Optical Illusion Life Quotes

The straight line, a respectable optical illusion which ruins many a man.

... all life rests on appearance, art, illusion, optics, the need for perspective and for error...

Freedom isn't an illusion; it's perfectly real in the context of sequential consciousness. Within the context of simultaneous consciousness, freedom is not meaningful, but neither is coercion; it's simply a different context, no more or less valid than the other. It's like that famous optical illusion, the drawing of either an elegant young woman, face turned away from the viewer, or a wart-nosed crone, chin tucked down on her chest. There's no “correct” interpretation; both are equally valid. But you can't see both at the same time. “Similarly, knowledge of the future was incompatible with free will. What made it possible for me to exercise freedom of choice also made it impossible for me to know the future. Conversely, now that I know the future, I would never act contrary to that future, including telling others what I know: those who know the future don't talk about it. Those who've read the Book of Ages never admit to it.

Life at times loses its sense of reality; it appears to us like a weird, optical illusion - a phantasmagoric bubble that will disappear at the slightest breath.

Years are an optical illusion that obscure our lived experiences.

Life presents itself as a continual deception, in small matters as well as in great. If it has promised, it does not keep its word, unless to show how little desirable the desired object was; hence we are deluded now by hope, now by what was hoped for. If it has given, it did so in order to take. The enchantment of distance shows us paradises that vanish like optical illusions, when we have allowed ourselves to be fooled by them. Accordingly, happiness lies always in the future, or else in the past, and the present may be compared to a small dark cloud driven by the wind over the sunny plain; in front of and behind the cloud everything is bright, only it itself always casts a shadow. Consequently, the present is always inadequate, but the future is uncertain, and the past irrecoverable.

In normal everyday usage, "I" embodies the primordial error, a misperception of who you are, an illusory sense of identity. This is the ego. The illusory sense of self is what Albert Einstein, who had deep insights not only into the reality of space an time, but also into human nature, referred to as "an optical illusion of consciousness.

These moral evaluations are optical illusions, however: the life force is beyond moral judgment.

We all know that rainbows are temporary optical illusions based on the factors of sunlight, moisture, and heat. The environment creates each rainbow like the mind creates a self. Both creations are relatively real, in that we can genuinely experience them temporarily; but just as the factors that created the illusion (whether rainbow or self) arose, so will they also pass. There is no permanent self; there is no permanent rainbow. It is not true to say that there is no self at all or that everything is empty or illusory, but it is true that everything is constantly changing and that there is no solid, permanent, unchanging self within the process that is life. Everything and everyone is an unfolding process.

That wall," explained the Shaggy Man, "is what is called an optical illusion. It is quite real while you have your eyes open, but if you are not looking at it the barrier doesn't exist at all. It's the same way with many other evils in life; they

For a few precarious seconds, the chaplain tingled with a weird, occult sensation of having experienced the identical situation before in some prior time or existence. He endeavored to trap and nourish the impression in order to predict, and perhaps even control, what incident would occur next, but the afflatus melted away unproductively, as he had known beforehand it would. Déjà vu. The subtle recurring confusion between illusion and reality that was characteristic of paramnesia fascinated the chaplain, and he knew a number of things about it. He knew, for example, that it was called paramnesia and he was interested as well in such corollary optical phenomena as jamais vu, never seen, and presque vu, almost seen. There were terrifying, sudden moments when objects, concepts and even people that the chaplain had lived with almost all his life inexplicably took on an unfamiliar and irregular aspect that he had never seen before and which made them seem totally strange: jamais vu. And there were other moments when he almost saw absolute truth in brilliant flashes of clarity that almost came to him: presque vu.

That wall," explained the Shaggy Man, "is what is called an optical illusion. It is quite real while you have your eyes open, but if you are not looking at it the barrier doesn't exist at all. It's the same way with many other evils in life; they seem to exist, and yet it's all seeming and not true.

Visual illusions, too, fascinated me; they showed how intellectual understanding, insight, and even common sense were powerless against the force of perceptual distortions. Gibson’s inverting glasses showed the power of the mind to rectify optical distortions, where visual illusions showed its inability to correct perceptual ones.

