#illusion

Illusions of grandeur are not the same as visions of greatness. ↗

— Edwin Louis Cole

#greatness #illusions #same #visions

The purpose of satire has been rightly stated as to strip off the veneer of comforting illusion and cosy half truth, and our job, as I see it, is to put it back again! ↗

— Michael Flanders

#back #been #comforting #half #i

Whatever happens in the world is real, what one thinks should have happened is projection. We suffer more from our fictitious illusion and expectations of reality. ↗

— Jacque Fresco

#fictitious #happened #happens #illusion #more

Let there be no illusions about the difficulty of forming this kind of a national community. It's tough, difficult, not easy. But a spirit of harmony will survive in America only if each of us remembers that we share a common destiny. ↗

— Barbara Jordan

#america #common #community #destiny #difficult

We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone. ↗

— Orson Welles

#alone #born #create #die #friendship

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

#artifice #dead #death #decadence #decadent

...it is not for the illusion of a moment to govern the choice of a lifetime. ↗

— Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

#illusion #life #life

One day everything will be well, that is our hope. Everything's fine today, that is our illusion ↗

— Voltaire

#optimism #status-quo #illusion

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance -- it is the illusion of knowledge. ↗

— Daniel J. Boorstin

#earth #illusion #illusion

I just want to kiss you." He slid his hand up her neck, cupping the side of her face. "Do you want to kiss me? ↗

— Aprilynne Pike

#illusion