Quotes About Illusion

My words are the garment of what I shall never be Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy.

The poet is a pretender. / He pretends so completely, / that he even pretends that it is pain / the pain he really feels.

Fog and hypocrisy - that is to say, shadow, convention, decency - these were the very things that lent to London its poetry and romance.

Profound thoughts and profound experiences get revealed to be tricks that we play on ourselves, and poetry gets revealed to be just, like, some dumb words that somebody put in an interesting order.

If I could write the beauty of your eyesAnd in fresh numbers number all your graces, The age to come would say 'this poet lies! Such heaven never touched earthly faces

All that we see and seem is but a dream within a dream.

In politics, as in every other sphere of life, there are two important principles for a man of any sense: don't cherish too many illusions, and never stop believing that every little bit helps.

If politics is like show business, then the idea is not to pursue excellence, clarity or honesty but to appear as if you are, which is another matter altogether.

The problem is, of course, that not only is economics bankrupt but it has always been nothing more than politics in disguise ... economics is a form of brain damage.

In politics, what appears is.

There they are. See no evil, hear no evil, and...evil.

Sometimes in politics, you think you've seen it all. Turns out I was wrong.

There are times when American politics seems like little more than two groups in a fever to prevent each other from trespassing upon their respective soothing versions of unreality

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

The man is the Piltdown Man of modern politics.

Politics, in a sense, has always been a con game.

Deep down he is shallow.

The journey of life is a mental one, which is taking place in the sea of illusion.

The picture of a shadow is a positive thing.

Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow.

One of the nice things about problems is that a good many of them do not exist except in our imaginations.

If we can be cheered up by positive images we can be depressed by negative ones. As long as we accept images as realities we are in that trap, because you can't control the images.

There are parodies of non-existent things.

The legitimate function of the mind is to tell you what is not. But if you want positive knowledge, you must go beyond the mind.