitching chaos behind them.

If things are not what they seem—and we are forever reminded that this is the case—then it must also be observed that enough of us ignore this truth to keep the world from collapsing.

we must make believe that we are not what we are—contradictory beings whose continuance only worsens our plight as mutants who embody the contorted logic of a paradox.

To repeat: we can tolerate existence only if we believe—in accord with a complex of illusions, a legerdemain of impenetrable deception—that we are not what we are. We are creatures with consciousness, but we must suppress that consciousness lest it break us with a sense of being in a universe without direction or foundation. In plain language, we cannot live with ourselves except as impostors.

And so I had to turn corners inside-out with my eyes and to read the third side of a book's page, seeking in futility to gaze at what I could then touch with none of my senses.

It all seemed so enticing, but like every other attraction along the world's midway the greatest part of its appeal lay in those moments of anticipation. And after it was all over, the particular attraction which had once promised so much would send you on your way unrewarded, purged of your curiosity and the poorer for being so.

An individual's demarcations as a being, not his trespass of them, create his identity and preserve his illusion of being something special and not a freak of chance, a product of blind mutations. Transcending all illusions and their emergent activities—having absolute control of what we are and not what we need to be so that we may survive the most unsavory facts of life and death—would untether us from the moorings of our self-limited selves.

Abbiamo bisogno di sapere che le marionette sono marionette. Ciononostante, potrebbero ancora farci paura. Perché, se osserviamo la marionetta in un certo modo, è come se ci guardassimo indietro, non come esseri umani ma come marionette. Parrebbe di essere sul punto di prendere vita. In questi momenti di lieve confusione, si manifesta un conflitto psicologico, una percezione dissonante che attraversa il nostro essere con una convulsione di orrore soprannaturale.

But stories, even very nasty ones, are traditionally considered more satisfying than reality—which, as we all know, is a grossly overrated affair.