Illusion Quotes - Page 20

• Being tired of all illusions and of everything about illusions – the loss of illusions, the uselessness of having them, the prefatigue of having to have them in order to lose them, the sadness of having had them, the intellectual shame of having had them knowing that they would have to end this way.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Tired, Sadness, Loss

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• Liking other people is an illusion we have to cherish in ourselves if we are to live in society.

  John Fowles

  People, Cherish, Ifs

  John Fowles (1968). “The Magus”, Pan

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• The bonds between ourselves and another person exists only in our minds. Memory as it grows fainter loosens them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we want to be duped and which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we dupe other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature who cannot escape from himself, who knows other people only in himself, and when he asserts the contrary, he is lying.

  Marcel Proust

  Memories, Lying, Men

  Marcel Proust (2010). “In Search Of Lost Time, Vol 5: The Captive & The Fugitive”, p.515, Random House

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• It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of Philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, it has set up that single, unconscionable freedom -- free trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

  Karl Marx

  Religious, Water, Political

  Karl Marx (2018). “The Communist Manifesto & Selected Writings: & Selected Writings”, p.11, Pan Macmillan

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• The causes of illusions are not pretty to discover. They're either vicious or tragic.

  Ayn Rand

  Causes, Vicious, Tragic

  Ayn Rand (2005). “The Fountainhead”, p.297, Penguin

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• Fiction is an illusion wrought with many small, conventionally symbolic marks, triggering visions in the minds of others

  William Gibson

  Mind, Vision, Fiction

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• Poetry can be dangerous, especially beautiful poetry, because it gives the illusion of having had the experience without actually going through it.

  Rumi

  Beautiful, Giving, Poetry

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• Jesus came to announce to us that an identity based on success, popularity and power is a false identity- an illusion! Loudly and clearly he says: 'You are not what the world makes you; but you are children of God.

  Henri Nouwen

  Jesus, Children, Identity

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• Oh yes, I have learned much from Tremorlor, and so assume a like strategy. Silence, a faint mocking smile suggesting I know more than I do, an air of mystery, yes, and fell knowledge. None could guess my confusion, my host of deluded illusions and elusive delusions!

  Steven Erikson

  Air, Confusion, Silence

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• In the beginning there was faith - which is childish; trust - which is vain; and illusion - which is dangerous.

  Elie Wiesel

  Vain, Dangerous

  Elie Wiesel (2012). “Night”, p.8, Macmillan

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• We believed in God, trusted in man, and lived with the illusion that every one of us has been entrusted with a sacred spark.

  Elie Wiesel

  Men, Sacred, Sparks

  Elie Wiesel (2012). “Night”, p.8, Macmillan

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• He wanted to care, and he could not care. For he had gone away and he could never go back anymore. The gates were closed, the sun was down, and there was no beauty left but the gray beauty of steel that withstands all time. Even the grief he could have borne was left behind in the country of youth, of illusion, of the richness of life, where his winter dreams had flourished.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Dream, Country, Growing Up

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2004). “The Complete Short Stories, Essays, and a Play”, p.530, Simon and Schuster

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• For a man’s life would become intolerable, if he knew what was going to happen to him. He would be made aware of future evils, and would suffer their agonies in advance, while he would get no joy of present blessings since he would know how they would end. Ignorance is the necessary condition of human happiness, and it has to be admitted that on the whole mankind observes that condition well. We are almost entirely ignorant of ourselves; absolutely of others. In ignorance, we find our bliss; in illusions, our happiness.

  Anatole France

  Ignorance, Blessing, Men

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• It's so easy to lie. What’s even worse is how we cling to those lies. We beg for the illusion so we don’t have to face the truth, don’t have to feel alone.

