Illusion Quotes - Page 19

• The straight line, a respectable optical illusion which ruins many a man.

  Victor Hugo

  Men, Lines, Optical Illusions

  Victor Hugo (2010). “The Works of Victor Hugo”, p.1969, BookCaps Study Guides

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• Mothers support certain illusions about their children, and one of my illusions was that I liked who I was, because she did. When she passed away, so did that idea.

  Mitch Albom

  Mother, Children, Ideas

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• Language can't describe reality. Literature has no stable reference, no real meaning. Each reader's interpretation is equally valid, more important than the author's intention. In fact, nothing in life has meaning. Reality is subjective. Values and truths are subjective. Life itself is a kind of illusion. Blah, blah, blah, let's have another scotch.

  Dean Koontz

  Real, Scotch, Important

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• You must not look in that mirror at your doughy legs and flat feet, for today is about dreams and illusions, and unfiltered natural daylight is the enemy of dreams.

  Tina Fey

  Dream, Witty, Mirrors

  Tina Fey (2011). “Bossypants”, p.77, Hachette UK

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• When you have indulged a lust, your wing drops off; you become lame, abandoned by a fantasy. …People fancy they are enjoying themselves, but they are really tearing out their wings for the sake of an illusion.

  Rumi

  Spiritual, Wings, People

  Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (Maulana), Jelaluddin Rumi, Kabir Helminski, Andrew Harvey (2005). “The Rumi Collection: An Anthology of Translations of Mevlâna Jalâluddin Rumi”, p.20, Shambhala Publications

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• Read day and night, devour books - these sleeping pills - not to know but to forget! Through books you can retrace your way back to the origins of spleen, discarding history and its illusions.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Book, Sleep, Night

  "Tears and Saints". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1937.

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• Deep breaths. I am taking deep breaths. Composure. Which, for me, means composing... Maybe this is my way of creating the illusion of control over something I have no control over. Like, if it's just a story I'm telling or a song I'm singing, then I'll be okay because I'm the guy who's providing the words.

  David Levithan

  Song, Mean, Creating

  Rachel Cohn, David Levithan (2007). “Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist”, p.133, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• I know,” said Peter. “Perhaps better than anyone. But you can’t stay a child forever. To choose to speak into Echo’s Well is to choose illusion. To choose to avoid the responsibilities of being an adult. The real trick—the real choice—is to keep the best of the child you were, without forgetting when you grow up. “It is the best of both worlds, Jack. Being a child is to believe in magic everywhere… “…but even Peter Pan had to grow up one day.

  James A. Owen

  Children, Growing Up, Real

  James A. Owen (2015). “Dawn of the Dragons: Here, There Be Dragons; The Search for the Red Dragon”, p.654, Simon and Schuster

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• No, Mary had no illusions about romance. Falling in love was a pretty name for it, that was all.

  Daphne du Maurier

  Falling In Love, Names, Romance

  Daphne du Maurier (1936). “JAMAICA INN”

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• It was all a lie, it all stank, stank of lies, it all gave the illusion of meaning and happiness and beauty, and all of it was just putrefaction that no one would admit to. Bitter was the taste of the world. Life was a torment.

  Hermann Hesse

  Lying, World, Taste

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• The main trouble with being an honest man was that it lost you all your illusions.

  James Jones

  Men, Honest, Trouble

  James Jones (2012). “The World War II Trilogy: From Here to Eternity, The Thin Red Line, and Whistle”, p.1155, Open Road Media

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• I like the stars. It's the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they're always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend... I can pretend that things last.

  Neil Gaiman

  Stars, Mean, Thinking

  "The Sandman: Brief Lives". Comic book series by Neil Gaiman, 1992 - 1993.

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• The key to seeing the world's soul, and in the process wakening our own, is to get over the confusion by which we think that fact is real and imagination is illusion.

