Illusory Quotes - Page 6

• Life is so messy that the temptation to straighten it up is very strong. And the results always illusory.

  Anna Quindlen

  Life, Strong, Temptation

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• I have written a book called 'In the Wonderland of Numbers.' It's about a young girl, Neha, who is very poor in mathematics, but in a series of illusory experiences, she becomes a great mathematician.

  Shakuntala Devi

  Girl, Book, Numbers

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• There is an untroubled harmony in everything, a full consonance in nature; only in our illusory freedom do we feel at variance with it.

  Fyodor Tyutchev

  Freedom, Harmony, Feels

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• ...in any society, Law is an illusory concept that works only when everyone voluntarily agrees to live by it.

  Massad Ayoob

  Law, Live By, Agree

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• People are distracted by objects of desire, and afterwards repent of the lust they've indulged, because they have indulged with a phantom and are left even farther from Reality than before. Your desire for the illusory is a wing, by means of which a seeker might ascend to Reality. When you have indulged a lust, your wing drops off; you become lame and that fantasy flees. Preserve the wing and don't indulge such lust, so that the wing of desire may bear you to Paradise. People fancy they are enjoying themselves, but they are really tearing out their wings for the sake of an illusion.

  Rumi

  Mean, Reality, Wings

  Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi (2008). “The Pocket Rumi”, p.171, Shambhala Publications

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• Pain, sorrow, ignorance are all illusory; they cannot live. Bliss, joy, knowledge are true; they cannot die.

  Sivananda

  Pain, Ignorance, Joy

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• It's good to remember often, every day, that you are not a physical creature in a physical universe; but a non-physical consciousness vibrating at a certain frequency. You are Consciousness having a state of being, that's it. Everything else you perceive is simply an illusory crystallization of your chosen vibration. You are the Creator of your life, in this way.

  Bentinho

  Way, Vibrations, Remember

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• The people who benefit from this state of affairs have been at pains to convince us that the agricultural practices and policies that have almost annihilated the farming population have greatly benefited the population of food consumers. But more and more consumers are now becoming aware that our supposed abundance of cheap and healthful food is to a considerable extent illusory.

  Wendell Berry

  Pain, Practice, Convince Us

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• Online gambling is very seductive and very illusory. It can seem like a really good idea. It can seem like what people told you to work hard and get ahead, but when someone shows you something and it's too good to be true, it probably is.

  Ben Affleck

  Hard Work, Gambling, Ideas

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• God alone is truth, everything else is transitory and illusory.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  God, Transitory

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• 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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• And one has to remember that no photography can pretend to show the truth. A picture only shows a given situation under a very specific perspective, consciously or not, openly or not, relevantly or not. Photographers have to accept they can just convey fragments of illusory realities and relate their own intimate experience of the world. In this process of fictionalising an unreachable truth, it's up to them to impose their doubts about any photographic truth, or accept being impotent pawns in the mediatic game.

  Antoine D'Agata

  Photography, Reality, Games

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• Those who have overcome self-will and become instruments to do God's work can accomplish tasks which are seemingly impossible, but they experience no feeling of self achievement. I now know myself to be a part of the infinite cosmos, not separate from other souls or God. My illusory self is dead; the real self controls the garment of clay and uses it for God's work.

  Peace Pilgrim

  Real, Self, Achievement

  Peace Pilgrim (1992). “Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words”, p.128, Friends of Peace PIlgrim

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• After generations of living under medical tutelage, which provides us with protection (albeit illusory) against "dangerous drugs", we have failed to cultivate the self-reliance and self-discipline we must possess as competent adults surrounded by the fruits of our pharmacological-technological age.

  Thomas Szasz

  Self, Discipline, Drug

  Thomas Szasz (1996). “Our Right to Drugs: The Case for a Free Market”, p.24, Syracuse University Press

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• Transcendence implies the surpassing of two things, and the consequent attainment of a third thing. But there are no 'things' in reality, of any kind whatever: there is only the thing-in-itself, its suchness, which is Reality, revealed when the illusory dualism of inexistent qualities is dissolved.

