Illusion Quotes - Page 16

• You have been professing yourself reluctant to throw off your load of illusion because truth was uncertain. Well, it is certain now, yet the burden still weighs you down, while other people are given wings on freer shoulders, people who have not worn themselves out with research, nor spent a decade and more reflecting on these questions.

  Saint Augustine

  Wings, People, Research

  Saint Augustine (1997). “The Confessions”, p.199

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• Drizzt Do'Urden had followed a line of precepts based upon discipline and ultimate optimism. He fought for a better world because he believed that a better world could and would be made. He had never held any illusions that he would change the world, of course, or even a substantial portion of it, but he always held strongly that fighting to better just his own little pocket of the world was a worthwhile cause.

  R. A. Salvatore

  Fighting, Discipline, Optimism

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• It is our destiny to live with the wrong as well as the right kind of citizens, and to learn from them, the wrong-minded ones, as much or more as from others. If we have not yet succeeded -after how many centuries?- in eliminating from life the elements which plague us perhaps we need to question life more closely. Perhaps our refusal to face reality is the only ill we suffer from, and all the rest but illusion and delusion. (p.26)

  Henry Miller

  Reality, Destiny, Suffering

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• Routine feeds the illusion of safety.

  Christopher Moore

  Safety, Routine

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• The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

  Karl Marx

  Giving Up, Real, People

  Karl Marx (1975). “Early writings”, Vintage

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• You know, when I was in love, I was always inventing things. A whole array of tricks, illusions and optical effects to amuse my lady friend. I think she'd had enough of my inventions by the end... I wanted to create a voyage to the moon just for her, but what I should have given her was a real journey on earth.

  Mathias Malzieu

  Real, Moon, Journey

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• Knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Veils, Action

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2016). “The Birth of Tragedy: Or Hellenism and Pessimism”, p.66, The Floating Press

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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.

  Cassandra Clare

  Beautiful, Daughter, Mother

  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.830, Simon and Schuster

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• By and large... the good's an illusion, little fables folks tell themselves so they can get through their days without screaming too much.

  Stephen King

  Littles, Too Much, Fables

  Stephen King (1999). “Storm of the Century: The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935”, p.308, Simon and Schuster

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• I did not count the days or the weeks or the months. Time is an illusion that only makes us pant. I survived because I forgot even the very notion of time.

  Yann Martel

  Months, Week, Life Of Pi Book

  Yann Martel (2015). “Life of Pi - CANCELED”, p.201, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• He was so far from the gallant knights in her romantic fantasies ... He was tarnished, scarred, imperfect. Deliberately he had destroyed any illusions she might have had about him, exposing his mysterious past for the ugly horror that it was. His purpose had been to drive her away. But instead she felt closer to him, as if the truth had bonded them in a new intimacy.

  Lisa Kleypas

  Past, Knights, Might

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• One sometimes weeps over one's illusions with as much bitterness as over a death.

  Guy de Maupassant

  Bitterness, Sometimes

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• If one chooses sides on emotion then the rebel is the guy to go with. He is fighting for everything men claim to honour, freedom, independance, truth, the right.......all the subjective illusions. All the eternal trigger words. We are minions of the villan of the piece. We confess the illusion and deny the substance.

  Glen Cook

  Fighting, Men, Guy

  Glen Cook (2007). “Chronicles of the Black Company”, p.79, Macmillan

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• Do you believe in the value of truth, my dear, or don’t you?” “Of course I believe in the truth,” said Rhoda, staring. “Yes, you say that, but perhaps you haven’t thought about it. The truth hurts sometimes – and destroys one’s illusions.” “I’d rather have it all the same.” said Rhoda. “So would I. But I don’t know that we’re wise.” Mrs. Oliver; Rhoda Dawes

  Agatha Christie

  Wise, Hurt, Believe

  Agatha Christie (1984). “Five complete Hercule Poirot novels”, Random House Value Pub

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• I've always preferred mythology to history. History is truth that becomes an illusion. Mythology is an illusion that becomes reality.

  Jean Cocteau

  Reality, Mythology

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• Of all the islands he'd visited, two stood out. The island of the past, he said, where the only time was past time and the inhabitants were bored and more or less happy, but where the weight of illusion was so great that the island sank a little deeper into the river every day. And the island of the future, where the only time was the future, and the inhabitants were planners and strivers, such strivers, said Ulises, that they were likely to end up devouring one another.

  Roberto Bolano

  Past, Two, Rivers

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• Now to sum it up,' said Bernard. 'Now to explain to you the meaning of my life. Since we do not know each other (though I met you once I think, on board a ship going to Africa), we can talk freely. The illusion is upon me that something adheres for a moment, has roundness, weight, depth, is completed. This, for the moment, seems to be my life. If it were possible, I would hand it you entire. I would break it off as one breaks off a bunch of grapes. I would say, "Take it. This is my life.

  Virginia Woolf

  Thinking, Break Off, Hands

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “The Waves”, p.175, Virginia Woolf

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• Clockwork could not run counter to its nature. The seconds, minutes, and hours moved only forward. Patient, precise, and unstoppable. Memory was an indulgence, an illusion that broke like a wave upon the juggernaut of time. The past remained the past.

  Matthew J. Kirby

  Running, Memories, Past

  Matthew J. Kirby (2012). “The Clockwork Three”, p.155, Scholastic Inc.

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• Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Socialism, Communism, Stage

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• Both the old and new physics were dealing with shadow-symbols, but the new physics was forced to be aware of that fact - forced to be aware that it was dealing with shadows and illusions, not reality.

  Ken Wilber

  Reality, Shadow, Old And New

  Ken Wilber (2004). “The Simple Feeling of Being: Visionary, Spiritual, and Poetic Writings”, p.97, Shambhala Publications

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• I couldn't fault her for believing, because I had to imagine i was nice to have that illusion still intact.

  David Levithan

  Nice, Believe, Faults

  Rachel Cohn, David Levithan (2010). “Dash & Lily's Book of Dares”, p.58, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• Only later did I come to understand that to be a mother is to be an illusion. No matter how vigilant, in the end a mother can't protect her child - not from pain, or horror, or the nightmare of violence, from sealed trains moving rapidly in the wrong direction, the depravity of strangers, trapdoors, abysses, fires, cars in the rain, from chance.

  Nicole Krauss

  Mother, Pain, Children

  Nicole Krauss (2011). “Great House: A Novel”, p.270, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The rules of magic, my dear, are best not discusses. For once we understand the illusion, we no longer believe it.

  Libba Bray

  Believe, Magic, Dear

  Libba Bray (2010). “The Sweet Far Thing”, p.213, Simon and Schuster

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• He looked at a world of incredible loveliness. Old distaff Celt's blood in some back chamber of his brain moved him to discourse with the birches, with the oaks. A cool green fire kept breaking in the woods and he could hear the footsteps of the dead. Everything had fallen from him. He scarce could tell where his being ended or the world began nor did he care. He lay on his back in the gravel, the earth's core sucking his bones, a moment's giddy vertigo with this illusion of falling outward through blue and windy space, over the offside of the planet, hurtling through the high thin cirrus.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Fall, Blood, Space

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• The illusions it had woven for me had taken place only in my head. The battle had been invisible to the naked eye, but the hard ones are.

  Karen Marie Moning

  Taken, Eye, Battle

  Karen Marie Moning (2016). “The Fever Series 7-Book Bundle: Darkfever, Bloodfever, Faefever, Dreamfever, Shadowfever, Iced, Burned”, p.1387, Dell

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