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Illusion Quotes

Browse 3091 quotes about Illusion.

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Illusion Quotes

“People are so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool's caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else's are transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone are rosy.”

PeopleIfsThinkingWorldLyingFoolIllusionRidiculousExceptionYellowLampsTransparentCapsRosyOpaqueMiddlemarch
Book:Middlemarch: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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“But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding Wonder, as for many other ends, are your two grand fundamental world-enveloping Appearances, SPACE and TIME. These, as spun and woven for us from before Birth itself, to clothe our celestial ME for dwelling here, and yet to blind it, lie all-embracing, as the universal canvas, or warp and woof, whereby all minor Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, weave and paint themselves. In vain, while here on Earth, shall you endeavor to strip them off; you can, at best, but rend them asunder for moments, and look through.”

WorldLooksTwoEndsMomentsEarthLyingSpaceExistenceWonderBirthIllusionUniversalFundamentalsBlindPaintAppearanceVainEndeavorHidingMinorsCanvasTime And SpaceDwellingCelestialWovenIllusorySpunWarp
Book:Carlyle Reader
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“If God does not exist, and if religion is an illusion that the majority of men cannot live without ... let men believe in the lies of religion since they cannot do without them, and let then a handful of sages, who know the truth and can live with it, keep it among themselves. Men are then divided into the wise and the foolish, the philosophers and the common men, and atheism becomes a guarded, esoteric doctrine - for if the illusions of religion were to be discredited, there is no telling with what madness men would be seized, with what uncontrollable anguish.”

IfsKnowsMenBelieveDoeWould BeLyingCommonWiseAtheismIllusionLet MeMadnessMajorityPhilosopherScaryFoolishDoctrineDividedAnguishSageHandfulGuardedCommon ManEsotericUncontrollable
Author:Irving Kristol
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“Whatever may be your desire to accomplish great deeds, the deep silence of pregnancy never comes to you! The event of the day sweeps you along like straws before the wind whilst ye lie under the illusion that ye are chasing the event,-poor fellows! If a man wishes to act the hero on the stage he must not think of forming part of the chorus; he should not even know how the chorus is made up.”

IfsThinkingKnowsMenShouldMayMadeLyingDesireWishPoorSilenceKnow HowStageEventsWindHeroIllusionFellowsDeedsAccomplishPregnancyChasingChorusStraws
Book:The Dawn of Day
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“Even in an intensely mediated world, in a world that offers at least the illusion of radical self-invention and radical freedom of choice, I as a novelist am drawn to the things you can't get away from. Because much of the promise of radical self-invention, of defining yourself through this marvelous freedom of choice, it's just a lie. It's a lie that we all buy into, because it helps the economy run.”

WorldSelfHelpingRunningLyingChoicesEconomyPromiseOffersIllusionInventionRadicalNovelistsGet AwayMarvelousDefiningFreedom Of ChoiceDefine Yourself
Author:Jonathan Franzen
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“Like medieval theologians we had a philosophy that explained everything to us in advance, and everything that did not fit could be readily identified as a fraud or a lie or an illusion... The perniciousness of the anti-Communist ideology of the Truman Doctrine arises not from any patent falsehood but from its distortion and simplification of reality, from its universalization and its elevation to the status of a revealed truth.”

PhilosophyRealityLyingFitIllusionAriseDoctrineIdeologyCommunistFraudFalsehoodTheologianMedievalDistortionPatentsElevationSimplificationTrumanAnti Communist
Author:J. William Fulbright
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“Beneath all the rhetoric about relevance lies a profoundly disturbing possibility - that people may base their lives upon an illusion, upon a blatant lie. The attractiveness of a belief is all too often inversely proportional to its truth... To allow "relevance" to be given greater weight than truth is a mark of intellectual shallowness and moral irresponsibility.”

PeopleMayLyingBeliefGivenMoralGreaterPossibilityTruth IsIntellectualIllusionWeightMarkRhetoricDisturbingRelevanceAttractivenessIrresponsibilityShallownessBlatant Lies
Author:Alister E. McGrath
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“The essential factor in the transition of the baroque to photography is not the perfecting of a physical process... rather does it lie in a psychological fact, to wit, in completely satisfying our appetite for illusion by a mechanical reproduction in the making of which man plays not part. The solution is not to be found in the result achieved, but in the way of achieving it.”

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Author:Andre Bazin
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“In each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice. We’re each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion fighting to emerge into something solid, something real. We’ve got to forgive ourselves that. I must remember to forgive myself. Because there is a lot of grey to work with. No one can live in the light all the time.”

