Quotes About Illusion

The standardized American is largely a myth created not least by Americans themselves.

All humanity could share a common insanity and be immersed in a common illusion while living in a common chaos. That can't be disproved, but we have no choice but to follow our senses.

What did our dear Joseph manage to see in life? Bupkis is what.

I can see how, with enough false education, enough widespread illusion and error, men can, while remaining men, believe this and commit the most unspeakable crimes.

Who can say it's not what we see with our eyes open that is distorted, and that what's described here isn't the true essence of things?" He slowed down outside a door. "Haven't you ever heard old men sigh that life's a dream?

In winter when I put a quilt over myself its shadows on the wall seem to sway like an elephant.

Never trust a mirror,' his mother had told him. 'They never tell the truth unless you make them.

The only true love is love at first sight second sight dispels it.

The Creator has – I say it in all reverence - drawn a myriad red herrings across the track, but the true scientist refuses to be baffled by superficial appearances in detecting the secrets of Nature. The vulgar herd catches at the gross apparent fact, but the man of insight knows what lies on the surfaces does lie.

envelop the universe by means of my mind; and by means of the universe, there is nothing that obstructs my mind. Riches and honor, good luck and calamity are elsewhere. When you seek after such things, you may obtain them or you may not—this is not something that is guaranteed. The Greatest Happiness is within yourself. If you seek your mind wholeheartedly, you will obtain it for sure. Simply, do not seek after illusion.

Falsehood is never in words; it is in things.

The things that the novel does not say are necessarily more numerous than those it does say and only a special halo around what is written can give the illusion that you are reading also what is not written.

The novels that attract me most... are those that create an illusion of transperancy around a knot of human relationships as obscure, cruel and perverse as possible.

It's better not to know authors personally, because the real person never corresponds to the image you form of him from reading his books.

The line between the reality that is photographed because it seems beautiful to us and the reality that seems beautiful because it has been photographed is very narrow." - from "The Adventure of a Photographer

At times the mirror increases a thing's value, at times denies it.

The dream of being invisible . . . When I find myself in an environment where I can enjoy the illusion of being invisible, I am really happy.

The facility of the entrance into another world is an illusion: you start writing in a rush, anticipating the happiness of a future reading, and the void yawns on the white page.

The difference between the true and the false is only a prejudice of ours.

And I see the houses of the human race perched on the edge of the sea, shipwrecked in their false neighborliness.

Quello che vorresti é l'aprirsi d'uno spazio e d'un tempo astratti ed assoluti in cui muoverti seguendo una traiettoria esatta e tesa; ma quando ti sembra di riuscirci t'accorgi d'esser fermo, bloccato, costretto a ripetere tutto da capo.

It is my image that I want to multiply, but not out of narcissism or megalomania, as could all too easily be believed: on the contrary, I want to conceal, in the midst of so many illusory ghosts of myself, the true me, who makes them move.

Perhaps, Kublai thought, the empire is nothing but a zodiac of the mind's phantasms.

There is someone looking through the befogged glass, he opens the glass door of the bar, everything is misty, inside, too, as if seen by nearsighted eyes, or eyes irritated by coal dust.