109 Quotes On Illusion

In a world where perception is often mistaken for reality, the concept of illusion captivates minds and inspires profound thought. From the alluring magic tricks that bewilder our senses to the intricate illusions of personal beliefs and societal constructs, illusions weave through our lives in remarkable ways. Our curated collection of 109 quotes on illusion dives into this captivating subject, offering insights from philosophers, writers, and thinkers who have pondered the delicate line between what is real and what is merely perceived. Whether these words enlighten or mystify, they invite us to explore the depths of our understanding and challenge the beliefs we hold dear. So, prepare to gaze into a realm where nothing is quite as it seems.

1. “Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.” - Sigmund Freud

2. “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

3. “A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.” - Saul Bellow

4. “[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

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

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

7. “Why, if it was an illusion, not praise the catastrophe, whatever it was, that destroyed illusion and put truth in it's place?” - Virginia Woolf

8. “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

9. “Knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

10. “Adornment, exoticism, affectation are all willed decadent strategies meant to pervert the texts they made. Decadent texts often live in their descriptive excursions, in their evocation of dreams, mysterious places and states of mind, in their excess of words, not events. The surface of the texts, the sound of the words, point to themselves as manufactured, as illusion. The decadents attempted to create texts that announced themselves as artifice.” - Asti Hustvedt

11. “In the end, this volume should be read a s a collection of love stories, Above all, they are tales of love, not the love with which so many stories end – the love of fidelity, kindness and fertility – but the other side of love, its cruelty, sterility and duplicity. In a way, the decadents did accept Nordau's idea of the artist as monster. But in nature, the glory and panacea of romanticism, they found nothing. Theirs is an aesthetic that disavows the natural and with it the body. The truly beautiful body is dead, because it is empty. Decadent work is always morbid, but its attraction to death is through art. What they refused was the condemnation of that monster. And yet despite the decadent celebration of artifice, these stories record art's failure in the struggle against natural horror. Nature fights back and wins, and decadent writing remains a remarkable account of that failure.” - Asti Hustvedt

12. “The desert and the ocean are realms of desolation on the surface.The desert is a place of bones, where the innards are turned out, to desiccate into dust.The ocean is a place of skin, rich outer membranes hiding thick juicy insides, laden with the soup of being.Inside out and outside in. These are worlds of things that implode or explode, and the only catalyst that determines the direction of eco-movement is the balance of water.Both worlds are deceptive, dangerous. Both, seething with hidden life.The only veil that stands between perception of what is underneath the desolate surface is your courage.Dare to breach the surface and sink.” - Vera Nazarian

13. “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

14. “And it all came to pass, all that she had hoped, but it did not fill her with rapture nor carry her away with the power or the fervor she had expected. She had imagined it all different, and had imagined herself different, too. In dreams and poems everything had been, as it were, beyond the sea; the haze of distance had mysteriously veiled all the restless mass of details and had thrown out the large lines in bold relief, while the silence of distance had lent its spirit of enchantment. It had been easy then to feel the beauty; but now that she was in the midst of it all, when every little feature stood out and spoke boldly with the manifold voices of reality, and beauty was shattered as light in a prism, she could not gather the rays together again, could not put the picture back beyond the sea. Despondently she was obliged to admit to herself that she felt poor, surrounded by riches that she could not make her own.” - Jens Peter Jacobsen

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

16. “The truth, my friend, is an awesome thing, to be handled with wisdom and with courage denied to ordinary people. Most of us must make do with illusions. Or else -- or else we could not endure.” - Ruth Tessler Goldstein

17. “Again I see you, But me I don't see!, The magical mirror in which I saw myself has been broken, And only a piece of me I see in each fatal fragment - Only a piece of you and me!...” - Fernando Pessoa

18. “All problems are illusions of the mind.” - Eckhart Tolle

19. “[On Schopenhauer in Black and White] Schopenhauer's views of love are flawed. Love can't be merely an illusion of the mind to aid in procreation, but the path to redemption for an otherwise violently selfish species. Past human greatness has proven that when challenged, love can overpower impulsive instinct, and in essence, the vilest aspects of our nature.” - Tiffany Madison

20. “The whole thing's illusion, [Jacob], and there's nothing wrong with that. It's what people want from us. It's what they expect.” - Sara Gruen