  Wei Wu Wei

  Reality, Two, Quality

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• Scientific discovery is a private event, and the delight that accompanies it, or the despair of finding it illusory, does not travel. One scientist may get great satisfaction from another's work and admire it deeply; it may give him great intellectual pleasure; but it gives him no sense of participation in the discovery, it does not carry him away, and his appreciation of it does not depend on his being carried away. If it were otherwise the inspirational origin of scientific discovery would never have been in doubt.

  Peter Medawar

  Appreciation, Discovery, Giving

  Peter Brian Medawar (1996). “The Strange Case of the Spotted Mice and Other Classic Essays on Science”, p.32, Oxford University Press, USA

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• The culture industry perpetually cheats its consumers of what it perpetually promises. The promissory note which, with its plots and staging, it draws on pleasure is endlessly prolonged; the promise, which is actually all the spectacle consists of, is illusory: all it actually confirms is that the real point will never be reached, that the diner must be satisfied with the menu.

  Theodor Adorno

  Real, Promise, Plot

  Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer (1997). “Dialectic of Enlightenment”, p.139, Verso

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• It is no wrong or injustice that one has many bags of the finest myrrh and garments embroidered with gold, while another has not those things, which are not necessary for our maintenance; he who has them has not thereby obtained control over anything that could be an essential addition to his nature, but has only obtained something illusory or deceptive. ...This is the rule at all times and in all places; no notice should be taken of exceptional cases, as we have explained.

  Maimonides

  Taken, Gold, Essentials

  "Guide for the Perplexed". Book by Maimonides, Ch.12, 1190.

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• The soul contains few secrets and longings which cannot be sensibly discussed, analyzed, and polled. Solitude, the very condition which sustained the individual against and beyond his society, has become technically impossible. Logical and linguistic analysis demonstrate that the old metaphysical problems are illusory problems; the quest for the "meaning" of things can be reformulated as the quest for the meaning of words, and the established universe of discourse and behavior can provide perfectly adequate criteria for the answer.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Soul, Solitude, Secret

  Herbert Marcuse (2012). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.71, Beacon Press

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• Certain knowledge of what to fight for, and what to fight against, gives meaning to life and provides its own version of discipline: never give up. That kind of meaning is illusory, I now believe, and blinkered. Fealty to a mystical absolute is a formula for disaster, especially in transformative times.

  Stewart Brand

  Giving Up, Believe, Fighting

  Stewart Brand (2010). “Whole Earth Discipline: Why Dense Cities, Nuclear Power, Transgenic Crops, RestoredWildlands, and Geoengineering Are Necessary”, p.223, Penguin

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• Does one get faith by mere studying of books? Too much reading creates confusion. The Master used to say that one should learn from the scriptures that God alone is real and the world illusory.

  Sarada Devi

  Real, Book, Reading

  "Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations" by Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, (p. 348), 2004.

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• It is not that things are delusory but their separateness in the fabric of the Whole that is illusory.

  Frederick Franck

  Fabric, Whole, Separateness

  "Echoes from the Bottomless Well". Book by Frederick Franck, p. 77, 1985.

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• Today, it may seem as if there are demons attacking me from within. I should remember that demons are illusory, and that when I think that I'm being attacked by unseen forces, it probably just means that I am going insane.

  John S. Hall

  Mean, Thinking, Insane

  "Daily Negations". Book by John S. Hall, 2007.

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• False modesty is the masterpiece of vanity: showing the vain man in such an illusory light that he appears in the reputation of the virtue quite opposite to the vice which constitutes his real character; it is a deceit.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Real, Character, Men

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• Love is reality, fear is an illusory concept created in your mind.

  Marcus Thomas

  Love, Fear, Reality

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