It is no doubt an evil to be full of faults, but it is a greater evil to be full of them, yet unwilling to recognise them, because that is to add the further fault of a voluntary illusion. We do not like others to deceive us, we do not think it just in them to require more esteem from us than they deserve; it is therefore unjust that we should deceive them, desiring more esteem from them than we deserve.
His (Adam Smith’s) was a real universalism in intent. Laissez Faire was intended to establish a world community as well as a natural harmony of interests within each nation…. But the “children of darkness” were able to make good use of his creed. A dogma which was intended to guarantee the economic freedom of the individual became the “ideology” of vast corporate structures of a later period of capitalism, used by them, and still used, to prevent a proper political control of their power…. Marxism was the social creed and the social cry of those classes who knew by their miseries that the creed of the liberal optimists was s snare and a delusion…. Liberalism and Marxism share a common illusion of the “children of light.” Neither understands property as a form of power which can be used in either its individual or its social form as an instrument of particular interest against the general interest. Liberalism makes this mistake in regard to private property and Marxism makes it in regard to socialized property…. The Marxist illusion is partly derived from a romantic conception of human nature…. It assumes that the socialization of property will eliminate human egotism…. The development of a managerial class in Russia, combing economic with political power, is an historic refutation of the Marxist theory. [ The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness , 1944.]
Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.
That man, as a "political animal," is susceptible of a vast amount of improvement, by education, by instruction, and by the application of his intelligence to the adaptation of tne conditions of life to his higher needs, I entertain not the slightest doubt. But, so long as he remains liable to error, intellectual or moral; so long as he is compelled to be perpetually on guard against the cosmic forces, whose ends are not his ends, without and within himself; so long as he is haunted by inexpugnable memories and hopeless aspirations; so long as the recognition of his intellectual limitations forces him to acknowledge his incapacity to penetrate the mystery of existence; the prospect of attaining untroubled happiness, or of a state which can, even remotely, deserve the title of perfection, appears to me to be as misleading an illusion as ever was dangled before the eyes of poor humanity. And there have been many of them.
This world is all a fleeting show, For man's illusion given; The smiles of joy, the tears of woe, Deceitful shine, deceitful flow,-- There 's nothing true but Heaven.
"Because," say some, "you have believed from childhood that a box was empty when you saw nothing in it, you have therefore believed the possibility of a vacuum. This is an illusion of your senses, strengthened by custom, which science must correct." "Because," say others, "you were taught at school that there is no such thing as a vacuum, your common sense, which clearly comprehended the matter before, is corrupted, and you must correct this false impression by returning to your primitive nature." Which has deceived you, your senses or your education?
Il y a souvent de l'illusion, de la mode, du caprice dans le jugement des hommes=--In the judgments of people there is often little more than self-deception, fashion, and whim.
Ein Wahn der mich begluckt, / Ist eine Wahrheit wert die mich zu Boden druckt=--An illusion which gladdens me is worth a truth which saddens me (_lit.
By poetry we mean the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination; the art of doing by means of words what the painter does by means of colors.--_Macaulay._
Deceptio visus=--Optical illusion.
The old freedom sufficiently survives in the mind of the wage earner to give him the illusion that, while accepting insurance and maintenance from the capitalist state, he can still be a full citizen. He thinks he can have his cake and eat it too. He is mistaken. The great capitalists who procured these regulations from the politicians knew what they were at. They were catching their proletariat in a net, and now they hold it fast. [“The New Paganism,” Essays of a Catholic . Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1992, p. 9.]
I am a being of Heaven and Earth, of thunder and lightning, of rain and wind, of the galaxies, of the suns and the stars and the void through which they travel. The essence of nature, eternal, divine that all men seek to know to hear, known as the great illusion time, and the all-prevailing atmosphere. And now you know my background.
Misery is so little appertaining to our nature, and happiness so much so, that we in the same degree of illusion only lament over that which has pained us, but leave unnoticed that which has rejoiced us.--_Richter._
When I reflect upon what I have seen, what I have heard, what I have done, I can hardly persuade myself that all that frivolous hurry and bustle and pleasure of the world had any reality; and I look on what has passed as one of those wild dreams which opium occasions, and I by no means wish to repeat the nauseous dose for the sake of the fugitive illusion.--_Chesterfield._
For in the depths of grief, sometimes one cannot tell the difference between illusion and reality.
