Illusory Quotes - Page 4

I played with the image, because I think image is temporary. It's a projection. It's illusory.

Annie Lennox

Thinking, Projection, Temporary

"The Look: Annie Lennox". Interview with Harry Brant, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 23, 2014.

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I urge people to be a scientist about what they want and ask themselves why they want it so badly. Perhaps they are chasing an illusory dream. But if you want to learn, to expand, to be of service, you will find a way.

Agapi Stassinopoulos

Dream, People, Want

Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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As I stepped on the moon, I looked around, dazed...magnifice nt. The vast, sandy silver surface was almost illusory.

Neil Armstrong

Moon, Silver, Surface

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Truth is inseperable from the illusory belief that from the figures of the unreal one day, in spite of all, real deliverance will come.

Theodor Adorno

Real, One Day, Belief

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What I love in a woman is not what she is in and for herself, but the side of herself she turns towards me, what she is for me. I love her as character in our common love story. what wuld Hamlet be without the castle at Elsinore, without Ophelia, without all the concrete situations he goes through, what would he be without the text of his part? What would be left but an empty, dumb, illusory essence?

Milan Kundera

Character, Essence, Dumb

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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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One of the things he'd always loved about Clary was how easily caught up in her imagination she was, how easily she could wall herself away in illusory worlds of curses and princes and destiny and magic.

Cassandra Clare

Wall, Destiny, Imagination

Cassandra Clare (2012). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series (5 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass; City of Fallen Angels, City of Lost Souls”, p.1663, Simon and Schuster

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It’s all about control. Control is illusory. No matter what university you go to, no matter what degree you hold, if your goal is to become master of your own destiny, you have more to learn. Parkinson’s is a perfect metaphor for lack of control. Every unwanted movement in my hand or arm, every twitch that I cannot anticipate or arrest, is a reminder that even in the domain of my own being, I am not calling the shots. I tried to exert control by drinking myself to a place of indifference, which just exacerbated the sense of miserable hopelessness.

Michael J. Fox

Drinking, Destiny, Hands

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It was as if the demise of the owner had lent the flat a physical void it hadn't had before. At the same time he had the feeling that he wasn't alone. Harry believed in the existence of the soul. Not that he was particularly religious as such, but it was one thing which always struck him when he saw a dead body: the body was bereft of something...the creature had gone, the light had gone,there was not the illusory afterglow that long-since burned-out stars have. The body was missing its soul and it was the absence of the soul that made Harry believe.

Jo Nesbo

Religious, Stars, Believe

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The trouble with words is that they give us the illusory sense that we are making ourselves understood as well as understanding what others are saying. However, when we turn around and come face-to-face with our destiny, we discover that words are not enough.

Paulo Coelho

Destiny, Giving, Understanding

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All choices are illusions, or if they are not illusions their strength is illusory, for one choice must contend with the choices of all the other men and women deciding anything in that moment.

Kevin Powers

Men, Choices, Illusion

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Existence is illusory and it is eternal.

Albert Camus

Existence, Eternal

"The Myth of Sisyphus". Book by Albert Camus, 1955.

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Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon then from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins the journey of awakening. Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of the crowd, and by choosing knowledge over veils of ignorance.

Henri Bergson

Motivational, Spiritual, Philosophy

"On Intuition vs. Intellect" by Henri Bergson, 1907.

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Life is a very sad piece of buffoonery, because we have .. the need to fool ourselves continuously by the spontaneous creation of a reality .. which, from time to time, reveals itself to be vain and illusory.

Luigi Pirandello

Acceptance, Reality, Needs

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Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew - not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew. ... What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man - and turns them into commodities. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange. The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general.

Karl Marx

Real, Jealous, Men

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It is clear that men accept an immediate pain rather than an immediate pleasure, but only because they expect a greater pleasure in the future. Often the pleasure is illusory, but their error in calculation is no refutation of the rule.

W. Somerset Maugham

Country, Children, Pain

"The Essential W. Somerset Maugham Collection".

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First of all there will appear to you, swifter than lightning, the luminous splendor of the colorless light of Emptiness, and that will surround you on all sides. ...Try to submerge yourself in that light, giving up all belief in a separate self, all attachment to your illusory ego.

Gautama Buddha

Giving Up, Book, Light

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In our everyday garden grow the rosemary, juniper, ferns and plane trees, perfectly tangible and visible. For these plants that have an illusory relationship with us, which in no way alters their existentiality, we are merely an event, an accident, and our presence, which seems so solid, laden with gravity, is to them no more than a momentary void in motion through the air. Reality is a quality that belongs to them, and we can exercise no rights over it.

Leo Lionni

Exercise, Reality, Garden

Leo Lionni (1977). “Parallel botany”, Random House Inc

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And so began something that had not quite begun and would not soon end, with many people in many places moving off in directions and on missions which they all mistakenly thought they understood. That was just as well. The future was too fearful for contemplation, and beyond the expected, illusory finish lines were things fated by the decisions made this morning -- and, once decided, best unseen.

Tom Clancy

Morning, Moving, People

Tom Clancy (2010). “Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan”, p.2389, Penguin

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It seems to be very hard for people to live with riddles or to let them live, although one would think that life is so full of riddles as it is that a few more things we cannot answer would make no difference. But perhaps it is just this that is so unendurable, that there are irrational things in our own psyche which upset the conscious mind in its illusory certainties by confronting it with the riddle of its existence.

Carl Jung

Thinking, Differences, People

Carl Gustav Jung, Gerhard Adler (1976). “The Collected Works of C. G. Jung”, Bollingen

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In a deep metaphysical sense, all that is conditioned is illusory. All phenomena are literally 'appearances,' the outer masks in which the One Reality shows itself forth in our changing universe. The more 'material' and solid the appearance, the further is it from reality, and therefore the more illusory it is.

Annie Besant

Reality, Appearance, Mask

Annie Besant (2009). “Death - and After?”, p.70, The Floating Press

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Illusory joy is often worth more than genuine sorrow.

Rene Descartes

Joy, Sorrow, Genuine

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Horror fiction shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory, and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion.

Clive Barker

Life, Believe, Scary

"Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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...there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable: I simply am not there.

Bret Easton Ellis

Real, Hands, Ideas

FaceBook post by Bret Easton Ellis from Jan 20, 2015

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And I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the blessings of this world. It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe.

Anton Chekhov

Wise, Book, Blessing

Anton Chekhov (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated)”, p.2020, Delphi Classics

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