  Karen Marie Moning

  Lying, Faces, Easy

  Karen Marie Moning (2016). “The Fever Series 7-Book Bundle: Darkfever, Bloodfever, Faefever, Dreamfever, Shadowfever, Iced, Burned”, p.1081, Dell

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• At first I protested and rebelled against poetry. I was about to deny my poetic worlds. I was doing violence to my illusions with analysis, science, and learning Henry’s language, entering Henry’s world. I wanted to destroy by violence and animalism my tenuous fantasies and illusions and my hypersensitivity. A kind of suicide. The ignominy awakened me. Then June came and answered the cravings of my imagination and saved me. Or perhaps she killed me, for now I am started on a course of madness.

  Anais Nin

  Suicide, June, Imagination

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• Without illusions. I love you because you are fallible and because your poor misguided testosterone-corrupted brain has you doing cartwheels trying not to be. I love you because of all you are and because of all you're not. And because, no matter what, you are all the man I'll ever need.

  Cindy Gerard

  Love You, Men, Brain

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• He became absorbed beyond mere happiness as he felt himself exercising control over living things. He talked to them, urging them, ordering them. Driven back by the tide, his footprints became bays in which they were trapped and gave him the illusion of mastery.

  William Golding

  Exercise, Mastery, Tides

  William Golding (2016). “Lord of the Flies”, p.42, Hamilton Books

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• A shadow of a reflection of an image of an illusion.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Reflection, Shadow

  Chuck Palahniuk (2011). “Haunted”, p.47, Random House

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• The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.

  Anton Chekhov

  Inspirational, Life, Thousand

  Anton Chekhov (2015). “The Collected Works of Anton Chekhov: Novellas, Short Stories, Plays, Letters & Diary: Three Sisters, Seagull , The Shooting Party, Uncle Vanya, Cherry Orchard, Chameleon, Tripping Tongue, On The Road, Vanka, Ward No. Six, Swedish Match, Nightmare, Bear, Reluctant Hero, Joy…”, p.3128, e-artnow

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• When illusions are shattered by truth, talent is set free.

  Lian Hearn

  Talent, Shattered

  Lian Hearn (2005). “Across the Nightingale Floor: Journey to Inuyama. episode 2”, Puffin

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• We can be seduced...by powerful political groups that promise more wealth and lower taxes. Those with power can use clever, psychological tricks and play upon our weaknesses and brokenness in order to attract us to their way of thinking. We can be manipulated into illusion.

  Jean Vanier

  Clever, Powerful, Thinking

  Jean Vanier (2003). “Finding Peace”, p.53, A&C Black

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• They will say I smoked cigarettes and marijuana, cursed hoarse as a crow in all my languages, and loved morphine and Demerol and tequila and pulque, women and men. I will shrug my illusion of shoulders and answer that I am a water woman, not a vessel, not something you can sail or charter. I am instead the tributary, the river, the fluid source, and the sea itself. I am all her rainy implications. And what do you, with your rusted compass, know of love?

  Kate Braverman

  Love, Men, Marijuana

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• It's an illusion, control," Naomi said. "You ought to understand that by now, young Claire. We are never in control of our destinies, even the strongest of us. All we can hope to do is not be too badly damaged by events.

  Rachel Caine

  Destiny, Events, Claire

  Rachel Caine (2012). “Black Dawn: The Morganville Vampires”, p.43, Penguin

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• You have seen that the universe is at root a magical illusion and a fabulous game, and that there is no separate "you" to get something out of it, as if life were a bank to be robbed. The only real "you" is the one that comes and goes, manifests and withdraws itself eternally in and as every conscious being. For "you" is the universe looking at itself from billions of points of view, points that come and go so that the vision is forever new.

  Alan Watts

  Spiritual, Wisdom, Real

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• What we see as death, empty space, or nothingness is only the trough between the crests of this endlessly waving ocean. It is all part of the illusion that there should seem to be something to be gained in the future, and that there is an urgent necessity to go on and on until we get it. Yet just as there is no time but the present, and no one except the all-and-everything, there is never anything to be gained - though the zest of the game is to pretend that there is.

  Alan Watts

  Ocean, Future, Zest

  "The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are". Book by Alan Watts, 1966.

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