Quotes about Illusion

Most of what you encounter when you meet a man is a facade, an elaborate fig leaf, a brilliant disguise.

Let them be fierce with you who have no experience of the difficulty with which error is discriminated from truth, and the way of life is found amid the illusions of the world.

Thou art a dreaming thing, A fever of thyself.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?

She's well acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand like a lizard on the window-pane.

A form of self-delusion.

You learn about equality in history and civics, but you find out life is not really like that.

You and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness.

I don't see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.

The trouble with kingdoms of heaven on earth is that they're liable to come to pass, and then their fraudulence is apparent for all to see. We need a kingdom of heaven in Heaven, if only because it can't be realized.

Where glowing embers through the room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom...

So spake the enemy of mankind, enclosed In serpent, inmate bad! and toward Eve Addressed his way: not with indented wave, Prone on the ground, as since; but on his rear, Circular base of rising folds, that towered Fold above fold, a surging maze! his head Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes; With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass Floated redundant: pleasing was his shape And lovely; never since of serpent-kind Lovelier…