Quotes about Illusion

Time is the illusion used to keep the illusion of mind going

An hour reflecting on one's own non-existence is better than a year of religious devotions with the thought that one exists.

The illusion
     that there will be some time in the future
           when all things will come together for us
                  interferes with our fully living today.
If we aren't living fully now,
      we never will.
The only time we ever have
      is the present.

For one who is truly ready to leave, to give up everything, to do anything to achieve full awareness in this lifetime...always radical means are essential in order to break free from this illusion in this lifetime.

I am Gourasana, and I make a very bold statement when I say I can guide you from this illusion – but I can.

In any soul mate relationship, you will need to let go of the illusion that there is a perfect person waiting for you who will fulfill your every expectation and give your personality everything it desires once you are together. Do not expect your ideal soul mate to be someone who is always loving and easy to get along with, who agrees with everything you say or do, and who brings you a life of ease and comfort.

It is easy to imagine fantasy as physical and myth as real. We do it almost every moment. We do this as we dream, as we think, and as we cope with the world about us. But these worlds of fantasy that we form into the solid things around us are the source of our discontent. They inspire our search to find ourselves.

losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth

The world is not the illusion. It's you who are the illusion.

Pain destroys the illusions of false, that is, elitist pleasures. It burns from the inside out. It, therefore, sensitizes us to what is truly beautiful in life.

We were talking about the space between us all
And the people who hide themselves behind a wall of illusion

The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents, and the ocean was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.

Despair is the only cure for illusion.

The mix of illusion and reality that runs through the play is also a particularly relevant theme at this time.  For this is at the heart of what we do each year.  With your participation, we visit people and worlds where the normal, earthbound laws of physics no longer apply. ... Not only is the play filled throughout with the imagery of dreams, but Puck even addresses the audience at the play's close with the advice that if they've not been pleased with what they've seen, they should just tell themselves that they've been dreaming, and will wake up with nothing lost.  And what's to say that we haven't been dreaming while this parade of characters has performed across the stretch of our imagination?

The self is fundamentally an illusion arising as a reflection of the soul in matter, much as a clear lake at midnight reflects the moon.

When illusion spins her net
I'm never where I want to be
And liberty she pirouettes
When I think that I am free
Watched by empty silhouettes
Who close their eyes, but still can see
No one taught them etiquette
I will show another me

In many ways, constancy is an illusion.  After all, our ancestors were immigrants, many of them moving on every few years; today we are migrants in time.  Unless teachers can hold up a model of lifelong learning and adaptation, graduates are likely to find themselves trapped into obsolescence as the world changes around them.  Of any stopping place in life, it is good to ask whether it will be a good place from which to go on as well as a good place to remain.

So you think you've found the solution but it's just another illusion. 

Illusions and pipe dreams on the one hand
And straight reality is always cold

I've looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all

Watch out now, take care,
Beware of soft shoe shufflers
Dancing down the sidewalks
As each unconscious sufferer
Wanders aimlessly,
Beware of Maya

Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet.  They are what we call civilization.

The one thing that matters is the effort.  It continues, whereas the end to be attained is but an illusion of the climber, as he fares on and on from crest to crest; and once the goal is reached it has no meaning.

Where do we people go if not towards the perfection of our own illusion?

Immortality is but an illusion to those who fear the inevitable, for true immortality lies in the hearts of those by whom we're cherished.

"Most people live by their illusions. Never let mere appearances become your reality."

"The hardest thing you'll learn in this journey is to give up the illusion of controlling your own life"

"Regard the fleeting world like this: like stars fading and vanishing at dawn, like bubbles on a fast moving stream, like morning dewdrops evaporating on blades of grass, like a candle flickering in a strong wind; echoes, mirages, and phantoms, hallucinations, and like a dream.

There was a part of the mind - perhaps what we call the self-reflective or introspective function - that kept turning to look and, finding emptiness, kept sending the message that something was wrong. It was a reflex that had developed during the years of living in the illusion of individuality, a reflex we commonly consider necessary to our selves. We "look within" repeatedly to determine what we think and feels, to make a study of ourselves and track our states of mind and heart. Now that there was no longer an "in" to look "into", the self-reflective reflex was adrift, but persisted. It kept turning in and turning in, unable to come to terms with the fact that there was no in anymore, only emptiness.

Even when utterly alone, the self is forever relational, and therefore always looking... at something. At times with the bird's eye view, it looks up to see cosmic origins, at another time it glances down to see the hardened cocoon of the body. And then it sees that there are other meshes, of gender, culture, times, ambitions, or just the greatest restriction of all, the compulsion to communicate, the greatest illusion of our lonely lives.

Life is what happens when you jump out of your mind and use your senses.

What pushes the masses into the camp of socialism is, even more than the illusion that socialism will make them richer, the expectation that it will curb all those who are better than they themselves are.