Quotes about Illusion

If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.

Unmentioned, what is can become as though it were not.

The perfect dictatorship would have the appearance of a democracy, but would basically be a prison without walls in which the prisoners would not even dream of escaping. It would essentially be a system of slavery where, through consumption and entertainment, the slaves would love their servitudes.

Consequently, we find it convenient to be misled by the inadequacies of language and to believe (not always, of course, but just when it suits us) that things, persons and events are as completely distinct and separate one from another as the words, by means of which we think about them.

I perceive that marble conceals a multitude of sins.

The trouble with fiction is that it makes too much sense, whereas reality never makes sense.

Nature at the middle distance is familiar - so familiar that we are deluded into believing that we really know what it is all about. See very close at hand, or at a great distance, or from an odd angle, it seems disquietingly strange, wonderful beyond all comprehension.

Query: how to combine the belief that the world is a to a great extent illusory with belief that it is none the less essential to improve the illusion? How to be simultaneously dispassionate and not indifferent, serene like an old man and active like a young one?

Life is but a dream, a grotesque and foolish dream.

An area of life that does not have hope is under a lie.

I hope she'll be a fool - that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.

Then I grew up, and the beauty of succulent illusions fell away from me.