Quotes About Illusions

All choices are illusions, or if they are not illusions their strength is illusory, for one choice must contend with the choices of all the other men and women deciding anything in that moment.

At first I protested and rebelled against poetry. I was about to deny my poetic worlds. I was doing violence to my illusions with analysis, science, and learning Henry’s language, entering Henry’s world. I wanted to destroy by violence and animalism my tenuous fantasies and illusions and my hypersensitivity. A kind of suicide. The ignominy awakened me. Then June came and answered the cravings of my imagination and saved me. Or perhaps she killed me, for now I am started on a course of madness.

Reality even when it is sad is better than illusions. Illusions are at the mercy of any winds that blow. Real happiness must come from within, from a fixed purpose and faith in one's fellow men.

To be godless is probably the first step to innocence," he said, "to lose the sense of sin and subordination, the false grief for things supposed to be lost." So by innocence you mean not an absence of experience, but an absence of illusions." An absence of need for illusions," he said. "A love of and respect for what is right before your eyes.

To his sister-in-law: What a contrast between us! You live a warm and glowing life, surrounded by loved ones whom you care for and who care for you; you are anchored in contentment. I drift about without rudder or compass, a wreck on the sea of life; I have no memories to cheer me, no pleasant illusions of the future to comfort me, or about me to satisfy my vanity. I have no family to furnish the only kind of survival that concerns us, no friends for the wholesome development of my affections, or enemies for my malice.

Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.

Time strips our illusions of their hue, And one by one in turn, some grand mistake Casts off its bright skin yearly like the snake.

A man must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions, and their sufferings.

The task of the real intellectual consists of analyzing illusions in order to discover their causes.

These are fat mummies sitting with their bags of crisps in front of the television, saying that thin models are ugly. Fashion is about dreams and illusions, and no one wants to see round women.

A man loses his illusions first, his teeth second, and his follies last.

Life is a process of losing our illusions, until we finally lose the illusion that we're alive.

The greatest profound pain is cased by, and is the result of our own illusions, fantasies and dreams.

As a child, I remember asking my parents when I was five years old, "How come if you are not Zionists, you came to the country?" I was surprised at myself that I asked this question. It means that it was always in the air. Then years later I understood it was because of the Holocaust, because they were refugees. They did not come as immigrants and, because of the illusions of the '50s and the late '40s, my mother said, "The world must be better." She could not imagine that it wouldn't be different.

Our goal while on this earth is to transcend our illusions and discover the innate power of our spirit. We are responsible for what we create, and we must therefore learn to act and think with love and wisdom and live in service to others and all life.

It's only when you become love - in other words, when you have dropped your illusions and attachments - that you will "know." As you identify less and less with the "me," you will be more at ease with everybody and with everything.

Sorrow is not in death but in loneliness, and conflict comes when you seek consolation, forgetfullness, explanations, and illusions.

Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet. They are what we call civilization.

Illusions as bad as mine make people aware of the fallacies of visual information and the pleasure to be derived from such fallacies.

A mind now clouded by the illusions of the innate darkness of life is like a tarnished mirror, but when polished, it is sure to become like a clear mirror, reflecting the essential nature of phenomena and the true aspect of reality. Arouse deep faith, and diligently polish your mirror day and night. How should you polish it? Only by chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo

To try and fit reincarnation into a neat mental package is very unwise. You will be very surprised when you discover that it doesn't work out that way. Your illusions will be painful for you.

Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false Self. We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves.

The most persistent of all attractive illusions in our country may be that racism can be ended by one single blow.

The way you're singing in your sleep The way you look before you leap The strange illusions that you keep You don't know But I'm noticing The way your touch turns into arcs The way you slide into the dark The beating of my open heart You don't know But I'm noticing

The mind spends most of the time lost in fantasies and illusions, reliving pleasant or unpleasant experiences and anticipating the future with eagerness or fear. While lost in such cravings or aversions, we are unaware of what is happening now, what we are doing now.

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.

Spirituality is not primarily about values and ethics, not about exhortations to do right or live well. The spiritual traditions are primarily about reality...an effort to penetrate the illusions of the external world and to name its underlying truth.

One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive one.

There's no point in clinging to illusions.

All round and round does the world lie as in a sharp-shooter's ambush, to pick off the beautiful illusions of youth, by the pitiless cracking rifles of the realities of age.

Wisdom is not having illusions, especially anything in your own mind that elevates you above others.

People who cling to their illusions find it difficult, if not impossible, to learn anything worth learning: a people under the necessity of creating themselves must examine everything, and soak up learning the way the roots of a tree soak up water.

Politics and the economy are not things that exist, or illusions, or ideologies. They are things that do not exist and yet which are inscribed in reality and fall under a regime of truth dividing the true and the false.

Rome is the city of echoes, the city of illusions, and the city of yearning.

Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows.

What, then, is that incalculable feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to life? A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.

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.

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.

Illusions are important. What you foresee or what you remember can be as important as what really happens.

It takes a lot to wound a man without illusions.

I have an audio stigmatism whereby I hear things wrong - I have audio illusions.

Truth is too simple for us: we do not like those who unmask our illusions.

The one wholly true thought one can hold about the past is that it is not here. To think about it at all is therefore to think about illusions.

I know how to dress for my body to give off illusions, and I like to teach women about it - it's important for women to have that power and that arsenal... tricks that make you feel good when you walk outside.

I have loved works of fiction precisely for their illusions, for the author's sleight-of-hand in showing me the magic, what appeared in the right hand but not in the left.

Illusions are crucial to the maintenance of life functions.

When you have lived longer in this world and outlived the enthusiastic and pleasing illusions of youth, you will find your love and pity for the race increase tenfold, your admiration and attachment to a particular party or opinion fall away altogether.