21. “Tu n'as rien appris, sinon que la solitude n'apprend rien, que l'indifférence n'apprend rien: c'était un leurre, une illusion fascinante et piégée. Tu étais seul et voilà tout et tu voulais te protéger: qu'entre le monde et toi les ponts soient à jamais coupés. Mais tu es si peu de chose et le monde est un si grand mot: tu n'as jamais fait qu'errer dans une grande ville, que longer sur quelques kilomètres des façades, des devantures, des parcs et des quais. L'indifférence est inutile. Tu peux vouloir ou ne pas vouloir, qu'importe! Faire ou ne pas faire une partie de billard électrique, quelqu'un, de toute façon, glissera une pièce de vingt centimes dans la fente de l'appareil. Tu peux croire qu'à manger chaque jour le même repas tu accomplis un geste décisif. Mais ton refus est inutile. Ta neutralité ne veut rien dire. Ton inertie est aussi vaine que ta colère.” - Georges Perec

22. “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

23. “Where do we people go if not towards the perfection of our own illusion? ” - Sorin Cerin

24. “It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.” - Virginia Woolf

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

26. “Gore Vidal, for instance, once languidly told me that one should never miss a chance either to have sex or to appear on television. My efforts to live up to this maxim have mainly resulted in my passing many unglamorous hours on off-peak cable TV. It was actually Vidal's great foe William F. Buckley who launched my part-time television career, by inviting me on to Firing Line when I was still quite young, and giving me one of the American Right's less towering intellects as my foil. The response to the show made my day, and then my week. Yet almost every time I go to a TV studio, I feel faintly guilty. This is pre-eminently the 'soft' world of dream and illusion and 'perception': it has only a surrogate relationship to the 'hard' world of printed words and written-down concepts to which I've tried to dedicate my life, and that surrogate relationship, while it, too, may be 'verbal,' consists of being glib rather than fluent, fast rather than quick, sharp rather than pointed. It means reveling in the fact that I have a meretricious, want-it-both-ways side. My only excuse is to say that at least I do not pretend that this is not so.” - Christopher Hitchens

27. “That's the whole burden of this novel - the loss of those illusions that give such color to the world that you don't care whether things are true or false as long as they partake of the magical glory.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

28. “How many minutes will still die in the swamp of your illusion of being human?” - Sorin Cerin

29. “God, listen to the absurdity within us and raise us from the illusion!” - Sorin Cerin

30. “I can never feel that the Illusion of Life is a truth as long as any illusion reflects unreality; however, even an untruth is a truth in its turn.” - Sorin Cerin

31. “How much weight can carry a thought which does not acknowledge that it is an illusion?” - Sorin Cerin

32. “\ Who can know the absolute truth of illusion or emptiness? That is why we feel the fulfilled sense of this world.” - Sorin Cerin

33. “An illusion threatens no one with harm. Neither can it be dispelled by armed force.” - Janny Wurts

34. “I think my quarry is illusion. I war against magic. I believe that, though illusion often cheers and comforts, it ultimately and invariably weakens and constricts the spirit.” - Irvin D. Yalom

35. “Silent. So it should be. You have no place in this world, Luthiel. And there is no other.' Zalos reached out and lifted a few strands of her hair. 'Bright songs and the magic of hope are but a dangerous illusion. The fake comfort of witches charms.” - Robert Fanney

36. “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

37. “Illusion is Reality's coy lover who cheers him when he is grim. Illusion is cunning to his wisdom of ages, weet oblivion to his knowledge. A bounty to his lack. [Sabine]” - Kresley Cole

38. “Your goodness must have some edge to it -- else it is none.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

39. “You know Sven? The man who takes care of the gym?' he asked. He waited till he got a nod from Nicholson. 'Well, if Sven dreamed tonight that his dog died, he'd have a very, very bad night's sleep, because he's very fond of that dog. But when he woke up in the morning, everything would be all right. He'd know it was only a dream.'Nicholson nodded. 'What's the point exactly?'The point is if his dog really died, it would be exactly the same thing. Only he wouldn't know it. I mean he wouldn't wake up till he died himself.” - J.D. Salinger

