Quotes & Sayings About Illusion

Photography seems to fix, but this is an illusion created by our short lives. A photograph is merely a note held for 200 years. — Douglas McCulloh

How does the biological wetware of the brain give rise to our experience: the sight of emerald green, the taste of cinnamon, the smell of wet soil? What if I told you that the world around you, with its rich colors, textures, sounds, and scents is an illusion, a show put on for you by your brain? If you could perceive reality as it really is, you would be shocked by its colorless, odorless, tasteless silence. Outside your brain, there is just energy and matter. Over millions of years of evolution the human brain has become adept at turning this energy and matter into a rich sensory experience of being in the world. — David Eagleman

But just make someone who has fallen in love listen to his stomach rumble, and the unity of body and soul, that lyrical illusion of the age of science , instantly fades away. — Milan Kundera

The idea of the freedom of the human will has found enthusiastic supporters and stubborn opponents in plenty. There are those who, in their moral fervor, label anyone a man of limited intelligence who can deny so patent a fact as freedom. Opposed to them are others who regard it as the acme of unscientific thinking for anyone to believe that the uniformity of natural law is broken in the sphere of human action and thinking. One and the same thing is thus proclaimed, now as the most precious possession of humanity, now as its most fatal illusion. — Rudolf Steiner

Am I an illusion? — Debasish Mridha

Past, present and future are illusions, or to put it another way, to separate past, present, and future is an illusion.... The present is the opening in time... — Deepak Chopra

Ambitions and dreams put you at a drinking table with unexpected companions. Cups were filled and refilled, making you drunk with the illusion of changing the world. — Guy Gavriel Kay

The most important quality of art and its aim is illusion; emotion, which is often obtained by certain sacrifices of poetic detail, is something else entirely and of an inferior order. — Gustave Flaubert

Over the years, I have developed a visceral reaction to families and victims expressing surprise at tragedy. Why are we surprised? Why do we forget we are mortal? Bad, bad things happen everywhere, every day. Humans, for better or worse, harbor this feeling that we - individually - are special. A patch of ice or a pea-sized blood clot makes a mockery of that illusion in a heartbeat. We are not special at all. — Michael Perry

The anoretic operates under the astounding illusion that she can escape the flesh, and, by association, the realm of emotions. — Marya Hornbacher

The great human problem of evil stems from the illusion of separateness. Whenever this illusion is overcome, we behave lovingly to one another. — Barbara Marx Hubbard

We must shed the illusion that we can deliberately 'create the future of mankind' — Friedrich August Von Hayek

Miracles are statistical improbabilities. And fate is an illusion humanity uses to comfort itself in the dark. There are no absolutes in life, save death. — Amie Kaufman

The experiences of promoting my first album were really something; there is so much illusion in my environment (touring and pop music) that I wanted to clear away. — Duncan Sheik

Real peace comes only when you stop chasing it. When you relax your driving desire for comfort, real fulfillment arises. When you drop your hectic pursuit of gratification, the real beauty of life comes out. When you seek to know the reality without illusion, complete with all its pain and danger, that is when real freedfom and security are yours. — Henepola Gunaratana

Safety is only an illusion when evil is on the hunt. I can't stand by and watch. I have to act. — Terry Goodkind

Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth. — Publilius Syrus

Chaos is the true state of the universe anyway." "My universe was fairly orderly before all this." "It was only an illusion. — Julie Moffett

The only freedom is freedom from illusion ... — Stefan Molyneux

Mastering our thoughts can only be achieved after we truly understand what reality is. Thus, it is time to shatter your pre-conceived concept of reality. First, the majority of what you perceive as reality exists only in your mind, and, chances are, you spend most hours of your life in this illusion. — Alaric Hutchinson

Seth gave her that: a private space to believe in the illusion of normalcy. — Melissa Marr

When all is said and done, cheap gas is an illusion, because our reliance on gas creates a whole series of costs that aren't factored in to the pump price - among them congestion, pollution, and increased risk of accidents. — James Surowiecki

