Illusion Quotes - Page 20

• 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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• ...Don't rupture another's illusion unless you're positive the alternative you offer is more worthwhile than that from which you're wrenching them. Interrogate your solipsism: Does it offer any better a home than the delusions you're reaching to shatter?

  Jonathan Lethem

  Home, Doe, Alternatives

  Jonathan Lethem (2010). “Chronic City”, p.341, Faber & Faber

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• Peter Lake had no illusions about mortality. He knew that it made everyone perfectly equal, and that the treasures of the earth were movement, courage, laughter, and love. The wealthy could not buy these things. On the contrary, they were for the taking.

  Mark Helprin

  Love, Laughter, Lakes

  Mark Helprin (1983). “Winter's Tale”, p.151, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• In all the illusions, you're the only truth that I need

  Nora Roberts

  Needs

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• Rob the average man of his life-illusion, and you rob him of his happiness at the same stroke.

  Henrik Ibsen

  Men, Average, Strokes

  Henrik Ibsen (2016). “The Wild Duck”, p.85, Jester House Publishing

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• What a fool I was! and yet, in the sight of angels, are we any wiser as we grow older? It seems to me, only, that our illusions change as we go on; but, still, we are madmen all the same.

  Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

  Angel, Sight, Goes On

  Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1975). “Ghost Stories and Mysteries”, p.38, Courier Corporation

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• When we were small, Rose and I used to play a game called connect the dots. I loved it. I loved drawing a line from dot number 1 to dot number 2 and so on. Most of all, I loved the moment when the chaotic sprinkle of dots resolved itself into a picture. That's what stories do. They connect the random dots of life into a picture. But it's all an illusion. Just try to connect the dots of life. You'll end up with a lunatic scribble.

  Franny Billingsley

  Games, Play, Drawing

  Franny Billingsley (2011). “Chime”, p.45, Penguin

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• Happiness is an illusion, Natalie. It doesn't actually exist." "Of course it does," I said. "It's what you feel when you're not sad." "That's unconsciousness. And I'm pretty sure that I'm miserable when I am unconscious, too.

  Lee Goldberg

  Doe, Miserable, Said

  Lee Goldberg (2011). “Mr. Monk on the Couch”, p.49, Penguin

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• Our perceptions are fallible. We sometimes see what isn't there. We are prey to optical illusions. Occasionally we hallucinate. We are error-prone.

  Carl Sagan

  Errors, Perception, Optical Illusions

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.43, Ballantine Books

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• ...it is not for the illusion of a moment to govern the choice of a lifetime.

  Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

  Choices, Moments, Lifetime

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• For what we suppose to be our love or our jealousy is never a single, continuous and indivisible passion. It is composed of an infinity of successive loves, of different jealousies, each of which is ephemeral, although by their uninterrupted multiplicity they give us the impression of continuity, the illusion of unity.

  Marcel Proust

  Passion, Giving, Unity

  Marcel Proust (1982). “Remembrance of Things Past: Swann's Way & Within a Budding Grove”, Vintage

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• Giving importance to what we think because we thought it, taking our own selves not only (to quote the Greek philosopher) as the measure of all things but as their norm or standard, we create in ourselves, if not an interpretation, at least a criticism of the universe, which we don't even know and therefore cannot criticize. The giddiest, most weak-minded of us then promote that criticism to an interpretation that's superimposed, like a hallucination; induced rather than deduced. It's a hallucination in the strict sense, being an illusion based on something only dimly seen.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Thinking, Self, Giving

  Fernando Pessoa (2005). “The Education of the Stoic: The Only Manuscript of the Baron of Teive”

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• Being tired of all illusions and of everything about illusions – the loss of illusions, the uselessness of having them, the prefatigue of having to have them in order to lose them, the sadness of having had them, the intellectual shame of having had them knowing that they would have to end this way.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Tired, Sadness, Loss

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• Liking other people is an illusion we have to cherish in ourselves if we are to live in society.

  John Fowles

  People, Cherish, Ifs

  John Fowles (1968). “The Magus”, Pan

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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.

  Marcel Proust

  Memories, Lying, Men

  Marcel Proust (2010). “In Search Of Lost Time, Vol 5: The Captive & The Fugitive”, p.515, Random House

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• It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of Philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, it has set up that single, unconscionable freedom -- free trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

  Karl Marx

  Religious, Water, Political

  Karl Marx (2018). “The Communist Manifesto & Selected Writings: & Selected Writings”, p.11, Pan Macmillan

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• The causes of illusions are not pretty to discover. They're either vicious or tragic.

  Ayn Rand

  Causes, Vicious, Tragic

  Ayn Rand (2005). “The Fountainhead”, p.297, Penguin

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• Fiction is an illusion wrought with many small, conventionally symbolic marks, triggering visions in the minds of others

  William Gibson

  Mind, Vision, Fiction

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• Poetry can be dangerous, especially beautiful poetry, because it gives the illusion of having had the experience without actually going through it.

  Rumi

  Beautiful, Giving, Poetry

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• Jesus came to announce to us that an identity based on success, popularity and power is a false identity- an illusion! Loudly and clearly he says: 'You are not what the world makes you; but you are children of God.

  Henri Nouwen

  Jesus, Children, Identity

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• Oh yes, I have learned much from Tremorlor, and so assume a like strategy. Silence, a faint mocking smile suggesting I know more than I do, an air of mystery, yes, and fell knowledge. None could guess my confusion, my host of deluded illusions and elusive delusions!

  Steven Erikson

  Air, Confusion, Silence

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• In the beginning there was faith - which is childish; trust - which is vain; and illusion - which is dangerous.

  Elie Wiesel

  Vain, Dangerous

  Elie Wiesel (2012). “Night”, p.8, Macmillan

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• We believed in God, trusted in man, and lived with the illusion that every one of us has been entrusted with a sacred spark.

  Elie Wiesel

  Men, Sacred, Sparks

  Elie Wiesel (2012). “Night”, p.8, Macmillan

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