Quotes About Illusion

The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you wont find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled.

Magicians protect their secrets not because the secrets are large and important, but because they are so small and trivial. The wonderful effects created on stage are often the result of a secret so absurd that the magician would be embarrassed to admit that that was how it was done.

Now you're looking for the secret, but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled.

None of it is real, though, because reality lies in a different, more evanescent realm. These are only the names of some of the places in the archipelago of dreams. The true reality is the one you perceive around you, or that which you are fortunate enough to imagine for yourself.

The search for meaning is an illusion of logic and a requirement of the middleclass for predictable breeding space.

I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?

Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?

At root, the business of baseball was no better or different from the movies or from church: put on a show, promise people something transcendent, and then bleed the suckers dry.

Weather today is an increasing trend toward denial.

The unreal is more powerful than the real.... Because it's only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die.

I like coincidences. They make me wonder about destiny, and whether free will is an illusion or just a matter of perspective. They let me speculate on the idea of some master plan that, from time to time, we're allowed to see out of the corner of our eye.

Me da lo que quiere darme, sabiendo que voy a aceptar cualquier limosna que venga del rey que le hice creer que es.

Nunca les pasó estar con alguien muy hermoso? Ver a esa persona, escucharla hablar, seguir cada uno de sus fascinantes gestos, admirar su belleza… y más tarde mirarse en el espejo y darse cuenta de que uno es horrible y que estuvo creyéndose bello simplemente porque estaba mirando a alguien lindo que resultó no ser uno.

Crow walked toward her, arms outstretched like a man in a dream, which he was, in a way. Sometimes a dream is enough.

The human mind had a remarkable ability both to discount what it sees and make reality conform to expectation.

A sensible girl would not have been crying, grieving for the boy with the magic in his voice and the blues in his eyes, mourning the loss of something that was a lie-a lie-from beginning to end.

Like everyone else at the Anchorage, except maybe for Natalie, Jonah had developed the blinders that allowed him to dance on. That prevented him from seeing the gradual decline of everyone around him; that allowed him to pretend that they weren't all heading for the same tragic end. The band played on as the ship sank beneath them. Distracted by the magic of music, they would keep dancing until the waves closed over their heads.

That—that's a Carthian sun dragon," he said, shooting a look at Strangward. "Isn't it?" Strangward nodded. "But . . . it is my understanding that dragons are not real," Botetort said. Strangward looked from the dragon to Botetort. "I assure you, this dragon is absolutely real. Touch it if you like.

A good photographer can make you look incredible, even when you're not feeling very sexy.

It's hard to imagine a bigger desert oasis than Las Vegas.

Naive enough to set off in pursuit of Truth, I had explored - to no avail - any number of disciplines. I was beginning to be confirmed in my skepticism when the notion occurred to me of consulting, as a last result, Poetry: who knows? perhaps it would be profitable, perhaps it conceals beneath its arbitrary appearances some definitive revelation ... Illusory recourse! Poetry had outstripped be in negation and cost me even my uncertainties ...

We worden meegenomen door een wervelwind die begon bij de aanvang van de tijd; en als die wervelwind de schijn van orde heeft aangenomen, is dat enkel om ons beter mee te slepen...

Uw geloof is niets meer dan grootheidswaan, getolereerd door de gemeenschap.

Maar wij ongelovigen, wij sterven met onze decors, te vermoeid om onszelf in de luren te leggen door de pracht en praal die beloofd is aan ons kadaver...