Pleasure can be supported by illusion; but happiness rests upon truth.
Que es la vida? Un frenesi. / Que es la vida? Una ilusion. / Una sombra, una ficcion, / Y el mayor bien es pequeno; / Que toda la vida es sueno, / Y los suenos, suenos son!=--What is life? A conceit of the fancy. What is life? An illusion, / a shadow, a fiction, and the greatest earthly possession insignificant; the whole of life nothing but a dream, and dreams are shadows.
Magic words and incantations are as fatal to our science as they are to any other. Methods, when classified and separated, acquire their true bearing and perspective as a means to an end, not as ends in themselves. We seek to find peace of mind in the word, the formula, the ritual. The hope is illusion.
Few natures can preserve through years the poetry of the first passionate illusion. That can alone render wedlock the seal that confirms affection, and not the mocking ceremonial that consecrates its grave.--_Bulwer-Lytton._
"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."
Der Wahn ist kurz, die Reu' ist lang=--The illusion is brief, the remorse is long.
Non-evaluative insight into history does not inevitably lead to relativism, but rather to relationism. Knowledge, as seen in the light of the total conception of ideology, is by no means an illusory experience, for ideology in its relational concept is not at all identical with illusion. Knowledge arising out of our experience in actual life situations, though not absolute, is knowledge none the less.
Betrug war Alles, Lug, und Schein=--All was deception, a lie, and illusion.
The rising productivity of labor is a myth, a statistical illusion created by measuring combined output in terms of labor input.
Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.
This misfortune is, no doubt, greater and more common in the higher classes, but lesser men are not exempt from it, since there is always an interest in making men love us. Thus human life is but a perpetual illusion, an interchange of deceit and flattery. No one speaks of us in our presence as in our absence. The society of men is founded on this universal deceit: few friendships would last if every man knew what his friend said of him behind his back, though he then spoke in sincerity and without passion.
Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Men feed themselves rather upon illusion than upon truth.
I live for coincidences. They briefly give to me the illusion or the hope that there's a pattern to my life, and if there's a pattern, then maybe I'm moving toward some kind of destiny where it's all explained.
No battle is ever won... They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.
Jefferson refused to pin his hopes on the occasional success of honest and unambitious men; on the contrary, the great danger was that philosophers would be lulled into complacence by the accidental rise of a Franklin or a Washington. Any government which made the welfare of men depend on the character of their governors was an illusion.
I believe that none can "save" his fellow man by making a choice for him. To help him, he can indicate the possible alternatives, with sincerity and love, without being sentimental and without illusion. The knowledge and awareness of the freeing alternatives can reawaken in an individual all his hidden energies and put him on the path to choosing respect for "life" instead of for "death."
Every generous illusion adds a wrinkle in vanishing. Experience is the successive disenchantment of the things of life. It is reason enriched by the spoils of the heart.--_J. Petit Senn._
O der Magnet des Wahns zieht machtig=--Oh, how powerfully the magnet of illusion attracts.
For poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry.
Time is an illusion perpetrated by the manufacturers of space.
All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist... It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever... Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes."
Glory long has made the sages smile, / 'Tis something, nothing, words, illusion, wind, / Depending more upon the historian's style / Than on the name a person leaves behind.
I like hotels where you can check in at an electronic kiosk and never have to speak to a desk clerk. I dislike a gold-wrapped chocolate on my pillow, a turned-down sheet, a bathroom towel folded so that it resembles a flower, or any other "personal touch" that gives humans the illusion that they are surrounded by a friendly universe. In reality, the universe is neutral about our existence. Only dogs care.
The voice of the intellect is a soft one, but it does not rest until it has gained a hearing. Ultimately, after endlessly repeated rebuffs, it succeeds. This is one of the few points in which it may be optimistic about the future of mankind, but in itself it signifies not a little.
The difference between one man and another is by no means so great as the superstitious crowd supposes. But the same feelings which in ancient Rome produced the apotheosis of a popular emperor, and in modern times the canonization of a devout prelate, lead men to cherish an illusion which furnishes them with something to adore.--_Macaulay._
When others asked the truth of me, I was convinced it was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with.