The old legends of America belong quite as much to the blue-eyed little patriot as to the black-haired aborigine. And when they are grown tall like the wise grown-ups may they not lack interest in a further study of Indian folklore, a study which so strongly suggests our near kinship with the rest of humanity and points a steady finger toward the great brotherhood of mankind, and by which one is so forcibly impressed with the possible earnestness of life as seen through the teepee door! If it be true that much lies "in the eye of the beholder," then in the American aborigine as in any other race, sincerity of belief, though it were based upon mere optical illusion, demands a little respect. After all he seems at heart much like other peoples.

I remember the words of the great physicist Albert Einstein: A human being is part of the whole we call the universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself in his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest . . . a kind of optical illusion of his consciousness. This illusion is a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for only the few people nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion, to embrace all living beings and all of nature. We

It suffices for an intransigent minority—a certain type of intransigent minority—with significant skin in the game (or, better, soul in the game) to reach a minutely small level, say 3 or 4 percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences. Further, an optical illusion comes with the dominance of the minority: a naive observer (who looks at the standard average) would be under the impression that the choices and preferences are those of the majority. If it seems absurd, it is because our scientific intuitions aren’t calibrated for this.

She finds herself, by some miraculous feat, no longer standing in the old nursery but returned to the clearing in the woods. It is the 'green cathedral', the place she first kissed Jack all those weeks ago. The place where they laid out the stunned sparrowhawk, then watched it spring miraculously back to life. All around, the smooth, grey trunks of ancient beech trees rise up from the walls of the room to tower over her, spreading their branches across the ceiling in a fan of tangled branches and leaves, paint and gold leaf cleverly combined to create the shimmering effect of a leafy canopy at its most dense and opulent. And yet it is not the clearing, not in any real or grounded sense, because instead of leaves, the trees taper up to a canopy of extraordinary feathers shimmering and spreading out like a peacock's tail across the ceiling, a hundred green, gold and sapphire eyes gazing down upon her. Jack's startling embellishments twist an otherwise literal interpretation of their woodland glade into a fantastical, dreamlike version of itself. Their green cathedral, more spectacular and beautiful than she could have ever imagined. She moves closer to one of the trees and stretches out a hand, feeling instead of rough bark the smooth, cool surface of a wall. She can't help but smile. The trompe-l'oeil effect is dazzling and disorienting in equal measure. Even the window shutters and cornicing have been painted to maintain the illusion of the trees, while high above her head the glass dome set into the roof spills light as if it were the sun itself, pouring through the canopy of eyes. The only other light falls from the glass windowpanes above the window seat, still flanked by the old green velvet curtains, which somehow appear to blend seamlessly with the painted scene. The whole effect is eerie and unsettling. Lillian feels unbalanced, no longer sure what is real and what is not. It is like that book she read to Albie once- the one where the boy walks through the wardrobe into another world. That's what it feels like, she realizes: as if she has stepped into another realm, a place both fantastical and otherworldly. It's not just the peacock-feather eyes that are staring at her. Her gaze finds other details: a shy muntjac deer peering out from the undergrowth, a squirrel, sitting high up in a tree holding a green nut between its paws, small birds flitting here and there. The tiniest details have been captured by Jack's brush: a silver spider's web, a creeping ladybird, a puffy white toadstool. The only thing missing is the sound of the leaf canopy rustling and the soft scuttle of insects moving across the forest floor.

Life is an optical illusion;means whatever you feel is happening is actually not happening and whatever looks is not happening is actually happening.

...an unlikely group pieced together these past few weeks from parties and family references, friend-of-friend happenstance, and (in one case, just now being introduced) sheer, scarcely tolerable intrusiveness-five people who, in normal life back home, would have been satisfied never to have known one another. Five young expatriates hunch around an undersized cafe table: a moment of total insignificance, and not without a powerful whiff of cliche. Unless you were one of them. Then this meaningless, overdrawn moment may (then or later) seem to be somehow the summation of both an era and your own youth, your undeniably defining afternoon (though you can hardly say that aloud without making a joke of it). Somehow this one game of Sincerity becomes the distilled recollection of a much longer series of events. It persistantly rises to the surface of your memory-that afternoon when you fell in love with a person or a place or a mood, when you savored the power of fooling everyone, when you discovered some great truth about the world, when (like a baby duck glimpsing your quacking mother's waddling rear for the first time) an indelible brand was seared into your heart, which is, of course, a finate space with limited room for searing. Despite its insignificance, there was this moment, this hour or two, this spring afternoon blurring into evening on a cafe patio in a Central European capital in the opening weeks of its post-Communist era. The glasses of liqueur. The diamond dapples of light between oval, leaf-shaped shadows, like optical illusions. The trellised curve of the cast-iron fence seperating the patio from its surrounding city square. The uncomfortable chair. Someday this too will represent someone's receding, cruelly unattainable golden age. (4-5)

