As long as one is ruled by illusion, one's thinking process is also illusory and that is nothing but misery. In Gnanis' [the enlightened one's] language, there is no such thing as happiness or unhappiness.

Anyone who can handle a needle convincingly can make us see a thread which is not there.

We wake from one dream into another dream.

Every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early and the human race come to an end.

A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavour to do, he drowns.

Time strips our illusions of their hue, And one by one in turn, some grand mistake Casts off its bright skin yearly like the snake.

Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that we live, if we do.

After an hour or so in the woods looking for mushrooms, Dad said, 'Well, we can always go and buy some real ones.'

Rob the average man of his life-illusion and you rob him of his happiness at one stroke.

The more intelligent and cultured a man is, the more subtly he can humbug himself.

It is always some illusion that creates disillusion, especially in the young, for whom the only alternative to perfection is cynicism.

Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.

Who is this person staring at me so sternly? The martial bones I bring from a former existence regret the flesh that covers them. Once life is over, the body itself will be seen to have been a deception.

What is actually happening is often less important than what appears to be happening.

Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives not by truth but by make-believe.

We must select the illusion which appeals to our temperament, and embrace it with passion, if we want to be happy.

Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.

Life is the art of being well deceived; and in order that the deception may succeed it must be habitual and uninterrupted.

Our greatest illusion is to believe that we are what we think ourselves to be.

We [Americans] suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in place of reality.