A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life. It tells us that for every human being there is a diversity of existences, that the single existence is itself an illusion in part, that these many existences signify something, tend to something, fulfill something; it promises us meaning, harmony and even justice.
Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace.
It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one.
Nur der Irrthum ist unser Teil, und Wahn ist unsre Wissenschaft=--Only error is our portion, and illusion our knowledge.
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.
_The reason of effects._--It is, then, true to say that all men are under an illusion, for even though the opinions of the people be sound, they are not so as they hold them, for they think that truth is where it is not. Truth is indeed in their opinions, but not at the point where they imagine it.
~Glory.~--To a father who loves his children victory has no charms. When the heart speaks, glory itself is an illusion.--_Napoleon._
The danger of dangers is illusion.
This world is all a fleeting show, / For man's illusion given: / The smiles of joy, the tears of woe, / Deceitful shine, deceitful flow, / There's nothing true but heaven.
The highest problem of every art is, by means of appearances, to produce the illusion of a loftier reality.
Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion.
What a force of illusion begins life with us, and attends us to the end!
~Illusion.~--In youth we feel richer for every new illusion; in maturer years, for every one we lose.--_Madame Swetchine._
When you are young, you enjoy a sustained illusion that sooner or later something marvelous is going to happen, that you are going to transcend your parents' limitations... At the same time, you feel sure that in all the wilderness of possibility; in all the forests of opinion, there is a vital something that can be known -- known and grasped. That we will eventually know it, and convert the whole mystery into a coherent narrative. So that then one's true life -- the point of everything -- will emerge from the mist into a pure light, into total comprehension. But it isn't like that at all. But if it isn't, where did the idea come from, to torture and unsettle us? -- Brian Aldiss, "Helliconia Summer"
Happiness is just an illusion, filled with sadness and confusion.
Perhaps the most widespread illusion is that if we were in power we would behave very differently from those who now hold it -- when, in truth, in order to get power we would have to become very much like them. (Lenin's fatal mistake, both in theory and in practice.)
The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred.
Breathe deep the gathering gloom. Watch lights fade from every room. Bed-sitter people look back and lament; another day's useless energies spent. Impassioned lovers wrestle as one. Lonely man cries for love and has none. New mother picks up and suckles her son. Senior citizens wish they were young. Cold-hearted orb that rules the night; Removes the colors from our sight. Red is grey and yellow white. But we decide which is real, and which is an illusion." -- The Moody Blues, "Days of Future Passed"
Decorate your home. It gives the illusion that your life is more interesting than it really is. -- C. Schulz
Government [is] an illusion the governed should not encourage. -- John Updike, "Couples"
It isn't an optical illusion. It just looks like one.
-- Voltaire
It's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one. -- Phil White
Time is an illusion perpetrated by the manufacturers of space.
"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." -- Ford Prefect, _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_
What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet. -- Woody Allen, "Without Feathers"
Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so. -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Deja vu: French., already seen; unoriginal; trite. Psychol., The illusion of having previously experienced something actually being encountered for the first time. Psychol., The illusion of having previously experienced something actually being encountered for the first time.
The external world of physics has … become a world of shadows. In removing our illusions we have removed the substance, for indeed we have seen that substance is one of the greatest of our illusions. … The sparsely spread nuclei of electric force become a tangible solid; their restless agitation becomes the warmth of summer; the octave of aethereal vibrations becomes a gorgeous rainbow. Nor does the alchemy stop here. In the transmuted world new significances arise which are scarcely to be traced in the world of symbols; so that it becomes a world of beauty and purpose — and, alas, suffering and evil. The frank realisation that physical science is concerned with a world of shadows is one of the most significant of recent advances.
And in truth, the mysterious impression produced on Cosette in the depths of the forest of Chelles by the hand of Jean Valjean grasping hers in the dark was not an illusion, but a reality. The entrance of that man into the destiny of that child had been the advent of God.
cognitive illusions are difficult to overcome. That is why education of the public is doomed to fail and paternalistic strategies to maneuver people into doing the “right” things are the only viable alternative.
But this great England will be angry at what we are saying here. She still cherishes, after her own 1688 and our 1789, the feudal illusion. She believes in heredity and hierarchy. This people, surpassed by none in power and glory, regards itself as a nation, and not as a people. And as a people, it willingly subordinates itself and takes a lord for its head. As a workman, it allows itself to be disdained; as a soldier, it allows itself to be flogged.
