Illusion Quotes - Page 17

• I fell victim to the temptation of every autobiographer, to the illusion that since the past exists only in one's memories and the words which strive vainly to encapsulate them, it is possible to create past events simply by saying they occurred.

  Salman Rushdie

  Memories, Past, Temptation

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• One day everything will be well, that is our hope. Everything's fine today, that is our illusion.

  Voltaire

  Optimistic, Optimism, One Day

  "Voltaire: Poeme sur le desastre de Lisbonne". Book by Voltaire (translated), 1756.

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• Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

  Karl Marx

  Fashion, Flower, Moving

  "Collected Works", v. 3, " Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right" by Karl Marx, 1843.

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• In this world, perfection is an illusion. Reagrdless of all those who utter the contrary, this is the reality. Obviously mediocre fools will forever lust for perfection and seek it out. However, what meaning is there in perfection? None. Not a bit. ...After perfection there exists nothing higher. Not even room for creation which means there is no room for wisdom or talent either. Understand? To scientists like ourselves, perfection is despair. - Kurotsuchi Mayuri (Bleach 306)

  Tite Kubo

  Mean, Reality, Perfection

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• She passed these years in a distant corner of her mind. A dry, barren field, out beyond wish and lament, beyond dream and disillusionment. There, the future did not matter. And the past held only this wisdom: that love was a damaging mistake, and it accomplice, hope, a treacherous illusion.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Life, Dream, Mistake

  Khaled Hosseini (2009). “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, p.161, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• True Love. I’m starting to suspect the concept is pure illusion, an insipid brand name manufactured by Hallmark and Disney.” — Cupcake

  Rachel Cohn

  Cupcakes, Names, Hallmark

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• Dive deep into the ocean, Sita, and you will find that the greatest treasures you find are the illusions you leave behind.

  Christopher Pike

  Ocean, Greatest Treasure, Sita

  Christopher Pike (2013). “Thirst: Thirst No. 1; Thirst No. 2; Thirst”, p.226, Simon and Schuster

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• I learned a lot that night. For example, that part of being the magician's assistant means coming face-to-face with illusion. That invisibility is really just knotting your body in a certain way and letting the black curtain fall over you. That people don't vanish into thin air; that when you can't find someone, it's because you've been misdirected to look elsewhere.

  Jodi Picoult

  Fall, Mean, Night

  Jodi Picoult (2007). “Vanishing acts”, p.2, Simon and Schuster

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• The Art Magicke has rules. It means I have to teach you all my tricks. All the substitutions, the replications, the illusions. How to read minds and palms and leaves. How to disappear and reappear. "How to saw people in half?" "That too." "Nice.

  Catherine Fisher

  Art, Nice, Mean

  Catherine Fisher (2010). “Sapphique”, p.184, Penguin

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• The security light made me feel safe, though I knew that was an illusion. If there's light, you can just see what's coming for you a little more clearly.

  Charlaine Harris

  Light, Safe, Littles

  Charlaine Harris (2008). “From Dead to Worse: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel”, p.168, Penguin

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• I think my quarry is illusion. I war against magic. I believe that, though illusion often cheers and comforts, it ultimately and invariably weakens and constricts the spirit.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Cheer, War, Believe

  Irvin D. Yalom (2012). “Love's Executioner: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy”, p.151, Basic Books

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• I assure you, Constable Morgan, I am quite sane, as I understand the word, perhaps the sanest person in this room, for I suffer from no illusions. I have freed myself, you see, from the pretense that burdens most men. Much like our prey, I do not impose order where there is none; I do not pretend there is any more than what there is, or that you and I are anything more than what we are. That is the essence of their beauty, Morgan, the aboriginal purity of their being, and why I admire them.

  Rick Yancey

  Men, Order, Essence

  Rick Yancey (2010). “The Monstrumologist: The Terror Beneath”, p.227, Simon and Schuster

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• Three weeks ago, he’d seen hail fall from the sky, only to be followed minutes later by a spectacular rainbow that seemed to frame the azalea bushes. The colors, so vivid they seemed almost alive, made him think that nature sometimes sends us signs, that it’s important to remember that joy can always follow despair. But a moment later, the rainbow had vanished and the hail returned, and he realized that joy was sometimes only an illusion.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Fall, Thinking, Azaleas

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• Romantic Love is only an Illusion. A story one makes up in One's Mind about Another Person.

  Virginia Woolf

  Romantic Love, Love Is, Mind

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• To believe that will has power over potentiality, that the passage to actuality is the result of a decision that puts an end to the ambiguity of potentiality (which is always potentiality to do and not to do) — this is the perpetual illusion of morality.

  Giorgio Agamben

  Believe, Decision, Morality

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• There has always been, for me, this other world, this second world to fall back on--a more reliable world in so far as it does not hide that its premise is illusion.

  Graham Swift

  Fall, Other Worlds, Doe

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• And I didn't know I loved her till I'd dreamt of her. I didn't know it was the real thing until an illusion had signalled it.

  Graham Swift

  Real, Knows, Real Things

  Graham Swift (2012). “Ever After”, p.267, Pan Macmillan

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• The trick was looking past the illusion, because the exit was never as far away as it seemed.

  Lauren DeStefano

  Past, Exit, Far Away

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• It is the Land of Truth (enchanted name!), surrounded by a wide and stormy ocean, the true home of illusion, where many a fog bank and ice, that soon melts away, tempt us to believe in new lands, while constantly deceiving the adventurous mariner with vain hopes, and involving him in adventures which he can never leave, yet never bring to an end.

  Immanuel Kant

  Believe, Ocean, Home

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• Truth is a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, anthropomorphisms, in short a sum of human relations which have been subjected to poetic and rhetorical intensification, translation and decoration […]; truths are illusions of which we have forgotten that they are illusions, metaphors which have become worn by frequent use and have lost all sensuous vigour […]. Yet we still do not know where the drive to truth comes from, for so far we have only heard about the obligation to be truthful which society imposes in order to exist" from, "On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense".

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Lying, Army, Order

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• And the more he was irritated by her basic personality, the more he was drawn to her by a harsh, bestial sensuality, illusions of a moment, which ended in hate.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Hate, Personality, Irritated

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• There was pain, but there was also joy. It was in the tension between the two that life happened. Imperfect as it was, this world was real. Illusion was no substitute. I'd rather live a hard life of fact than a sweet life of lies.

  Karen Marie Moning

  Sweet, Pain, Real

  Karen Marie Moning (2016). “The Fever Series 7-Book Bundle: Darkfever, Bloodfever, Faefever, Dreamfever, Shadowfever, Iced, Burned”, p.1384, Dell

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• The sky is like a monochromatic contemporay painting, drawing me in its illusion of depth, pulling me up.

  John Green

  Sky, Drawing, Depth

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• Also, I had not yet found out about time; I was still under the illusion that I had plenty of time - time for this, time for that, time for everything, time to waste.

  Joseph Mitchell

  Waste, Found, Stills

  Joseph Mitchell (2016). “Joe Gould's Secret”, p.66, Open Road Media

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• But, as Einstein once said, “For we convinced physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent.”5

  Brian Greene

  Past, Said, Distinction

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