Quotes about Illusion

In the case of sand as in that of woman, there is a fineness which is treacherous.

Théodule was, we think we have mentioned, the favourite of Aunt Gillenormand, who preferred him because she did not see him. Not seeing people permits us to imagine in them every perfection.

Optimism is the opium of the people.

The old duality of body and soul has become shrouded in scientific terminology, and we can laugh at it as merely an obsolete prejudice. 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.

Of course, uniformity rules everywhere. But in this park it has a wider choice of uniforms. So you can hold on to the illusion of your own individuality.

But was it love? Was it simply the hysteria of a man who, aware deep down of his inaptitude for love, felt the self-deluding need to simulate it?

He took a look at the blond girl's eyes and knew that he must not take part in the rigged game in which the ephemeral passes for the eternal and the small for the big, that he must not take part in the rigged game called love.

Actually, he had always preferred the unreal to the real.

Actually, he had always preferred the unreal to the real.

The way contemporary history is told is like a huge concert where they present all of Beethoven's one hundred thirty-eight opuses one after the other, but actually play just the first eight bars of each.

She came from a land where revolutionary illusion had long since faded but where the thing he admired most in revolution remained: life on a large scale; a life of risk, daring, and the danger of death. Sabina had renewed his faith in the grandeur of human endeavour. Superimposing the painful drama of her country on her person, he found her even more beautiful.

Franz could not accept that the fact that the glory of the Grand March was equal to the comic vanity of its marchers.