87 Illusion Quotes

In a world where perception often blurs the lines between reality and fantasy, illusions play a captivating role in shaping our experiences. Whether they arise from magic tricks, optical deceits, or the intricate stories we tell ourselves, illusions challenge our senses and provoke thought. Our collection of the top 87 illusion quotes delves into this fascinating realm, offering insights from philosophers, artists, and thinkers who have pondered the elusive nature of reality. Join us on this journey through words as we explore the depth and beauty of illusions and their impact on our lives.

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

2. “[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

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

4. “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

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

6. “Priceless is economic illusion.Costless is an economical trick.” - Toba Beta

7. “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

8. “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

9. “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

10. “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

11. “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

12. “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

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

14. “[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

15. “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

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

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

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

19. “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

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

21. “Does anybody know which are the thoughts of God, even if they are plants, mountains, sky, stars or whatever else?” - Sorin Cerin

22. “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

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

24. “I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.” - Alan Wilson Watts

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

26. “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

27. “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

28. “You're a dream. Like everything else.” - Kelly Creagh

29. “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

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

31. “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

32. “How strange when an illusion dies. It's as though you've lost a child.” - Judy Garland

33. “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

34. “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

35. “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

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

37. “Maybe illusion and artifice—lies, even—are a necessary part of romance.” - Jody Gehrman

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

39. “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

40. “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

41. “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

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

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

44. “We were on Barrow Street now."Who is the man with the scar?" I said.She shot me a glance, and her face hardened. "You saw him?""How could I miss? He was the real center of attention. Didn't you go to the opening at all?""No" She said. "And just because you saw him doesn't mean he was there.” - Nicholas Christopher

45. “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

46. “We can be seduced...by powerful political groups that promise more wealth and lower taxes. Those with power can use clever, psychological tricks and play upon our weaknesses and brokenness in order to attract us to their way of thinking. We can be manipulated into illusion.” - Jean Vanier

47. “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

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

49. “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

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

51. “Martha: Truth or illusion, George; you don't know the difference.George: No, but we must carry on as though we did.Martha: Amen.” - Edward Albee

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

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

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

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

56. “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

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

58. “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

59. “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

60. “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

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

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

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

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

65. “A world without problems is an illusion, so is a world without solutions.” - Gianni Sarcone

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

67. “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

68. “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

69. “- 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

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

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

72. “All my joys resemble more a momentary intoxication than the real gold of happiness. It was all but an illusion.” - Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing

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

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

75. “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

76. “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

77. “Love is an optical illusion that makes you believe the object of your affection is the most beautiful person in the world.” - Tom Holt

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

79. “Meanwhile, the trees were just as green as before; the birds sang and the sun shone as clearly now as ever. The familiar surroundings had not darkened because of her grief, nor sickened because of her pain.She might have seen that what had bowed her head so profoundly -the thought of the world's concern at her situation- was found on an illusion. She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself.” - Thomas Hardy

80. “Lucrurile supreme trebuie să aibă o altă origine, una proprie lor, - ele nu ar putea lua naştere din această lume efemeră, înşelătoare, iluzorie şi mizeră, din această harababură de amăgiri şi pofte!” - Friedrich Nietzsche

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

82. “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

83. “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

84. “...people live their lives bound by what they accept as correct and true... that is how they define reality. But what does it mean to be correct or true? Merely vague concepts... their reality may all be an illusion.” - Kishimoto Masashi Uchiha Itachi - chapter 385

85. “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

86. “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

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