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Book:A Great and Terrible Beauty
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“People in general attach too much importance to words. They are under the illusion that talking effects great results. As a matter of fact, words are, as a rule, the shallowest portion of all the argument. They but dimly represent the great surging feelings and desires which lie behind. When the distraction of the tongue is removed, the heart listens.”

PeopleHeartMatterFactsFeelingsLyingDesireResultsBehindsTalkingToo MuchEffectsIllusionArgumentImportanceTongueDistractionPortionsMatter Of FactGreat Results
Book:Sister Carrie
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“I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions; I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, location are functions. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain.”

ThinkingBelieveBodyScienceLyingCertainI BelieveMemoriesTakenOne ThingShapesIllusionAll ThingsFunctionSensesLocationExtensionsBody Shapes
Author:Rene Descartes
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“Demons feed on death and pain madness," Valentine said. "When I kill, it is because I must. You grew up in a falsely beautiful paradise surrounded by fragile glass walls, my daughter. Your mother created the world she wanted to live in and she brought you up in it, but she never told you it was an illusion. And all the time the demons waited with their weapons of blood and terror to smash the glass and pull you free of the lie.”

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Book: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
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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".”

KnowsHumansHas BeensStillsUseLyingOrderLostMoralHeardTruth IsIllusionArmyRelationForgottenMetaphorObligationPoeticTruthfulWornTranslationsMobileHuman RelationsDecorationBeing TruthfulSensuousRhetoricalAnthropomorphism
Author:Friedrich Nietzsche
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“This is where we are at right now, as a whole. No one is left out of the loop. We are experiencing a reality based on a thin veneer of lies and illusions. A world where greed is our God and wisdom is sin, where division is key and unity is fantasy, where the ego-driven cleverness of the mind is praised, rather than the intelligence of the heart.”

WorldMindHeartWholeRealityLyingLeftSinFantasyKeysRight NowEgoIllusionUnityGreedDrivenDivisionClevernessLeft OutLoopsVeneerRevolutionary Ideas
Author:Bill Hicks
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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.”

WorldTwoRealHardFactsPainJoyLyingHappenedThis WorldSweetIllusionTensionSubstitutesImperfectHard LifeSweet Life
Book:The Fever Series 7-Book Bundle: Darkfever, Bloodfever, Faefever, Dreamfever, Shadowfever, Iced, Burned
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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.”

PeopleKnowsMenWantMindPersonsLyingGrowsMemoriesDutyCreaturesIllusionContraryPolitenessFriendship LoveDeferenceDupesAlone Man
Book:In Search Of Lost Time, Vol 5: The Captive & The Fugitive
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“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.”

IfsThinkingKnowsWorldWayReasonLawUsedLyingGoneStudyCenturyIllusionLogicConnectedStabilityGrammarGood And BadInstabilityHidden Meaning
Book:No and Me
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“Think hard about the reasons for believing and not believing, what your religion teaches you and demands so inexorably that you believe. I am convinced that if you follow closely the natural light of your spirit, you will see ... that all the religions in the world are only human inventions and that everything your religion teaches you and forces you to believe as supernatural and divine is at heart only error, lie, illusion and trickery.”

IfsThinkingWorldBelieveHumansHeartHardReasonLightSpiritLyingForceNaturalTeachDivineDemandIllusionErrorsAtheistConvincedInventionTrickeryHuman InventionsNatural Light
Author:Jean Meslier
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“Ask most people who live in a home and have a mortgage on it whether they own their own home and the answer is almost guaranteed to be a resounding 'yes'. Yet it's the wrong answer. Technically speaking, until they have paid the mortgage off, they don't own it. Herein lies the difference between reality and illusion, between ownership and control. This confusion lies not only at the individual level, but also at the heart of government thinking.”

PeopleThinkingHeartHomeRealityGovernmentLyingAsksIndividualDifferencesAnswersLevelsIllusionPaidConfusionOwnershipMortgageWrong AnswersOwnership And Control
Book:How The West Was Lost: Fifty Years of Economic Folly - And the Stark Choices Ahead
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“In vain do we seek tranquility in the desert; temptations are always with us; our passions, represented by the demons, never let us alone: those monsters created by the heart, those illusions produced by the mind, those vain specters that are our errors and our lies always appear before us to seduce us; they attack us even in our fasting or our mortifications, in other words, in our very strength.”

MindHeartLyingPassionIllusionErrorsMonstersTemptationDesertVainDemonTranquilityFastingSeducingMortification
Author:Baron de Montesquieu
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“Today, when death and old age are increasingly concealed behind euphemisms and comforting baby talk, and life is threatened with being smothered in the mass consumption of hypnotic mechanized vulgarity, the need to confront man with the reality of his situation is greater than ever. For the dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its senselessness; to accept it freely, without fear, without illusions - and to laugh at it.”

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Book:The Theatre of the Absurd
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