I dreamed in night vision; white flowers of nocturnal gun fire – day residue shot to hell. If I held my dreams to a windowsill, sun would sieve through my screams.

The desire to reach the destination is a natural process, but it is not a natural way that you leave it deliberately behind you. It now means ahead of you is only the mirage, and it is an endless circle of an optical illusion to the end of your life.

It’s like that famous optical illusion, the drawing of either an elegant young woman, face turned away from the viewer, or a wart-nosed crone, chin tucked down on her chest. There’s no “correct” interpretation; both are equally valid. But you can’t see both at the same time.

The heptapods are neither free nor bound as we understand those concepts; they don’t act according to their will, nor are they helpless automatons. What distinguishes the heptapods’ mode of awareness is not just that their actions coincide with history’s events; it is also that their motives coincide with history’s purposes. They act to create the future, to enact chronology. Freedom isn’t an illusion; it’s perfectly real in the context of sequential consciousness. Within the context of simultaneous consciousness, freedom is not meaningful, but neither is coercion; it’s simply a different context, no more or less valid than the other. It’s like that famous optical illusion, the drawing of either an elegant young woman, face turned away from the viewer, or a wart-nosed crone, chin tucked down on her chest. There’s no “correct” interpretation; both are equally valid. But you can’t see both at the same time. Similarly, knowledge of the future was incompatible with free will. What made it possible for me to exercise freedom of choice also made it impossible for me to know the future. Conversely, now that I know the future, I would never act contrary to that future, including telling others what I know: those who know the future don’t talk about it. Those who’ve read the Book of Ages never admit to it. —

It may seem absurd at first, but it is perfectly fitting that our first touchpoint with Tiphareth, the Sephirah that represents the consciousness of the Christ, is represented by the Devil tarot card. The devil is merely a symbol for an illusion. At the same time, so are all man’s ideas of what “God” is: an illusion. We indeed become caught up in our own personal perceptions of God, rather than the reality of God. We get so wrapped up—and become slave to—our ideas and notions of what we think God is to us, just like the two chained persons in the tarot card. They are slave not to the literal creature “the devil”; they are slave to the established orthodoxy of their own ideas. The devil is merely a scapegoat for their own shortcomings. Too often we blame this invisible adversary for the sins which are, frankly, our own responsibility. Facing the devil, facing this illusion, is the first step in the dark night to receive the truth of Tiphareth, of the individuality. Moving further into the Great Work, our notions of what we perceive God to be are likely to change, to be turned completely upside down. We need to be ready, as we strive further and further to uncover the veil of the Mysteries, for Truth with a capital T. Based upon our current understanding of the world, this Truth can seem more like paradox than logic. Yet, the world of spirit is often irrational to the world of the nonspiritual. This takes an intuitive leap past the logical framework of Hod in order to reach new frontiers of understanding that will often seem downright scary because of their illogical nature. We must be constantly aware of everything around us as illusion. The Hebrew letter for this Path, Ayin, means “eye,” which aligns with the optical nature of this theme. The eye can be easily tricked. Ayin is a reminder of the paradox between the physical eye and one’s intuition. The initiate must understand that the material world is illusion and take great care not to confuse outer forms with inner reflection. One may relate to another in some way, but they are not the same thing. One may relate to another in some way, but they are not the same thing. As always, discernment is your ally.

In normal everyday usage, “I” embodies the primordial error, a misperception of who you are, an illusory sense of identity. This is the ego. This illusory sense of self is what Albert Einstein, who had deep insights not only into the reality of space and time but also into human nature, referred to as “an optical illusion of consciousness.” That illusory self then becomes the basis for all further interpretations, or rather misinterpretations of reality, all thought processes, interactions, and relationships. Your reality becomes a reflection of the original illusion.

