Smoke Mirror Quotes & Sayings

We trigger each other, it seems, some dysfunctional Rube Goldberg mousetrap, a laugh, then a slap, a razor gliding over a mirror, a glass filled, a glass emptied, a ball rolling down a length of pipe, a pipe filling up and overflowing with smoke. On our best days, we see each other for all that we are, and we find a way to make each other better. — Richard Thomas

I think good filmmaking is when you really hold the mirror up truthfully, and you don't angle it and you don't hide things with smoke and mirrors. — Charlize Theron

How many times have you struggled with the interpretation of certain Biblical texts related to the time of Jesus' return because they did not fit with a preconceived system of eschatology? Russell's Parousia takes the Bible seriously when it tells us of the nearness of Christ's return. Those who claim to interpret the Bible literally, trip over the obvious meaning of these time texts by making Scripture mean the opposite of what it unequivocally declares. Reading Russell is a breath of fresh air in a room filled with smoke and mirror hermeneutics. — Gary DeMar

Litanies of the Rose
Rose with dark eyes,
mirror of your nothingness,
rose with dark eyes,
make us believe in the mystery,
hypocrite flower,
flower of silence.
Rose the colour of pure gold,
oh safe deposit of the ideal,
rose the colour of pure gold,
give us the key of your womb,
hypocrite flower,
flower of silence.
Rose the colour of silver,
censer of our dreams,
rose the colour of silver,
take our heart and turn it into smoke,
hypocrite flower,
flower of silence. — Remy De Gourmont

All is clouded by desire: as fire by smoke, as a mirror by dust ...Through these it blinds the soul. — Christopher J. Koch

As fire is covered by smoke, mirror by dust, and embryo by amnion, so is knowledge covered by desire. — Shweta Chandra

Smoke and mirrors' is a useful metaphor for the ways in which organised abuse has chided conceptualisation and understanding. The chapter provides an overview of cite often incendiary debates over organised abuse before going on to suggest that critical theories on gender, crime and intersubjectivity may offer new insights into the phenomenon. — Michael Salter

I turn the water all the way hot, turn my back to the water, and I take it. I close my eyes and I'm on the hundredth floor with the jet-fuel fire at my back and the drop below. I take it and take it until I can't take it, until the heat takes over everything, and I jump, plummeting to the street
I'm out of the shower.
I turn my back to the mirror and look at the too-red skin behind my shoulder blades. The wind blows north and the smoke is here. Then the wind shifts and you can't smell a thing. Then the wind shifts again. Now you smell it, now you don't. — Adam Berlin

Along the open road on winter nights, homeless, cold, and hungry, one voice gripped my frozen heart: 'Weakness or strength: you exist, that is strength. You don't know where you are going or why you are going, go in everywhere, answer everyone. No one will kill you, any more than if you were a corpse.' In the morning my eyes were so vacant and my face so dead, that the people I met may not even have seen me.

In cities, mud went suddenly red and black, like a mirror when a lamp in the next room moves, like treasure in the forest! Good luck, I cried, and I saw a sea of flames and smoke rise to heaven; and left and right, all wealth exploded like a billion thunderbolts. — Arthur Rimbaud

A dingy emblem on the door depicted a little boy peeing into a pot. The rest of the bar was equally drab and tasteless. Dim bulbs behind red-tasseled lamp shades barely illuminated each of a dozen maroon vinyl booths, which marched along one wall toward the murky front windows. Chipped Formica tables anchored the booths in place. Opposite the row of booths was a long, scarred wooden bar with uncomfortable-looking stools. Behind the bar, sitting on glass shelves in front of a cloudy mirror, were endless rows of bottles, each looking as forlorn as the folks for whom they waited.
He caught the strong odors of liquor and tobacco smoke, and the weaker scents of cleaning chemicals and vomit. In one of the booths , two heads bobbed with the movement of mug-clenching fists. A scrawny bartender with droopy eyelids picked his teeth with a swizzle stick and chatted quietly with a woman seated at the bar. Otherwise the bar was empty. — Robert Liparulo

"So good to see you again, little luv. How I've missed you."
Gasping, I fall to my knees. The Caterpillar and the moth and the winged guy. They are all one and the same. They have been all along ...
"I've seen that bug," Jeb says. "In your car. On the mirror." He drops the backpack and grips my shoulders, trying to drag me ti my feet. My legs won't cooperate.
"Tut-tut. You are never to bow to me, lovely Alyssa." The voice drifts from the moth's proboscis on gray puffs of smoke. His attention shifts to Jeb. "You, on the other hand, will bow to her." — A.G. Howard

The leaf fall of his words, the stained glass hues of his moods, the rust in his voice, the smoke in his mouth, his breath on my vision like human breath blinding a mirror. — Anais Nin

The smoke! The golden smoke!
His robe whipped upward, turning him until his face was directed downward into the abyss. With his gaze on the depths, he recognized a maelstrom of boiling rapids there, the mirror of his life-precipitous currents and plunges, all movement gathering up all substance. Leto's words wound through his mind on a path of golden smoke: "Caution is the path to mediocrity. Gliding, passionless mediocrity is all that most people think they can achieve." Moneo fell freely then in the ecstasy of awareness. The universe opened for him like clear glass, everything flowing in a no Time. — Frank Herbert

Weakness or strength: there you are, strength. You do not know where you are going, nor why you are going; enter anywhere, reply to anything. They will no more kill you than if you were a corpse. In the morning I had a look so lost, a face so dead, that perhaps those whom I met did not see me.
In cities, suddenly, the mud seemed red and black like a mirror when the lamp moves about in the adjoining room, like a treasure in the forest! Good luck, I cried, and I saw a sea of flames and smoke in the sky; to the right, to the left all the riches of the world flaming like a billion thunder-bolts. — Arthur Rimbaud

The freckle-faced corporal from Iowa grinned. "Geez, Major, whatever you gave that German broad last night sure got her talking. Was it some new Russian drug? Something from HQ?"

"That's my affair." Major Rosemary Wilson ignored the grinning boy and lit a cigarette, blowing out smoke as she gazed through the one way mirror. The German girl, Waller, looked pale and lost under the interrogation lights, but she was still exceptionally pretty. No doubt last night had been her first time with a woman. Still, Greta had been an enthusiastic learner, responsive and eager to please. The Major had every intention of continuing the girl's education -- once Werewolf and his Nazi pack were back behind bars. — Joseph Heywood

He also saw that matter is a mirror - everything is a mirror that reflects light and creates images of that light - and the world of illusion, the Dream, is just like smoke which doesn't allow us to see what we really are. "The real us is pure love, pure light," he said. — Miguel Ruiz

I got a smile that'll make the mirror crack,
And I seem to stay under clouds that's pitch black.
So when it rains, it pours, and when it pours, I'm soaked.
I contracted lung cancer from third hand smoke,
And I'm like the frog that's dying to be a prince,
The boy who cried wolf and no one was convinced.
The man who hit lotto and lost his ticket,
In a rainstorm ... and struck by lightning trying to get it. — GZA

One of the comforts of firing a big gun during a siege must be the satisfaction of watching the results at long range. Inside a tank or behind an M107, a smudge of smoke against a building can be marked off against a map coordinate. The blood and shattered bones at the other end of the trajectory have no physical contact with the gun. But Randal and I were driving towards the other end of the trajectory, back to west Beirut, where the casualty statistics marked the other side of the concave mirror through which armies fight their wars. — Robert Fisk