Illusion Quotes - Page 21

• It is a melancholy illusion of those who write books and articles that the printed word survives. Alas, it rarely does.

  Eric Hobsbawm

  Book, Writing, Printed Word

  Eric Hobsbawm (2011). “How To Change The World: Tales of Marx and Marxism”, p.126, Hachette UK

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• But the man who is not afraid to admit everything that he sees to be wrong with himself, and yet recognizes that he may be the object of God's love precisely because of his shortcomings, can begin to be sincere. His sincerity is based on confidence, not in his own illusions about himself, but in the endless, unfailing mercy of God.

  Thomas Merton

  Men, Mercy Of God, May

  Thomas Merton (2002). “No Man Is an Island”, p.228, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• Change from the inside out involves a steadfast gaze upon our Lord that's life changing because it reflects a deep turning from a commitment to self-sufficiency. Without repentance, a look at Christ provides only the illusion of comfort.

  Larry Crabb

  Life Changing, Commitment, Self

  27 Copy quote

• What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions — they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Long, People, Host

  Friedrich Nietzsche “Delphi Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Illustrated): Friedrich Nietzsche”, Delphi Classics

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• The man who fears to be alone will never be anything but lonely, no matter how much he may surround himself with people. But the man who learns, in solitude and recollection, to be at peace with his own loneliness, and to prefer its reality to the illusion of merely natural companionship, comes to know the invisible companionship of God. Such a one is alone with God in all places, and he alone truly enjoys the companionship of other men, because he loves them in God in Whom their presence is not tiresome, and because of Whom his own love for them can never know satiety.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Lonely, Loneliness

  17 Copy quote

• They stared at her curiously, and she caught snatches of conversation in two or three languages. It wasn't hard to guess their content, and she smiled a bit primly. Youth, it appeared, was full of illusions as to how much sexual energy two people might have to spare while hiking forty or so kilometers a day, concussed, stunned, diseased, on poor food and little sleep, alternating caring for a wounded man with avoiding becoming dinner for every carnivore within range - and with a coup to plan for the end.

  Lois McMaster Bujold

  Sleep, Caring, Men

  4 Copy quote

• In the state I was in, if someone had come and told me I could go home quietly, that they would leave me my life whole, it would have left me cold: several hours or several years of waiting is all the same when you have lost the illusion of being eternal.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Home, Years, Waiting

  Jean-Paul Sartre (1969). “The Wall (Intimacy) and Other Stories”, p.12, New Directions Publishing

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Yes, victors are our strongest. They're the ones who survived the arena and slipped the noose of poverty that strangles the rest of us. They, or should I say we, are the very embodiment of hope where there is no hope. And now twenty-three of us will be killed to show how even that hope was an illusion.

  Suzanne Collins

  Twenties, Three, Embodiment

  Suzanne Collins (2011). “The Hunger Games Trilogy”, p.712, Scholastic Inc.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Then I grew up, and the beauty of succulent illusions fell away from me.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Grew Up, Grew, Succulents

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Beautiful and Damned”, p.126, Pelekanos Books

  63 Copy quote

  Show source

• In you is the illusion of each day. You arrive like the dew to the cupped flowers. You undermine the horizon with your absence. Eternally in flight like the wave.

  Pablo Neruda

  Flower, Dew, Horizon

  22 Copy quote

• Love is an optical illusion that makes you believe the object of your affection is the most beautiful person in the world.

  Tom Holt

  Beautiful, Believe, Love Is

  Tom Holt (2008). “In Your Dreams”, p.91, Hachette UK

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Perhaps someday you can have one city as easy to see as Illusions and as hard to forget as Reality.

  Norton Juster

  Reality, Cities, Forget

  Norton Juster (2011). “The Phantom Tollbooth”, p.103, Knopf Books for Young Readers

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Meanwhile, the trees were just as green as before; the birds sang and the sun shone as clearly now as ever. The familiar surroundings had not darkened because of her grief, nor sickened because of her pain. She might have seen that what had bowed her head so profoundly -the thought of the world's concern at her situation- was found on an illusion. She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself.