An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.
People are so ridiculous with their illusions, carrying their fool's caps unawares, thinking their own lies opaque while everybody else's are transparent, making themselves exceptions to everything, as if when all the world looked yellow under a lamp they alone were rosy.--_George Eliot._
Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
Apparently the rise of consciousness is linked to certain kinds of privation. It is the bitterness of self-consciousness that we knowers know best. Critical of the illusions that sustained mankind in earlier times, this self-consciousness of ours does little to sustain us now. The question is: which is disenchanted, the world itself or the consciousness we have of it?
With this calm, Cosette, his sole anxiety, recurred to his thoughts. Not that he was troubled by this headache, a little nervous crisis, a young girl's fit of sulks, the cloud of a moment, there would be nothing left of it in a day or two; but he meditated on the future, and, as was his habit, he thought of it with pleasure. After all, he saw no obstacle to their happy life resuming its course. At certain hours, everything seems impossible, at others everything appears easy; Jean Valjean was in the midst of one of these good hours. They generally succeed the bad ones, as day follows night, by virtue of that law of succession and of contrast which lies at the very foundation of nature, and which superficial minds call antithesis. In this peaceful street where he had taken refuge, Jean Valjean got rid of all that had been troubling him for some time past. This very fact, that he had seen many shadows, made him begin to perceive a little azure. To have quitted the Rue Plumet without complications or incidents was one good step already accomplished. Perhaps it would be wise to go abroad, if only for a few months, and to set out for London. Well, they would go. What difference did it make to him whether he was in France or in England, provided he had Cosette beside him? Cosette was his nation. Cosette sufficed for his happiness; the idea that he, perhaps, did not suffice for Cosette's happiness, that idea which had formerly been the cause of his fever and sleeplessness, did not even present itself to his mind. He was in a state of collapse from all his past sufferings, and he was fully entered on optimism. Cosette was by his side, she seemed to be his; an optical illusion which every one has experienced. He arranged in his own mind, with all sorts of felicitous devices, his departure for England with Cosette, and he beheld his felicity reconstituted wherever he pleased, in the perspective of his revery.
Reason may cure illusions but not suffering.--_Alfred de Musset._
Led by illusions romantic and subtle deceptions of fancy, / Pleasure disguised as duty, and love in the semblance of friendship.
Feel disillusioned? I've got some great new illusions, right here!
He had found her in a condition approaching to absolute madness. She screamed, and trembled, and cried out that Rogojin was hiding out there in the garden--that she had seen him herself--and that he would murder her in the night--that he would cut her throat. She was terribly agitated all day. But it so happened that the prince called at Hippolyte's house later on, and heard from his mother that she had been in town all day, and had there received a visit from Rogojin, who had made inquiries about Pavlofsk. On inquiry, it turned out that Rogojin visited the old lady in town at almost the same moment when Nastasia declared that she had seen him in the garden; so that the whole thing turned out to be an illusion on her part. Nastasia immediately went across to Hippolyte's to inquire more accurately, and returned immensely relieved and comforted.
The changing wisdom of successive generations discards ideas, questions facts, demolishes theories. But the artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom: to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition — and, therefore, more permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation — and to the subtle but invincible, conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts: to the solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other, which binds together all humanity — the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.
The mournfulness of the place and time, and the great terror of this illusion, though it was but momentary, caused me to feel an indescribable awe as I came out between the open wooden gates where I had once wrung my hair after Estella had wrung my heart. Passing on into the front courtyard, I hesitated whether to call the woman to let me out at the locked gate of which she had the key, or first to go up stairs and assure myself that Miss Havisham was as safe and well as I had left her. I took the latter course and went up.
And who doubts that if we dreamt in company, and if by chance men's dreams agreed, which is common enough, and if we were always alone when awake, we should believe that the conditions were reversed? In a word, as we often dream that we dream, and heap vision upon vision, it may well be that this life itself is but a dream, on which the others are grafted, from which we wake at death; having in our lifetime as few principles of what is good and true, as during natural sleep, the different thoughts which agitate us being perhaps only illusions like those of the flight of time and the vain fantasies of our dreams....