40. “What do you mean, 'Angle of Repose?' she asked me when I dreamed we were talking about Grandmother's life, and I said it was the angle at which a man or woman finally lies down. I suppose it is; and yet ... I thought when I began, and still think, that there was another angle in all those years when she was growing old and older and very old, and Grandfather was matching her year for year, a separate line that did not intersect with hers. They were vertical people, they lived by pride, and it is only by the ocular illusion of perspective that they can be said to have met. But he had not been dead two months when she lay down and died too, and that may indicate that at that absolute vanishing point they did intersect. They had intersected for years, for more than he especially would ever admit.” - Wallace Stegner

41. “You said you were a fairy princessYou said you were a shooting starYou said we'd go to Bora BoraNow look at where the fuck we are” - Jennifer Egan

42. “When your heart truly adores somebody, your mind perceives a halo on that man's head.” - Toba Beta

43. “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

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

45. “Refutation of the Assertion That the (Phenomenal) Appearances Are MindAlthough forms appear to the mind, the (objective) appearances are not mind.... When the reflection of your face appears in a mirror, it appears as the face looks, because the clear surface of the mirror is capable of making the reflection appear and the face has the potential of appearing or of projecting the reflection. At that time, the reflection of the face is not the face, nor is there any other face than the face which imprinted it. Likewise, various kinds (of phenomena) are appearing in the deluded mind because of the interdependent origination of the causes and conditions of delusion. The various objective appearances, such as mountains, are not mind. Also there is nothing in the mind which truly exists, but (merely) appearances (created by the) delusory habituation of the mind. So they are the forms of delusory appearances. They are wrong appearances, just as the person who has "hairy vision" will see hair before his eyes....” - Longchen Rabjam

46. “For the first time in his life, Mont Blanc for a moment looked to him what it was - a chaos of anarchic and purposeless forces - and he needed days of repose to see it clothe itself again with the illusions of his senses, the white purity of its snows, the splendor of its light, and the infinity of its heavenly peace. Nature was kind; Lake Geneva was beautiful beyond itself, and the Alps put on charms real as terrors.” - Henry Adams

47. “I don't care if you're gay, black, Chinese, straight. That means nothing to me. It's all an illusion.” - Joe Rogan

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

49. “Things aren't like this," he kept repeating. "It shouldn't be this way." As if he had access to some other plane of existence, some parallel, "right" universe, and had sensed that our time had somehow been put out of joint. Such was his vehemence that I found myself believing him, believing, for example, in the possibility of that other life in which Vina had never left and we were making our lives together, all three of us, ascending together to the stars. Then he shook his head, and the spell broke. He opened his eyes, grinning ruefully. As if he knew his thoughts had infected mine. As if he knew his power. "Better get on with it," he said. "Make do with what there is.” - Salman Rushdie

50. “My father looked on in disbelief, overwhelmed that his son had been taught to eat glass and relish it.” - Tahir Shah

51. “The pursuit of illusion is not about studying for prizes, or for study's sake. There's no right or wrong, no pass or fail.” - Tahir Shah

52. “The nostalgia of a moment's love can be an illusionary precipice from which we fall from truth; in heartbreak, what we escape to in the past is what tortures us in the present.” - Mike Norton

53. “There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

54. “...it is not for the illusion of a moment to govern the choice of a lifetime.” - Pierre A.F. Choderlos de Laclos

55. “We believe that it is possible for scientific work to gain some knowledge about the reality of the world, by means of which we can increase out power and in accordance with which we can arrange our life. If this belief is an illusion, then we are in the same position as you. But science has given us evidence by its numerous and important successes that it is no illusion.” - Sigmund Freud

56. “If it looks real and feels real, do you think it matters if it's real?” - Daniel Nayeri

57. “All order, I've come to understand, is theoretical, unreal — a harmless, sensible, smiling mask men slide between the two great, dark realities, the self and the world — two snake pits.” - John Gardner

58. “Don't believe everything you think. Thoughts are just that - thoughts.” - Allan Lokos

59. “Everybody talks about freedom, citizens," the big man said gently, seeming to draw upon that very sure source of personal knowledge again, "but they dont really want it. Half of them wants it but the other half dont. What they really want is to maintain an illusion of freedom in front of their wives and business associates. Its a satisfactory compromise, and as long they can have that they can get along without the other which is more expensive. The only trouble is, every man who declares himself free to his friends has to make a slave out of his wife and employees to keep up the illusion and prove it; the wife to be free in front of her bridgeclub has to command her Help, Husband and Heirs. It resolves itself into a battle; whoever wins, the other one loses. For every general in this world there have to be 6,000 privates.” - James Jones