  Thomas Hardy

  Pain, Grief, Passion

  Thomas Hardy (2008). “Tess of the d'Urbervilles”, p.103, OUP Oxford

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• What happened was simple, even banal: I became naked, died, lost parts of my flesh and most of my ego along with a few illusions such as a belief in the uniqueness of my personal scrap of consciousness and the cosmic importance therof, and went on from there.

  MacDonald Harris

  Simple, Ego, Naked

  4 Copy quote

• It was a part of myself that was my enemy; I still had a childish illusion that the flesh on my own bones was somehow unique and precious to the universe, in some obscure corner of my mind I wanted the others to love me and make exceptions for me simply because I felt heat and cold, pain and loneliness as they did. Now this was gone once and for all, and I understood there were no exceptions and on one was invulnerable, we all had to share the same conditions and in the end this was simply mortality, the mortality of things as well as ourselves. After that I didn't expect anybody to love me.

  MacDonald Harris

  Pain, Loneliness, Unique

  4 Copy quote

• Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

  William Faulkner

  Men, Victory, Despair

  The Sound and the Fury pt. 2 (1929)

  38 Copy quote

  Show source

• I looked at her. Sheila was my girl--the girl I wanted--and wanted for keeps. But it wasn't any use having illusions about her. Sheila was a liar and probably always would be a liar. It was her way of fighting for survival--the quick easy glib denial. It was a child's weapon--and she'd probably never got out of using it. If I wanted Sheila, I must accept her as she was--be at hand to prop up the weak places. We've all got our weak places. Mine were different from Sheila's, but they were there.

  Agatha Christie

  Girl, Children, Liars

  4 Copy quote

• Do not mistake me. I am not yet weak enough to yield to fearful imaginings, which are almost as absurd as illusions of hope, and are certainly harder to bear. If I must deceive myself, I should prefer to stay on the side of confidence, for I shall lose no more there and shall suffer less.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Mistake, Yield, Suffering

  Marguerite Yourcenar (1957). “Hadrian's Memoirs”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• One of the delights beyond the grasp of youth is that of Not Going. Not to have an invitation for the dance, the party, the picnic, the excursion is to be diminished. To have an invitation and then not to be able to go -- oh cursed spite! Now I do not care the rottenest fig whether I receive an invitation or not. After years of illusion, I finally decided I was missing nothing by Not Going. I no longer care whether I am missing anything or not.

  J. B. Priestley

  Party, Years, Missing

  40 Copy quote

• Love's an illusion. It's a dream you wake up from with an enormous hangover and net credit debt. I'd rather have cash.

  Janet Fitch

  Dream, Hangover, Wake Up

  Janet Fitch (2013). “White Oleander”, p.92, Hachette UK

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I know I fib a good deal. After all, a woman's charm is fifty per cent illusion, but when a thing is important I tell the truth. - Blanche Scene II

  Tennessee Williams

  Important, Fifty, Telling The Truth

  7 Copy quote

• Martha: Truth or illusion, George; you don't know the difference. George: No, but we must carry on as though we did. Martha: Amen.

  Edward Albee

  Differences, Amen, Knows

  Edward Albee (1962). “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: A Play”, p.86, Dramatists Play Service Inc

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I used to think things were the way they are for a reason, that there was some hidden meaning. I used to think that this meaning governed the way the world was. But it's an illusion to think that there are good and bad reasons. Grammar is a lie to make us think that what we say is connected by a logic that you'll find if you study it, a lie that gone on for centuries. Because I now know that life just lurches between stability and instability and doesn't obey any law.

  Delphine de Vigan

  Lying, Thinking, Law

  Delphine de Vigan (2010). “No and Me”, p.143, A&C Black

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Sometimes, one wants to have the illusion that one is making ones own life, out of ones own resources.

  Zadie Smith

  Want, Sometimes, Resources

  4 Copy quote

• Time is an illusion that makes us all pant.

  Yann Martel

  7 Copy quote