Illusion And Its Causes Quotes & Sayings

The highest problem of any art is to cause by appearance the illusion of a higher reality. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Formerly these harsh cells in which the discipline of the prison leaves the condemned to himself were composed of four stone walls, a ceiling of stone, a pavement of tiles, a camp bed, a grated air-hole, a double iron door, and were called "dungeons" ; but the dungeon has been thought too horrible; now it is composed ofan iron door, a grated air-hole, a camp bed, a pavement of tiles, a ceiling of stone, four stone walls, and it is called "punishment cell. — Victor Hugo

All that happens is the cause of all that happens. Causes are numberless; the idea of a sole cause is an illusion. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Life is made up of a collection of moments that are not ours to keep. The pain we encounter throughout our days spent on this earth comes from the illusion that some moments can be held onto. Clinging to people and experiences that were never ours in the first place is what causes us to miss out on the beauty of the miracle that is the now. All of this is yours, yet none of it is. How could it be? Look around you. Everything is fleeting.

To love and let go, love and let go, love and let go...it's the single most important thing we can learn in this lifetime. — Rachel Brathen

Tolerance is NOT acceptance. And that's the problem with ALL religion. It teaches acceptance only for those who believe exactly as you do, and at best, tolerance for the rest of us "sinners." Sorry. Not acceptable. — Quentin R. Bufogle

Democrats are fighting fire with fire. Our principled stance on Medicare and Social Security is absolutely no different than the Republicans' stance on no revenue increases without cuts. — Judy Chu

The real damage is done by those millions who want to 'survive.' The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won't take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don't like to make waves - or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the bogeyman won't find you. But it's all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn. — Sophie Scholl

They always act this way: push those who are falling. — Igor Eliseev

I wonder why looking at that causes sleepiness ... Maybe it's the illusion-type magic that Spriggans are good at or something. — Reki Kawahara

No matter, they weren't going anywhere. Never again. Two skeletons buried beneath a dead city. No more fitting a barrow for a warrior of the Apocalypse and a Malazan soldier. That seemed just, poetic even. He would not complain, and when he stood at this sergeant's side at Hood's Gate, he would be proud for the company.So much had changed inside him. He was no believer in causes, not any more. Certainty was an illusion, a lie. Fanaticism was poison in the soul, and the first victim in its inexorable, ever-growing list was compassion. Who could speak of freedom, when one's own soul was bound in chains? — Steven Erikson

There is always something particularly delightful about exceptions to a rule. — Elizabeth Goudge

I have few illusions: the cause is lost in advance. As for me, I do my part, which is to drag a fairly drab existence to its conclusion. — Rene Magritte

All suffering is caused by the illusion of separateness, which generates fear and self-hatred, which eventually causes illness. You are the master of your life. You can do much more than you thought you could, including cure yourself of a "terminal illness". — Barbara Brennan

As a young man, causes of one kind or another engaged me, and I thought the media is where you express yourself in that. I lived with the illusion, for quite a long time, that if you described something accurately, something would be done about it. — Jonathan Dimbleby

There are no arguments. Can anyone who has reached the limit bother with arguments, causes, effects, moral considerations, and so forth? Of course not. For such a person there are only unmotivated motives for living. On the heights of despair, the passion for the absurd is the only thing that can still throw a demonic light on chaos. When all the current reasons - moral, esthetic, religious, social, and so on - no longer guide one's life, how can one sustain life without succumbing to nothingness? Only by a connection with the absurd, by love of absolute uselessness, loving something which does not have substance but which simulates an illusion of life.
I live because the mountains do not laugh and the worms do not sing. — Emil Cioran

If God created our will, then he's responsible for every choice we make ... So
as I recall, the official philosophical answer is that free will doesn't exist. Only the illusion of free will, because the causes of hour behavior are so complex that we can't trace them back. If you've got one line of dominoes knocking each other down, one by one, then you can always say, look, this domino fell because that one pushed it. But when you have an infinite number of dominoes that can be traced back in an infinite number of directions, you can never find where the causal chain begins. So you think, That domino fell because it wanted to ... Even if there is no such thing as free will, we have to treat each other as if there were free will in order to live together in society. — Orson Scott Card

As we increasingly become aware of the One Life breathing in each brother form of life, we learn the meaning of compassion, which literally means to 'suffer with' ... How does [the] self cause the desire which causes suffering? ... by the illusion of separateness, the unawareness of One. — Christmas Humphreys