Human life is designed as a self-study program.
Existence is always one undivided. It is what we often call the Light. It is a pure consciousness of unconditional love. Out of the Light the idea of darkness is created. There is no existence of light and darkness, as separated energies. The separation is illusionary.
Experiencing ourselves as humans is an exploration of the greater Self in a localised condition.
A dense reality is created to facilitate the idea of forgetfulness.
Now we collectively entered a new time of remembering. It is not necessary anymore to create the illusion of self-disconnection from the energy source. — Raphael Zernoff

Sometimes I get the feeling that everything that happened to me was some kind of illusion. It's as though something happened to make me think that things happened that never really happened at all. But I know for sure that they did happen. — Haruki Murakami

The Man of Truth has learned that Illusion is the One Reality, and that Substance is the Great Impostor. — H.P. Lovecraft

It's easy to operate under the illusion that what we are doing is so important we cannot stop doing it ... Stopping is a spiritual act. It is the refuge where we drink life in. — Sue Monk Kidd

Perfection is an illusion which often prevents us from accepting the realities of life. — Sandeep Sharma

Just because some dreams never see light that doesn't make us nonbelievers, they are wings to our sky and fiction makes us dream. I know the truth is fatal, especially for the stubborn's but trust me the illusion is worse. — Parul Wadhwa

I don't try to be clever at all. The idea that I could see what no one else can is an illusion. — Daniel Kahneman

We cannot make ourselves known to each other; we are not healed and forgiven by each other's presence. With words as valueless as poker chips, we play games whose object it is to keep us from seeing each other's cards. Chit-chat games in which "How are you?" means "Don't tell me who you are," and "I'm alone and scared" becomes "Fine thanks." Games where the players create the illusion of being in the same room but where the reality of it is that each is alone inside a skin in that room, like bathyspheres at the bottom of the sea. Blind man's buff games where everyone is blind. — Frederick Buechner

When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you ... Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you. — Ernest Hemingway,

INFINITY is an illusion, we are just too lazy to count... — Andy Flynn

The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion. — Frank Herbert

A life that is truly lived is constantly burning away the veils of illusion, gradually revealing the essence of the individual. — Marion Woodman

Without justice and love, peace will always be a great illusion. — Helder Camara

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance. It is the illusion of knowledge." Many — John C. Maxwell

True Love. I'm starting to suspect the concept is pure illusion, an insipid brand name manufactured by Hallmark and Disney. - Cupcake — Rachel Cohn

Prospero, you are the master of illusion.
Lying is your trademark.
And you have lied so much to me
(Lied about the world, lied about me)
That you have ended by imposing on me
An image of myself.
Underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior,
That s the way you have forced me to see myself
I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie!
But now I know you, you old cancer,
And I know myself as well. — Aime Cesaire

Love is a simple thing and a deep thing: it is an act of life and not an illusion. Art is an illusion. — George Bernard Shaw

We're in an illusion about what our role is in world politics and foreign affairs, and our policies are killing and destroying and doing a lot of things that we are not aware of. — Talib Kweli

This modernizing experiment seems to have something diabolic about it. Everything that was becomes rejected in the name of a modernity that assumes the nature of a fiction, an illusion, a devilish apparition. To a greater or lesser extent this applies to all the postcommunist countries. — Andrzej Stasiuk

My walls no longer protect me. They never protected me. Their solidity is mere illusion, their whiteness is stained — Agota Kristof

Our sense of our own freedom results from our not paying attention to what it is actually like to be what we are. The moment we do pay attention, we begin to see that free will is nowhere to be found, and our subjectivity is perfectly compatible with this truth. Thoughts and actions simply arise in the mind. What else could they do? The truth about us is stranger than many suppose: The illusion of free will is itself an illusion. — Sam Harris

What of Art?' she asked
'It is a malody.'
'Love?'
'Illusion'
'Religion?'
'A fashionable substitute for belief.'
'What are you?'
'To define is to limit — Oscar Wilde

The Grand Illusion, one of the great war films of all time. — Studs Terkel

Naturally, bureaucrats can be expected to embrace a technology that helps to create the illusion that decisions are not under their control. Because of its seeming intelligence and impartiality, a computer has an almost magical tendency to direct attention away from the people in charge of bureaucratic functions and toward itself, as if the computer were the true source of authority. A bureaucrat armed with a computer is the unacknowledged legislator of our age, and a terrible burden to bear. — Neil Postman