60. “Courage, Love, Illusion (or dream, if you will) -- he who possesses all three, or two, or at least one of these things wins whatever there is to win; those who lack all three are the failures.” - Edward Lewis Wallant

61. “Yet 'Reality' is just whatever illusion we believe in” - Fola

62. “Death is merely an illusion of the departed... Just because you cannot physically see the idea of God, doesn't mean that he or she isn't there. Just because you cannot physically see someone that isn't here, doesn't mean that they aren't there.” - Lionel Suggs

63. “Don't talk to strangers. Don't do drugs. Don't smoke. Don't drink and drive. Don't have sex. Wear a condom. Wear sunblock. Wear a seat belt. Wear a helmet. If you see something, say something. Just say no. Stop, drop, and roll. Stop, look, and listen. Look both ways before you cross the street...Safety is an illusion. Bad things can happen to anyone at any time, whether you follow the rules or not. You can check left, check right, check left again before you step off the curb and into the crosswalk, but that won't stop an anonymous asshole in his shitty pickup from putting you in intensive care...” - Megan McCafferty

64. “We seek to find peace of mind in the word, the formula, the ritual. The hope is illusion.” - Benjamin Cardozo

65. “These are fat mummies sitting with their bags of crisps in front of the television, saying that thin models are ugly. Fashion is about dreams and illusions, and no one wants to see round women.” - Karl Lagerfeld

66. “That was why, later on, he began to lose interest in photography: first when colour took over, then when it became plain that the old magic of light-sensitive emulsions was waning, that to the rising generation the enchantment lay in a techne of images without substance, images that could flash through the ether without residing anywhere, that could be sucked into a machine and emerge from it doctored, untrue. He gave up recording the world in photographs then, and transferred his energies to saving the past.” - J.M. Coetzee

67. “It's hard for a masked man to hide behind a mask when he isn't wearing one.” - Lionel Suggs

68. “...I deliberately spilled the black ink of despair because my perfect soul was a stained glass illusion - can you understand that?...” - John Geddes

69. “There are times when the truth can only show you an illusion.” - Lionel Suggs

70. “What a strange thing it is to wake up to a milk-white overcast June morning! The sun is hidden by a thick cotton blanket of clouds, and the air is vapor-filled and hazy with a concentration of blooming scent.The world is somnolent and cool, in a temporary reprieve from the normal heat and radiance.But the sensation of illusion is strong. Because the sun can break through the clouds at any moment . . .What a soft thoughtful time.In this illusory gloom, like a night-blooming flower, let your imagination bloom in a riot of color.” - Vera Nazarian

71. “A story is nothing but a lie. An illusion. And that illusion only works if we trust in it.” - Eduardo Halfon

72. “Because there is a word for perfection, people will always imagine that they know it.” - Idries Shah

73. “What is sometimes thought to be clever is, significantly often, merely an advanced form of foolishness.” - Idries Shah

74. “Sometimes, one wants to have the illusion that one is making ones own life, out of one's own resources.” - zadie smith

75. “That illusion of a world so shaped that it echoes every groan, of human beings so tied together by common needs and fears that a twitch at one wrist jerks another, where however strange your experience other people have had it too, where however far you travel in your own mind someone has been there before you - - is all an illusion. We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds' feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and like it better so. Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable.” - Virginia Woolf

76. “Memory is an illusion, nothing more. It is a fire that needs constant tending.” - Ray Bradbury

77. “I don't mean to defend zoos. Close them all down if you want (and let us hope that what wildlife remains can survive in what is left of the natural world). I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusion about freedom plague them both.” - Yann Martel

78. “Whatever is a reality today, whatever you touch and believe in and that seems real for you today, is going to be, like the reality of yesterday, an illusion tomorrow.” - Luigi Pirandello

79. “One realized all sorts of things. The value of an illusion, for instance, and that the shadow can be more important than the substance. All sorts of things.” - Jean Rhys

80. “To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It's irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.” - Eugene O'Neill

81. “The illusion is reality. The only contradiction is the observer.” - Lionel Suggs

82. “The true genius of a Woman is her subtle flair in creating the illusion that you are the smart one” - Josh Stern

83. “Tomorrow is an illusion suggesting that another chance always exists.  It is a dangerously false illusion.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