The only difference in the way we make sense of our own minds versus other people's minds is that we know we're guessing about the minds of others. The sense of privileged access you have to the actual workings of your own mind - to the causes and processes that guide your thoughts and behavior - appears to be an illusion. — Nicholas Epley

An emotion as such tells you nothing about reality, beyond the fact that something makes you feel something. Without a ruthlessly honest commitment to introspection - to the conceptual identification of your inner states - you will not discover what you feel, what arouses the feeling, and whether your feeling is an appropriate response to the facts of reality, or a mistaken response, or a vicious illusion produced by years of self-deception. The men who scorn or dread introspection take their inner states for granted, as an irreducible and irresistible primary, and let their emotions determine their actions. This means that they choose to act without knowing the context (reality), the causes (motives), and the consequences (goals) of their actions. — Ayn Rand

Free will doesn't exist. Only the illusion of free will, because the causes of our behavior are so complex that we can't trace them back. If you've got one line of dominoes knocking each other down one by one, then you can always say, Look, this domino fell because that one pushed it. But when you have an infinite number of directions, you can never find where the casual chain begins. So you think, That domino fell because it wanted to. — Orson Scott Card

The process of concentrating on the goal
every day greatly increases the likelihood of noticing an
opportunity in the environment. The coincidence will create
the illusion that writing down the goal causes the environment
to produce opportunities. But in reality the only thing
that changes is the person's ability to notice the opportunities. — Scott Adams

You have no fixed self. This is only an illusion that causes you to feel pain and suffering. — Frederick Lenz

I hold no preconceived prejudice against anyone," he'd said, "because to do so is utter folly for someone in my line of work. It's only ignorance that causes individuals to label an entire race as either good or bad. These are generalities so broad as to be both worthless and dangerous. I deal only in specifics. God as they say, is in the details. I must focus on the unique traits of the individual in order to tailor an illusion that will ultimately enchant. To see others in this manner is to never give in to labeling. To fail to do this is the equivalent of putting on a blindfold. Do you understand? The devil is in the details. — Jeffrey Ford

I think we need to invest more in America. — Hillary Clinton

Magic is the illusion which is created when a series of natural movements apparently causes an unnatural, or magical, result. — Jean Hugard

We are the fingertips of blind illusion,
You are the absolute Cause of causes. — Rumi

Through this process, wisdom clarifies the way that the mind manufacturers emotion and karma, and finally penetrates the illusion of self. Just as though one were investigating how a magician created his display of illusions, one studies mental events to understand the conditions and causes that support the operation of ordinary self-oriented experience. One first understands the root emotions as the basis for samsara, then studies the workings of the associated emotions and how each one manifests a distinctive character. Gradually, the manner in which the self supports emotion and emotion supports the sense of self becomes clear. Self and emotion are seen as relying on and reinforcing each other's existence. Understanding how this collusion gives rise to the whole range of samsaric delusion liberates the mind from all forms of deception. — Dharma Publishing

Because these consequences are distributed globally, the problem masquerades as a distraction. Because the length of time between causes and consequences stretches out longer than we're used to dealing with, it gives us the illusion that we have the luxury of time. Neither of those things is true. — Al Gore

A lot of the stuff I listen to is glitchy electronic stuff and stuff with beats. — Mark Linkous

Old age is the repose of life; the rest that precedes the rest that remains. — Robert Collyer

Nothing causes more people to deny God, misunderstand God, mistreat others, or abuse Nature more than the illusion of separateness.
Nothing.
No thing. — Donald L. Hicks

Fuck it, I'll make my own quote. — Douglas Self

Free will is actually more than an illusion (or less), in that it cannot be made conceptually coherent. Either our wills are determined by prior causes and we are not responsible for them, or they are the product of chance and we are not responsible for them. — Sam Harris

Faith is essentially intolerant ... essentially because necessarily bound up with faith is the illusion that one's cause is also God's cause. — Ludwig Feuerbach

They remain dead, the people I try to resuscitate by straining to hear what they say. But the illusion is not pointless, or not quite, even if the reader knows all this better than I do. One thing a book tries to do, beneath the disguise of words and causes and clothes and grief, is show the skeleton and the skeleton dust to come. The author too, like those of whom he speaks, is dead. — Jean Genet