Illusion Quotes

“Very occasionally, if you pay really close attention, life doesn't suck.”
― Joss Whedon

“I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet.”
― T.S. Eliot.

“A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”
― Saul Bellow, To Jerusalem and Back

“[Horror fiction] shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory, and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion.”
― Clive Barker

“No, our science is no illusion. But an illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give us we can get elsewhere.”
― Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion

“Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is like a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue. . . . ”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.”
― Virginia Woolf, The Death of the Moth and Other Essays

“All problems are illusions of the mind.”
― Eckhart Tolle, Practicing the Power of Now: Essential Teachings, Meditations, and Exercises From The Power of Now

“Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.”
― Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis

“Some people are magic, and others are just the illusion of it.”
― Beau Taplin

“But that afternoon he asked himself, with his infinite capacity for illusion, if such pitiless indifference might not be a subterfuge for hiding the torments of love.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

“One day everything will be well, that is our hope. Everything's fine today, that is our illusion”
― Voltaire

“To find out if she really loved me, I hooked her up to a lie detector. And just as I suspected, my machine was broken.
”
― Dark Jar Tin Zoo, Love Quotes for the Ages. Specifically Ages 19-91.

“I have been finding treasures in places I did not want to search. I have been hearing wisdom from tongues I did not want to listen. I have been finding beauty where I did not want to look. And I have learned so much from journeys I did not want to take. Forgive me, O Gracious One; for I have been closing my ears and eyes for too long. I have learned that miracles are only called miracles because they are often witnessed by only those who can can see through all of life's illusions. I am ready to see what really exists on other side, what exists behind the blinds, and taste all the ugly fruit instead of all that looks right, plump and ripe.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“How often, you wonder, has the direction of your life been shaped by such misunderstandings? How many opportunities have you been denied--or, for that matter, awarded--because someone failed to see you properly? How many friends have you lost, how many have you gained, because they glimpsed some element of your personality that shone through for only an instant, and in circumstances you could never reproduce? An illusion of water shimmering at the far bend of a highway.”
― Kevin Brockmeier, The View from the Seventh Layer

“In order to share one's true brilliance one initially has to risk looking like a fool: genius is like a wheel that spins so fast, it at first glance appears to be sitting still.”
― Criss Jami, Venus in Arms

“Wish You Were Here

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell,
Blue skys from pain.
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

And did they get you to trade
Your heros for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl,
Year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found?
The same old fears.
Wish you were here.”
― Roger Waters

“There is an old illusion. It is called good and evil.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“You're a dream. Like everything else.”
― Kelly Creagh, Nevermore

“Knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy

“There's a difference between playing and playing games. The former is an act of joy, the latter — an act.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“Because an illusion is an illusion. Reality always exists despite the facade.”
― Kasie West, Pivot Point

“In the beginning there was faith - which is childish; trust - which is vain; and illusion - which is dangerous.”
― Elie Wiesel, Night

“Here too it’s masquerade, I find:
As everywhere, the dance of mind.
I grasped a lovely masked procession,
And caught things from a horror show…
I’d gladly settle for a false impression,
If it would last a little longer, though.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“How strange when an illusion dies. It's as though you've lost a child.”
― Judy Garland

“Nostalgia is an illness
for those who haven't realized
that today
is tomorrow's nostalgia.”
― Zeena Schreck

“What is the point of searching for love, when love is nothing but an illusion?”
― Marie Lu, The Rose Society

“One day it may feel as if energy and enthusiasm are quenched, feelings dried up and emotions scorched, love and affection tangled in a harsh and uninviting setting. Nothing seems to grow anymore. No seed. No flowers. No foreseeable hope. No conceivable prospects. Any blossom of expectation seems to have become an illusion and life appears to have come to a standstill. If no seed of loving care is sown in the untilled, abandoned land, no bud can come into flower. Singer Amy Winehouse felt like lying fallow in the ground of a wasteland "with tears dry, dying a hundred times, going back to black" and leaving eventually for a place of ultimate sorrow and heartbreak, for a point of no return. ( “Amour en friche” )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“If nothing lasted and the world did not exist, all that meant was that reality was not fixed. The illusion she lived in was fluid and mutable, and could be easily altered by someone willing to rewrite the script of reality.”
― R.F. Kuang, The Dragon Republic