Quotes About Illusion

Each note Cobb wrote contained a rave review of his abilities over a fictitious signature. "Ty Cobb is really tearing up the horsehide in the Tennessee-Alabama League—Jack Smith." Instead of sending off these pieces right away, Ty would drop them in mailboxes at various points along the Steelers' circuit, the better to create the impression of a grassroots movement.

Decorate your home. It gives the illusion that your life is more interesting than it really is.

The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science.

And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but the truth in masquerade.

Greatest trick ever played on mankind is that somewhere, somebody sold us a bill of goods convincing us that evil ain't real." I

Nobody goes to a zoo to dream about dragons.

Even if they never got anything for it, it was cheap at that price. Without malice aforethought I had given them the best show that was ever staged in their territory since the landing of the Pilgrims! It was easily worth fifteen million bucks to watch me put the thing over.

It's true that the importance of illusion in human life is not to be underestimated, but for the Christian it is essential to have a hope which is based on solid foundations." —LETTERS AND PAPERS FROM PRISON

According to Democritus, truth lies at the bottom of a well, the water of which serves as a mirror in which objects may be reflected. I have heard, however, that some philosophers, in seeking for truth, to pay homage to her, have seen their own image and adored it instead.

Are you sure twice two are four? Not at all. A certain percentage of the human race are insane and subject to illusions. It may be you are one of them, and that your idea that twice two is four is a lunatic notion, and your seeming recollection that other people think so, the baseless fabric of a vision.

And of course, for all we know, I might be a hundred years old already, and she just a sleepy little girl with glasses.

Not the least charm of this tableau is that it can be so easily dismissed as preposterous.

You're here, supposedly, in a new land full of opportunity, but somehow have gotten trapped in a pretend version of the old country.

The thing about building a castle in the air is it's easy. You build up. It's like a little ladder, then you start building a castle in the air. Then, you destroy the ladder. And your castle is floating.

Once that gets going, doors start opening until they're all open, the whole building buzzing until sunrise, as if nothing matters because nothing does matter because the idea was you came here, your parents and their parents and their parents, and you always seem to have just arrived and yet never seem to have actually arrived. You're here, supposedly, in a new land full of opportunity, but somehow have gotten trapped in a pretend version of the old country.

It's a staircase in a house built by the construction firm of Escher and Sons.

Society? Can we trust us? Doubt it. We're probably not even real, as was revealed in the popular documentary The Matrix. That bloke next door? Made of pixels. Your co-workers? Pixels. You? One pixel. One measly pixel. You haven't even got shoes, for Christ's sake.

Cupcakes are for people who can't handle reality.

Actually, perhaps they're just trying to remind themselves where they are. After all, sitting there with Jeremy [Kyle] and his iridescent pupils glistening before them, confronted by a studio audience so ugly they'd make John Merrick spew down the inside of his face-bag, the poor sods could be forgiven for forgetting they were on national television and starting to believe they were somewhere in the bowels of hell instead.

If people know how it's done, all the magic goes.

He was reminded of TV ads for plug-in air fresheners where some woman would stick the little plastic thing in a socket and animated fumes would waft out and everyone would lift their faces, close their eyes, breathe in deeply and go 'Aaaaaah'. Like they were taking some kind of drug rather than inhaling chemicals.

He was all too aware that no matter how handsome you looked, how full of life and energy you were, underneath your skin was a grinning skeleton.

If I saw something once that I can't explain, that doesn't make them real. And if a trick of the dark gave me a chill, that doesn't make them real. And if a madman says what's at the core of us all is a senseless, flapping quiver of black shade, that's just one more reason not to believe.

Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true.