Sanity is an illusion caused by alcohol deficiency. — N. F. Simpson

Many Sages have said, "Your world is a dream. You're living in an illusion." They're referring to this world of the mind and the way we believe our thoughts about reality. When we see the world through our thoughts, we stop experiencing life as it really is and others as they really are. — Adyashanti

The idea of achieving security through national armament is, at the present state of military technique, a disastrous illusion. — Albert Einstein

There is a great deal of illusion in a work of art; one could go farther and say that it is illusory in and of itself, as a "work." Its ambition is to make others believe that it was not made but rather simply arose, burst forth from Jupiter's head like Pallas Athena fully adorned in enchased armor. But that is only a pretense. No work has ever come into being that way. It is indeed work, artistic labor for the purpose of illusion-and now the question arises whether, given the current state of our consciousness, our comprehension, and our sense of truth, the game is still permissible, still intellectually possible, can still be taken seriously; whether the work as such, as a self-sufficient and harmonically self-contained structure, still stands in a legitimate relation to our problematical social condition, with its total insecurity and lack of harmony; whether all illusion, even the most beautiful, and especially the most beautiful, has not become a lie today. — Thomas Mann

It's all sort of dreams and it's all illusion. It's theater; it's not real. We're making up stories, you know, and people tend to run into you and believe you are your characters. And I suppose the funny thing is the longer you go, you do become sort of some version of [your characters]. You both diverge from them - you know - you live, but you also permanently inhabit that geography and that mental space - and so you do morph a little bit. We do become what we imagine. — Bruce Springsteen

In the beginning was belief, foolish belief, and faith, empty faith, and illusion, the terrible illusion ... We believed in God, had faith in man, and lived with the illusion that in each one of us is a sacred spark from the fire of the shekinah, that each one carried in his eyes and in his soul the sign of God. This was the source - if not the cause - of all our misfortune. — Elie Wiesel

We are everything and we are nothing. We are a forgotten moment. We don't even exist, which is the freeing part. We just think we do. That's the illusion. — Frederick Lenz

Illusions are crucial to the maintenance of life functions ... — Sheila Ballantyne

Awakening is the experience of forgiving the illusion of manifesting, for Identity Is Spirit. Christ comes not into form, but calls you out of the world to recognize your Self as eternal Spirit. — David Hoffmeister

There is still the illusion that if we could declare corporations are not people or that money is not speech, all would be solved. Regardless of the good in those ideas, it wouldn't. — Lawrence Lessig

Nothing that was real ever died, only names, forms, and illusions. — Eckhart Tolle

Like the librarians of Babel in Borges's story, who are looking for the book that will provide them with the key to all the others, we oscillate between the illusion of perfection and the vertigo of the unattainable. In the name of completeness, we would like to believe that a unique order exists that would enable us to accede in knowledge all in one go; in the name of the unattainable, we would like to think that order and disorder are in fact the same word, denoting pure chance.
It's possible also that both are decoys, illusions intended to disguise the erosion of both books and systems. It is no bad thing in any case that between the two our bookshelves should serve from time to time as joggers of the memory, as cat-rests and as lumber-rooms. — Georges Perec

Illusion doesn't mean that something is not real. Illusion simply means that something is less real than something else. This life and this world certainly exist - who is to say the reality of the dream is not real? — Frederick Lenz

Right now, there's the illusion of order and civilization, but there's a tremendous amount of economic tension in this country and the educational system is constantly eroding. — Kathryn Bigelow

The world of shapes, lines, curves, and solids is as varied as the world of numbers, and it is only our long-satisfied possession of Euclidean geometry that offers us the impression, or the illusion, that it has, that world, already been encompassed in a manageable intellectual structure. The lineaments of that structure are well known: as in the rest of life, something is given and something is gotten; but the logic behind those lineaments is apt to pass unnoticed, and it is the logic that controls the system. — David Berlinski

