Quotes About Illusion

Everybody has an idea of himself which augments, aggravates, or modifies the actuality.

If the world is as you dream it, why had I dreamed such a world?

The philosopher Ernst Mach once got on a bus, and saw a scruffy unkempt bookish-looking person at the far end. He thought to himself (1) That man is a shabby pedagogue. In fact, Mach was seeing himself in a large mirror at the far end of the bus, of the sort conductors used to help keep track of things. He eventually realized this, and thought to himself: (2) I am that man. (3) I am a shabby pedagogue.

The U.S. is a cosmetic democracy.

All men are fools when it comes to love,' the doctor murmured.

To live in delusion is to live in the comfort of ideology.

A civilization unable to differentiate between illusion and reality is usually believed to be at the tail end of its existence.

He dressed in dark sport coats over black golf shirts because, he thought, they made him look smaller. They didn't; they made him look like a hole in space.

I thought I saw him once, but it turned out to be a yeti

That's the human brain," Attavio VI said. "It creates patterns when there aren't any. Imagines causality when there is none. Imagines a narrative where none exists. It's in the design of the brain itself. It's primed to lie." "And primed to believe the lie.

Then Dahl remembered that until that very second, absolutely none of that was true.

They look like terrain, until they don't." Tom pointed to one of them. "That's Kevin." "Really?" Niamh said. "Fucking Kevin?

Our thinking minds are so full of beliefs about how things "should be" rather than how things "are" that we refuse to accept reality as it is. We

And that's the great thing about Ye Olde Peruvian Marching Powder, he went on. It's like psychic Saran Wrap: it locks in freshness so well that you can't even feel your own soul ticking, much less anyone else's.

It's an illusion to think that a choice is open to us, unless we are open to that choice.

You've seen the sun flatten and take strange shapes just before it sinks in the ocean. Do you have to tell yourself every time that it's an illusion caused by atmospheric dust and light distorted by the sea, or do you simply enjoy the beauty of it?

I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stronger.

Just like heaven. Ever'body wants a little piece of lan'. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It's just in their head. They're all the time talkin' about it, but it's jus' in their head.

I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless.

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold onto this illusion, even though he knows it's not true.

They come, an' they quit an' go on; an' every damn one of 'em's got a little piece of land in his head. An' never a God damn one of 'em ever gets it. Just like heaven. Ever'body wants a little piece of lan'. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It's just in their head.

It is astounding to find that the belly of every black and evil thing is as white as snow. And it is saddening to discover how the concealed parts of angels are leporous.

And in his dream, Coyotito was reading from a book as large as a house, with letters as big as dogs, and the words galloped and played on the book.

Henri the painter was not French and his name was not Henri. Also he was not really a painter. Henri has so steeped himself in stories of the Left Bank in Paris that he lived there although he had never been there.