84. “Depending on the reality one must face, one may prefer to opt for illusion.” - Judith Guest

85. “People wear masks in the light because true happiness are the agents of deception and delusion.” - Lionel Suggs

86. “You lost your ability to choose the moment you started to use your eyes to see, and your heart to feel. Choice has become nothing but an illusion for you.” - Lionel Suggs

87. “Trust is such a devious term. When you trust someone, are you not merely assuming that they are what they say that they are? If you place so much in the trust that you have for that one person, then you should place the same amount of trust in assuming that they are not what they appear to be. If there is a wall in front of you that does not allow you to do that, then you must place all of your trust in the fact that your trust is misplaced.” - Lionel Suggs

88. “- I see the real world, Nancy. But it doesn't seem real to me.- How does it seem?- It seems like an illusion that nobody notices.” - Stevie Mikayne

89. “It takes discipline to turn illusion into reality.” - Lionel Suggs

90. “Deceptions of the senses are the truths of perception.” - Johannes Purkinje

91. “I can fight with a real problem. But I cannot solve the ignorance. I cannot solve the illusion of your mind.” - Ravindra Shukla

92. “From the very beginningperplexing and wanderingfrom one ocean to anotheran everlasting wander” - Rixa White

93. “Looking aroundthere is nothing but illusionEverything is drownedin the oceans of illusion” - Rixa White

94. “Survival is an ancient dream Life is nothing but an everlasting illusionNothing is RealDon’t believe in illusion,Remember me,I am here …” - Rixa White

95. “Look at meI am the life in a wastelandLook at meI am the slavery through the agesLook at meI am the mirror of the worldLook at meI am the illusion I’ve fought forLook at meI’m still loving youand I keep being herefor you, for me,and for what’s worth breathing” - Rixa White

96. “That's when I saw you, really saw you for the first time. I didn't intend to look at you, it just happened. It was like those pictures, you know, those optical illusions. You can gaze at them forever and see only one thing. Then when you relax your eyes for just a moment, another picture magically appears. The funny thing with that kind of visual trick it that it's really hard to go back to seeing the original picture once you've seen the new one.” - Kimberly Sabatini

97. “If you know something is an illusion, why pretend it is reality?” - Lionel Suggs

98. “تبقى كل الحكايات العظيمة خرافية إلى أن يؤمن بها الناس” - بلال فضل

99. “Ah, love. That’s what the world has lost. There’s no more love, only the illusion of it.” - Lauren DeStefano

100. “When my mind plays tricks on me I can deal. But when my mind plays tricks on my mind I can not tell what's real” - Stanley Victor Paskavich

101. “You are dealing with national security. Anything labeled a national security issie is taken out from the system. There is no due process, no lawyers. They may do with us what they wish. Fear is a government's greatest weapon. With it, they can convince a people that they need to abandon their freedom. In exchange, they get safety. Of course, you just trade one monster for another, but by the time the people realize this, it is too late. -- Excerpt from Superhero.” - Victor Methos

102. “Illusory universality is the universality of the art of the culture industry, it is the universality of the homogeneous same, an art which no longer even promises happiness but only provides easy amusement as relief from labour.” - J.M. Bernstein

103. “Illusions connected with religion are generally most difficult to remove.” - John Meade Falkner

104. “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

105. “Like the appearance of silver in mother of pearl, the world seems real until the Self, the underlying reality, is realized.” - Shankara

106. “According to the Buddha, the failure to recognize the illusion of the self is the source of all ignorance and unhappiness. It is only by renouncing the self, that is, by dropping his ego defences and committing metaphorical suicide, that a person can open up to different modes of being and relating and thereby transform himself into a pure essence of humanity. In so doing, he becomes free to recast himself as a much more joyful and productive person, and attains the only species of transcendence and immortality that is open to man.” - Neel Burton

107. “There was somewhere, if you knew where to find it, some place where money could be made like drawing water from a well, some Big Rock Candy Mountain where life was effortless and rich and unrestricted and full of adventure and action, where something could be had for nothing.” - Wallace Stegner

108. “Because an illusion is an illusion. Reality always exists despite the facade.” - Kasie West

109. “Kiss a frog with your eyes wide open. If he turns into a prince you won't miss the transformation, but if he doesn't, you won't be fooled by some wishful illusion in your head.” - Richelle E. Goodrich