For years, i lived my life, waiting for the other shoe to drop ... i thought control was something i could have over my life. My goal was to live life, in such a way, that i would never again have to suffer any form of trauma or abuse that would remind me of my painful past. I was living life on a tightrope of tension. I was only happy when things went smoothly and came apart at the seams when i was thrown a curveball.
NOW, i realize, that the key to happiness is surrendering to the illusion of control. And to trust that, no matter what happens to me, i have the infinite inner-wisdom and strength to find my way through. — Jaeda DeWalt

Oh, how powerfully the magnet of illusion attracts. — Karl Gutzkow

One comes back [reborn] as a son because of harmony with us [from the past life] and one comes back as a son also because of enmity [vengeance from the past life], [but] needlessly arises the illusion [wrong belief] that 'they are mine...they are mine'. — Dada Bhagwan

Possible Ending #16 (Life Imitates Art Imitates Life Imitates Art Imitates): I'd seen this movie. Obvious ending: outright betrayal, lesson learned, life is heartbreak, people who mean well still fuck you over, everyone's sad, greedy, looking out for number one, no consideration for the fragile fat boy whose displayed cynicism only masks a deeper hope that everyone's okay, will ultimately end up all right, that love exists, that happiness may not be stable but at least comes in bursts, that everything worthwhile wasn't just a self-created illusion. — Adam Wilson

The greatest architectural illusion is not Baroque fancy or Victorian flamboyant, but minimalism. — Kevin McCloud

There was somewhere, if you knew where to find it, some place where money could be made like drawing water from a well, some Big Rock Candy Mountain where life was effortless and rich and unrestricted and full of adventure and action, where something could be had for nothing. — Wallace Stegner

You don't need as much as some of the other artists but you do sing with your eyes close and it gives the illusion that you singing in your sleep and number one places around the country, you have to have your eyes open. You can close your eyes for a certain gesture or whatever but your eyes are the mirrors of your soul ... — Maxine Powell

There are two paths of which one may choose in the walk of life; one we are born with, and the one we consciously blaze. One is naturally true, while the other is a perceptive illusion. Choose wisely at each fork in the road. — T.F. Hodge

I had the feeling, when the thoughts first clarified on paper, that my experience was very different from other people's. (Are we all under this illusion?) — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

If people are always comfortable with you, you're probably not telling them the whole truth. — Aniekee Tochukwu Ezekiel

Radical acceptance rests on letting go of the illusion of control and a willingness to notice and accept things as they are right now, without judging. — Marsha M. Linehan

To know yourself, you must first sacrifice the illusion that already you do. — Vironika Tugaleva

The source of wisdom and power, of love and beauty, is within ourselves, but not within our egos. It is within our consciousness. Indeed, its presence provides us with a conscious contrast which enables us to speak of the ego as if it were something different and apart: it is the true Self whereas the ego is only an illusion of the mind. — Paul Brunton

It is pointless to try to make an illusion real — Sunday Adelaja

Never in our silent moments of illusion do we sense the dark parallel that lives next to us. Nor do we suspect the carrier. — Kris Courtney

I know all about myself now, I know. You've told me so often. You haven't left me one rag of illusion to clothe myself in. — Jean Rhys

We're living under the illusion that we have the power to determine what to do with it. — Mordecai Wyatt Johnson

As a business, the funeral industry has developed by selling a certain type of "dignity." Dignity is having a well-orchestrated final moment for the family, complete with a well-orchestrated corpse. Funeral directors become like directors for the stage, curating the evening's performance. The corpse is the star of the show and pains are taken to make sure the fourth wall is never broken, that the corpse does not interact with the audience and spoil the illusion. — Caitlin Doughty

When others asked the truth of me, I was convinced it was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with. — Anais Nin

I always liked the magic of poetry but now I'm just starting to see behind the curtain of even the best poets, how they've used, tried and tested craft to create the illusion. Wonderful feeling of exhilaration to finally be there. — David Knopfler

Perhaps my life is nothing but an image of this kind; perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps under the illusion that I am exploring, doomed to try and learn what I simply should recognize, learning a mere fraction of what I have forgotten. — Andre Breton