  Thomas Moore

  Real, Thinking, Keys

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• If you alter or obscure the Biblical portrait of God in order to attract converts, you don't get converts to God, you get converts to an illusion. This is not evangelism, but deception.

  John Piper

  Biblical, Order, Deception

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• The two of you are getting downright chatty, aren't you, Ms. Lane? When did you last see him? what else did he tell you? I'm asking the questions tonight. If an illusion of control comforts you, Ms. Lane, by all means, cling to it.

  Karen Marie Moning

  Mean, Two, Comfort

  Karen Marie Moning (2007). “Bloodfever: Fever Series”, p.90, Delacorte Press

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• Music makes me forget myself, my true condition, it carries me off into another state of being, one that isn't my own: under the influence of music I have the illusion of feeling things I don't really feel, of understanding things I don't understand, being able to do things I'm not able to do... Can it really be allowable for anyone who feels like it to hypnotize another person, or many other persons, and then do what he likes with them? Particularly if the hypnotist is the first unscrupulous individual who happens to come along?

  Leo Tolstoy

  Understanding, Feelings, Able

  "The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories". Book by Leo Tolstoy, 1890.

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• Nothing feeds forgetfulness better than war.... We all keep quiet and they try to convince us that what we've seen, what we've done, what we've learned about ourselves and about others, is an illusion, a passing nightmare. Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened, until the moment comes when we no longer recognize them and they return, with another face and another name, to devour what they left behind.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Memories, War, Convince Us

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• Once we're able to see this world as an illusion and a phantasm, then we can see everything that happens to us as a dream, as something that pretended to exist while we were sleeping. And we will become subtly and profoundly indifferent towards all of life's setbacks and calamities. Those who die turned a corner, which is why we've stopped seeing them; those who suffer pass before us like a nightmare, if we feel, or like an unpleasant daydream, if we think. And even our own suffering won't be more than this nothingness.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Dream, Sleep, Thinking

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• The feeling that was born that night, how could i describe it?Words like love or lust just don't seem right. I may call it jealousy, or may be anxiety and moreover, need. Even now I'm anxious at times because when I am with Ren, everything around feels like a dream. That was how Ren turned my boring life into an illusion, and that was too much for no matter how hard i tried, it seemed I could never catch him.

  Ai Yazawa

  Dream, Night, Like Love

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• But what I wanted back had never really been there. He was a temporary illusion, a mirage of water after walking in the desert. I had made him up. And he could have killed me. You've got to stop the ride sometimes. Stop it and get off.

  Deb Caletti

  Attitude, Water, Desert

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• A moral character is attached to autumnal scenes; the leaves falling like our years, the flowers fading like our hours, the clouds fleeting like our illusions, the light diminishing like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers becoming frozen like our lives--all bear secret relations to our destinies.

  François-René de Chateaubriand

  Flower, Fall, Character

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• She wasn't, nor ever had been, under the illusion that marriage was a relationship characterized by endless bliss and romance. Throw any two people together, add the inevitable ups and downs, give the mixture a vigorous stir, and a few stormy arguments were inevitable, no matter how the couple loved each other.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Couple, Two, People

  "The Best of Me". Book by Nicholas Sparks, October 11, 2011.

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• It's the same with menus and men and just about anything else: we think we're choosing things for ourselves, but in fact we may not be choosing anything. It could be that everthing's being decided in advance and we pretend we're making choices. Free will may be an illusion. I often think that.

  Haruki Murakami

  Men, Thinking, Choices

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• The night is full of mystery. Even when the moon is brightest, secrets hide everywhere. Then the sun rises and its rays cast so many shadows that the day creates more illusion than all the veiled truth of the night.

  Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

  Moon, Night, Secret

  Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (2008). “Demon in My View”, p.1, Laurel Leaf

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• But he could not renounce his infinite capacity for illusion at the very moment he needed it most... he saw fireflies where there were none.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Firefly, Saws, Infinite

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