Quotes About Illusion

They stood like that, his embrace still holding her, for ten seconds at most, during which she ignored the truth of the moment and allowed herself to savor the illusion of being cared for.

It was my first lesson. Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things is another that waits to tear the world in two.

Beneath the smooth, familiar face of things is another that waits to tear the world in two.

It was easy, in those moments, to forget that the war had not yet really begun.

It was a trick of his, to set a sentence out like a plate on a table to see what you would put on it.

Though the rooms were deserted, there was no speck of dust, and I would learn that none could cross the marble threshold. However I tracked upon it, the floor was always clean, the tables gleaming. The ashes vanished from the fireplace, the dishes washed themselves, and the firewood regrew overnight.

If Finn Toller had in his nervous organisation anything resembling what in popular parlance is called a complex, such a complex consisted in the idea—almost, although not quite, a complete illusion—that people were continually wanting to bribe him to commit some murder.

Love is a myth.' 'Love is a myth,' Grandfather Trout said. 'Like summer.' 'What?' 'In winter,'Grandfather Trout said, 'summer is a myth. A report, a rumor. Not to be believed in. Get it? Love is a myth. So is summer.

My friend Meyer, the economist, says that cretins are the only humans who can be absolutely certain of their own sanity. All the rest of us go rocketing along rickety rails over spavined bridges and along the edge of bottomless gorges. The man who believes himself free of any taint of madness is a damned liar.

Molly Bea, she of the hard white breasts lightly dusted with golden freckles, would never be so humiliated by life because she could never become as deeply involved in the meaty toughness of life. She would never be victimized by her own illusions because they were not essential to her. She could always find new ones when the old ones wore out. But Cathy was stuck with hers. The illusion of love, magically changed to a memory of shame.

He tottered in. In a few moments he came out, hair piece in place. But the haggardness of his face made it look more spurious than before.

boy. I have a shallow, pyrotechnic, unchanging brilliance with which I awe the peasants, but there is no solidity, no basic texture, hence no capacity for creative growth.

He guessed he had better face up to it and admit, watching the shabby rowboat approach the bank, that she was just too darn close to that picture he had been carting around in his head, of a girl he had never met, of a girl made up of bits and pieces of other girls known wisely and not too well.

When anybody looks directly at me, right into my eyes, which isn't normal, and doesn't do any fidgeting, which again isn't normal, and drops their voice level about a half octave and gets real grammatical, I just lay back and wait for them to bring out the three walnut shells and the rubber pea.

I've been frozen solid against the wall in Mazzo's, staring at my index finger for a couple of hours, when my dead brother Morton shows up. He does that literally. I mean, I look down on one side and see him coming up through the floor. Nothing special about that. People have been showing up through the floor all evening. They pop up and mushroom in bursts, clumps of people that explode and disappear. In the Mazzo theme park it's another of those acid nights.

Love, built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.

Spain as a modern centralized nation is an illusion, a very unfortunate one; for the present atrophy, the desolating resultlessness of a century of revolution, may very well be due in large measure to the artificial imposition of centralized government on a land essentially centrifugal.

When I consider life, 't is all a cheat. Yet fool'd with hope, men favour the deceit; Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay. To-morrow 's falser than the former day; Lies worse, and while it says we shall be blest With some new joys, cuts off what we possest. Strange cozenage! none would live past years again, Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain; And from the dregs of life think to receive What the first sprightly running could not give.

When I consider life, 't is all a cheat; Yet, fooled with hope, men favour the deceit, Trust on and think to-morrow will repay; To-morrow's falser than the former day.

Thus, in a Pageant Show, a Plot is made; And Peace it self is War in Masquerade.

When I consider life, it is all a cheat. Yet fooled with hope, people favor this deceit.

The left-right political dichotomy serves liberalism by not challenging it. Democracy sustains the status quo by offering the illusion of choice with no choice. Genuine opposition can only emerge if there is an alternative story with which to counter the current mythos.

the First Testament is under no illusion about whether implementing the Torah has the potential to achieve God's purpose for Israel's life. There is no direct link between seeking to restrain injustice in society and the implementing of God's reign. Implementing God's reign is fortunately God's business.

Most of what you encounter when you meet a man is a facade, an elaborate fig leaf, a brilliant disguise.