No two notes are ever the same volume. With the guitar, you really have to model in your mind this wider thing; you're trying to create the illusion of a bigger dynamic range. — Pat Metheny

With an understanding of Shakespeare there comes a release from the gullibility that makes you prey to the great shopkeeper who runs the world, and would sell you cheap to illusion. — Nadine Gordimer

Look at me
I am the life in a wasteland
Look at me
I am the slavery through the ages
Look at me
I am the mirror of the world
Look at me
I am the illusion I've fought for
Look at me
I'm still loving you
and I keep being here
for you, for me,
and for what's worth breathing — Rixa White

The woman's gaze sent chills racing down his spine. The diabolical, aberrantly predatory arch of her lips curdled his blood. Seriously, his blood must be curdling back at the lab right now.

"Nice illusion. I'm definitely feeling the evil vibe here."

She stood and rounded the desk with perfect grace. "There is no illusion. Explain yourself quickly now, before I grow bored by your presence and dispense with it. — G.S. Jennsen

Upon meeting Julian Morrow, one has the impression that he is a man of extraordinary sympathy and warmth. But what you call his 'Asiatic serenity' is, I think, a mask for great coldness. The face one shows him he invariably reflects back at one, creating the illusion of warmth and depth when in fact he is brittle and shallow as a mirror. — Donna Tartt

Up close, she could see the sharp, cold, look that she constantly shot at Mr. Treviso, particularly when there was a break, and she was waiting to come in. It shattered illusion for Mildred. She preferred to remain at a distance, to enjoy this child as she seemed, rather than as she was. — James M. Cain

Engaging each moment without reservation cuts through the illusion that things could be other than they are. — Rami M. Shapiro

Despair ... is the only cure for illusion. Without despair we cannot transfer our allegiance to reality - it's a kind of mourning period for our fantasies. Some people do not survive this despair, but no major change within a person can occur without it. — Philip Slater

For the bee, honey is the ultimate reality. It represents the fulfillment of her life mission, the triumph over her enemies, the continuity of the hive, the justification for working herself to death. Honey is to bees what money in the bank is to people - a measure of prosperity and well-being. But there is nothing abstract or symbolic about honey, as there is about money, which has no intrinsic value. There is more real wealth in a pound of honey, or a load of manure for that matter, than all the currency in the world. We often destroy the world's real wealth to create an illusion of wealth, confusing symbol and substance. - William Longgood, The Queen Must Die — Susan Wiggs

And I didn't know I loved her till I'd dreamt of her. I didn't know it was the real thing until an illusion had signalled it. — Graham Swift

One problem with people is that as soon as they fill a space it's them you see and not the space. Large, desolate landscapes stop being large, desolate landscapes once they have people in them. They define what the eye sees. And the human eye is almost always directed at other humans. In this way an illusion is created that humans are more important than those things on earth which are not human. It's a sick illusion. — Erlend Loe

Funny how the illusion of safety can make us careless. — Christopher Moore

Everything is already healed, except in the dream of illness. Let the illusion go, in exchange for peace. — Doreen Virtue

Shallow intellect is worse than ignorance. Ignorance can be treated with knowledge, but shallow intellect, that is illusion of knowledge, is untreatable and quite dangerous to the progress and wellbeing of humanity. — Abhijit Naskar

There's no ideology, only people. — Peter Tieryas

The envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power. — John Berger

The world of "magick" is, nine times out of ten, a world where people can hide their deep-set insecurity and personal damage behind illusion, constructed identities and claims to privileged knowledge, power or spiritual status. A gaudy carnival magic show, conducted with props that have long since begun to disintegrate with age, that seems to function only to distract people from the real magic that is occurring all around them, in every facet of their lives, every day of their lives. While the rituals and magical techniques of the Temple seem overly simplistic in comparison with the loftier Qabalahs, tables of correspondences and secret formulae of "high" magick, they have one thing which high magick quite often forgets: a concrete function. — Jason Louv

A wise man, recognizing that the world is but an illusion, does not act as if it is real, so he escapes the suffering. — Gautama Buddha