Quotes About Illusions

Civilised life, you know, is based on a huge number of illusions in which we all collaborate willingly. The trouble is we forget after a while that they are illusions and we are deeply shocked when reality is torn down around us.

Illusions are certainly expensive amusements; but the destruction of illusions is still more expensive, if looked upon as an amusement, as it undoubtedly is by some people.

No doubt the truth is hard to come by for those who do not like the sound of it - dreams and illusions are so much more pleasant.

Each of us believes himself to live directly within the world that surrounds him, to sense its objects and events precisely, and to live in real and current time. I assert that these are perceptual illusions ... Each of us lives within the universe - the prison of his own brain.

Single vision produces worse illusions than double vision or many-headed monsters.

Do you want a sign that you're asleep? Here it is: you're suffering. Suffering is a sign that you're out of touch with the truth. Suffering is given to you that you might open your eyes to the truth, that you might understand that there's falsehood somewhere, just as physical pain is given to you so you will understand that there is disease or illness somewhere. Suffering occurs when you clash with reality. When your illusions clash with reality, when your falsehoods clash with truth, then you have suffering. Otherwise there is no suffering.

Reason dissipates the illusions of life, but does not console us for their departure.

The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones.

Worrying, obsessing, and controlling are illusions. They are tricks we play on ourselves.

Freedom from worries and surcease from strain are illusions that always inhabit the distance.

If you prefer illusions to realities, it is only because all decent realities have eluded you and left you in the lurch; or else your contempt for the world is mere hypocrisy and funk.

Contemplative living is living in true relationship with oneself, God, others and nature, free of the illusions of separateness.

I'd always wanted to do these types of things - pieces of magic I could put out not as illusions, but really doing it.

The 1990's will be a determining period of time for another cycle. If humanity during this time chooses to throw away a lot of the mirages and illusions it's fooled itself with, we will enter a very bright and golden age. It won't happen in one day.

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

Rationalism belongs to the cool observer. But because of the stupidity of the average person, they follow not reason, but faith. This naïve faith, requires necessary illusions and emotionally potent oversimplifications, which are provided by the myth maker to keep the ordinary person on course.

Our experience is composed rather of illusions lost than of wisdom acquired.

What kind of god is it that some human brain can shatter the illusions that have been built up around such a deity? God's a mystery. I'll never be able to tell you what God is.

Wishes and fears are illusions, Dil Bahadur, not realities. You must practice detachment.

Dying visions of angels and Christ and God and heaven are confined to credibly good men. Why do not bad men have such visions? They die of all sorts of diseases; they have nervous temperaments; they even have creeds and hopes about the future which they cling to with very great tenacity; why do not they rejoice in some such glorious illusions when they go out of the world?

Verse is a mechanism by which we can create interpretative illusions suggesting profoundities of response and understanding which far exceed the engagement or research of the writer.

Man did not address his inquiries to the earth on which he stood until a remarkably late stage in the development of his desire for knowledge. And the answers he received to the questions, "Where do I come from?", "What is man?", although they made him poorer by a few illusions, gave him in compensation a knowledge of his past that is vaster than he could ever have dreamed. For it emerged that the history of life was his history too.

That's the whole burden of this novel - the loss of those illusions that give such color to the world that you don't care whether things are true or false as long as they partake of the magical glory.

You can't learn anything from saguaro cactus, from ocotillo. They are just passing through; their roots, their much heralded dormancy in the dry season, these are only illusions of permanence. They know even less than you do.

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

Tutelage is a comfortable relationship for the senior partner, but it is demoralizing in the long run. It breeds illusions of omniscience on one side and attitudes of impotent irresponsibility on the other.

There is no inherent awakening power in cultural forms that have become dissociated from the wisdom and practicality that gave birth to them. They turn into illusions themselves and become part of the drama of religious culture. Although they can make us happy temporarily, they can't free us from suffering, so at some point, they become a source of disappointment and discouragement. Eventually, these forms may inspire nothing more than resistance to their authority.

Living is a risk," I snapped at him. "Every decision, every interaction, every step, every time you get out of bed in the morning, you take a risk. To survive is to know you're taking that risk and to not get out of bed clutching illusions of safety.

You can't live without illusions, even if you must fight for them.

The idea that positive illusions are in the service of sef-esteem virtually requires that they stay in check. If one develops substantially unrealistic expectations regarding the future that greatly exceed what one is actually able to accomplish, then one is set up for failure and disappointment, leading to lower self-esteem.

The experience of going to the other side to nirvana clarifies and simplifies your view of all things. You see the world with greater clarity, because it is not obscured by illusions.

Forgiveness is not a matter of feeling superior, of feeling sorry for our parents because they didn't' know any better. It comes when we understand that as humans we all do the very best we can, and we can't ask for more than that. Forgiveness is making the choice to find no more value in anger, and to see that we are all God's light, all joined, and the separations we feel are only part of the illusions of the ego.

In vain do we seek tranquility in the desert; temptations are always with us; our passions, represented by the demons, never let us alone: those monsters created by the heart, those illusions produced by the mind, those vain specters that are our errors and our lies always appear before us to seduce us; they attack us even in our fasting or our mortifications, in other words, in our very strength.

We are no longer anchored here through the illusions. The Earth itself is transforming to allow us to be unearthed and to make our way differently within the universal community.

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.

Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.

The worst was relizing that I’d lost him for nothing because he’d been rght about all of it-- vampires, my parents, everything. He’d told me my parents lied. I yelled at him for it. He forgave me. He told me vampires were killers. I told him they weren’t, even after one stalked Raquel. He told me Charity was dangerous. I didn’t listen, and she killed Courtney. He told me vampires were treacherous, and did I get the message? Not until my illusions had been destroyed by my parents’ confession.

A [wo]man who is unconscious of [her/]himself acts in a blind, instinctive way and is in addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections upon his neighbour.

Matter and death are mortal illusions.

...the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whaterver form. Both are illusions.

People who have realized that this is a dream imagine that it is easy to wake up, and are angry with those who continue sleeping, not considering that the whole world that environs them does not permit them to wake. Life proceeds as a series of optical illusions, artificial needs and imaginary sensations.

I'm an idealist without illusions.

You're a prisoner of your own illusions - about yourself and about the world.

Each of us, I suppose needs his illusions. Life after death. A maker of planets. A woman to love, a man to hate. Something sacred. But what a waste.

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.

Perhaps someday you can have one city as easy to see as Illusions and as hard to forget as Reality.

All things are accomplished by the meditative act of releasing illusions and simply becoming.

Most people like to live in illusions.