Illusion Quotes - Page 19

I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend... I can pretend that things last.

Neil Gaiman

Stars, Mean, Thinking

"The Sandman: Brief Lives". Comic book series by Neil Gaiman, 1992 - 1993.

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The key to seeing the world's soul, and in the process wakening our own, is to get over the confusion by which we think that fact is real and imagination is illusion.

Thomas Moore

Real, Thinking, Keys

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If you alter or obscure the Biblical portrait of God in order to attract converts, you don't get converts to God, you get converts to an illusion. This is not evangelism, but deception.

John Piper

Biblical, Order, Deception

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The two of you are getting downright chatty, aren't you, Ms. Lane? When did you last see him? what else did he tell you? I'm asking the questions tonight. If an illusion of control comforts you, Ms. Lane, by all means, cling to it.

Karen Marie Moning

Mean, Two, Comfort

Karen Marie Moning (2007). “Bloodfever: Fever Series”, p.90, Delacorte Press

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Music makes me forget myself, my true condition, it carries me off into another state of being, one that isn't my own: under the influence of music I have the illusion of feeling things I don't really feel, of understanding things I don't understand, being able to do things I'm not able to do... Can it really be allowable for anyone who feels like it to hypnotize another person, or many other persons, and then do what he likes with them? Particularly if the hypnotist is the first unscrupulous individual who happens to come along?

Leo Tolstoy

Understanding, Feelings, Able

"The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories". Book by Leo Tolstoy, 1890.

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Nothing feeds forgetfulness better than war.... We all keep quiet and they try to convince us that what we've seen, what we've done, what we've learned about ourselves and about others, is an illusion, a passing nightmare. Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened, until the moment comes when we no longer recognize them and they return, with another face and another name, to devour what they left behind.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Memories, War, Convince Us

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Once we're able to see this world as an illusion and a phantasm, then we can see everything that happens to us as a dream, as something that pretended to exist while we were sleeping. And we will become subtly and profoundly indifferent towards all of life's setbacks and calamities. Those who die turned a corner, which is why we've stopped seeing them; those who suffer pass before us like a nightmare, if we feel, or like an unpleasant daydream, if we think. And even our own suffering won't be more than this nothingness.

Fernando Pessoa

Dream, Sleep, Thinking

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The feeling that was born that night, how could i describe it?Words like love or lust just don't seem right. I may call it jealousy, or may be anxiety and moreover, need. Even now I'm anxious at times because when I am with Ren, everything around feels like a dream. That was how Ren turned my boring life into an illusion, and that was too much for no matter how hard i tried, it seemed I could never catch him.

Ai Yazawa

Dream, Night, Like Love

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But what I wanted back had never really been there. He was a temporary illusion, a mirage of water after walking in the desert. I had made him up. And he could have killed me. You've got to stop the ride sometimes. Stop it and get off.

Deb Caletti

Attitude, Water, Desert

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A moral character is attached to autumnal scenes; the leaves falling like our years, the flowers fading like our hours, the clouds fleeting like our illusions, the light diminishing like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers becoming frozen like our lives--all bear secret relations to our destinies.

François-René de Chateaubriand

Flower, Fall, Character

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She wasn't, nor ever had been, under the illusion that marriage was a relationship characterized by endless bliss and romance. Throw any two people together, add the inevitable ups and downs, give the mixture a vigorous stir, and a few stormy arguments were inevitable, no matter how the couple loved each other.

Nicholas Sparks

Couple, Two, People

"The Best of Me". Book by Nicholas Sparks, October 11, 2011.

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It's the same with menus and men and just about anything else: we think we're choosing things for ourselves, but in fact we may not be choosing anything. It could be that everthing's being decided in advance and we pretend we're making choices. Free will may be an illusion. I often think that.

Haruki Murakami

Men, Thinking, Choices

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The night is full of mystery. Even when the moon is brightest, secrets hide everywhere. Then the sun rises and its rays cast so many shadows that the day creates more illusion than all the veiled truth of the night.

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

Moon, Night, Secret

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (2008). “Demon in My View”, p.1, Laurel Leaf

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But he could not renounce his infinite capacity for illusion at the very moment he needed it most... he saw fireflies where there were none.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Firefly, Saws, Infinite

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...Don't rupture another's illusion unless you're positive the alternative you offer is more worthwhile than that from which you're wrenching them. Interrogate your solipsism: Does it offer any better a home than the delusions you're reaching to shatter?

Jonathan Lethem

Home, Doe, Alternatives

Jonathan Lethem (2010). “Chronic City”, p.341, Faber & Faber

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Peter Lake had no illusions about mortality. He knew that it made everyone perfectly equal, and that the treasures of the earth were movement, courage, laughter, and love. The wealthy could not buy these things. On the contrary, they were for the taking.

Mark Helprin

Love, Laughter, Lakes

Mark Helprin (1983). “Winter's Tale”, p.151, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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In all the illusions, you're the only truth that I need

Nora Roberts

Needs

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Rob the average man of his life-illusion, and you rob him of his happiness at the same stroke.

Henrik Ibsen

Men, Average, Strokes

Henrik Ibsen (2016). “The Wild Duck”, p.85, Jester House Publishing

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What a fool I was! and yet, in the sight of angels, are we any wiser as we grow older? It seems to me, only, that our illusions change as we go on; but, still, we are madmen all the same.

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Angel, Sight, Goes On

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1975). “Ghost Stories and Mysteries”, p.38, Courier Corporation

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When we were small, Rose and I used to play a game called connect the dots. I loved it. I loved drawing a line from dot number 1 to dot number 2 and so on. Most of all, I loved the moment when the chaotic sprinkle of dots resolved itself into a picture. That's what stories do. They connect the random dots of life into a picture. But it's all an illusion. Just try to connect the dots of life. You'll end up with a lunatic scribble.

Franny Billingsley

Games, Play, Drawing

Franny Billingsley (2011). “Chime”, p.45, Penguin

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Happiness is an illusion, Natalie. It doesn't actually exist." "Of course it does," I said. "It's what you feel when you're not sad." "That's unconsciousness. And I'm pretty sure that I'm miserable when I am unconscious, too.

Lee Goldberg

Doe, Miserable, Said

Lee Goldberg (2011). “Mr. Monk on the Couch”, p.49, Penguin

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Our perceptions are fallible. We sometimes see what isn't there. We are prey to optical illusions. Occasionally we hallucinate. We are error-prone.

Carl Sagan

Errors, Perception, Optical Illusions

Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.43, Ballantine Books

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...it is not for the illusion of a moment to govern the choice of a lifetime.

Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

Choices, Moments, Lifetime

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For what we suppose to be our love or our jealousy is never a single, continuous and indivisible passion. It is composed of an infinity of successive loves, of different jealousies, each of which is ephemeral, although by their uninterrupted multiplicity they give us the impression of continuity, the illusion of unity.

Marcel Proust

Passion, Giving, Unity

Marcel Proust (1982). “Remembrance of Things Past: Swann's Way & Within a Budding Grove”, Vintage

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Giving importance to what we think because we thought it, taking our own selves not only (to quote the Greek philosopher) as the measure of all things but as their norm or standard, we create in ourselves, if not an interpretation, at least a criticism of the universe, which we don't even know and therefore cannot criticize. The giddiest, most weak-minded of us then promote that criticism to an interpretation that's superimposed, like a hallucination; induced rather than deduced. It's a hallucination in the strict sense, being an illusion based on something only dimly seen.

Fernando Pessoa

Thinking, Self, Giving

Fernando Pessoa (2005). “The Education of the Stoic: The Only Manuscript of the Baron of Teive”

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