Waiting and expecting a destination in the way of a mirage results in another optical illusion as a bare reality; such a journey carries only the failure of time and life.

Waiting and expecting a destination in the way of a mirage; it results in another optical illusion, as a bare reality, such a journey carries only the failure of time and life.

The desire to reach the destination is a natural process, but it is not nature that you deliberately leave behind you. It now means ahead of you is only the mirage, and it is an endless circle of an optical illusion to the end of your life.

THE ILLUSORY SELF The word I embodies the greatest error and the deepest truth, depending on how it is used. In conventional usage, it is not only one of the most frequently used words in the language (together with the related words: me, my, mine, and myself) but also one of the most misleading. In normal everyday usage, I embodies the primordial error, a misperception of who you are, an illusory sense of identity. This is the ego. This illusory sense of self is what Albert Einstein, who had deep insights not only in to the reality of space and time but also into human nature, referred to as an optical illusion of consciousness. That illusory self then becomes the basis for all further interpretations, or rather misinterpretations of reality, all thought processes, interactions, and relationships. Your reality becomes a reflection of the original illusion.

I was here all those years,” he said, “within your reach, inside your own realm, watching your struggle, your loneliness, your longing, watching you in a battle you thought you were fighting for me, a battle in which you were supporting my enemies and taking an endless defeat—I was here, hidden by nothing but an error of your sight, as Atlantis is hidden from men by nothing but an optical illusion—I was here, waiting for the day when you would see, when you would know that by the code of the world you were supporting, it’s to the darkest bottom of the underground that all the things you valued would have to be consigned and that it’s there that you would have to look. I was here. I was waiting for you. I love you, Dagny. I love you more than my life, I who have taught men how life is to be loved. I’ve taught them also never to expect the unpaid for—and what I did tonight, I did it with full knowledge that I would pay for it and that my life might have to be the price.

The "Mona Lisa" is an optical illusion created by Leonardo Da Vinci. The woman in the painting "The Mona Lisa" doesn't appear to be always smiling. When you look at the mouth you feel she looks sad, melancholic, and hostile. But when you look at the eyes you feel she is happy and cheerful. Leonardo perfected the "sfumato technique," which translated literally from Italian means "vanished or evaporated." He created imperceptible transitions between light and shade, and sometimes between colors. "Why the Silhouette?" appears as a simple story of a few individuals, but when you look at it from a distance, it appears to show you the philosophy of life. I have tried to create imperceptible transitions between light and darkness and sometimes between colors. Hope you see the illusion in "Why the Silhouette?

The "Mona Lisa" is an optical illusion created by Leonardo Da Vinci. The woman in the painting "The Mona Lisa" doesn't appear to be always smiling. When you look at her mouth you feel she looks sad, melancholic, and hostile. But when you look at her eyes you feel she is happy and cheerful. Leonardo perfected the "sfumato technique," which translated literally from Italian means "vanished or evaporated." He created imperceptible transitions between light and shade, and sometimes between colors. "Why the Silhouette?" appears as a simple story of a few individuals, but when you look at it from a distance, it appears to show you the philosophy of life. I have tried to create imperceptible transitions between light and darkness and sometimes between colors. Hope you see the illusion in "Why the Silhouette?

The "Monalisa Lisa" is an optical illusion created by Leonardo Da Vinci. The woman in the painting "The Mona Lisa" doesn't appear to be always smiling. When you look at the mouth you feel she looks sad, melancholic, and hostile. But when you look at the eyes you feel she is happy and cheerful. Leonardo perfected the "sfumato technique," which translated literally from Italian means "vanished or evaporated." He created imperceptible transitions between light and shade, and sometimes between colors. "Why the Silhouette?" appears as a simple story of a few individuals, but when you look at it from a distance, it appears to show you the philosophy of life. I have tried to create imperceptible transitions between light and darkness and sometimes between colors. Hope you see the illusion in "Why the Silhouette?

Our mental frames change the way we interpret the world. And that’s why I think these optical illusions are such powerful metaphors for life. I’ve come to believe in the importance of frames and reframing. As with the vase and the face, there are often different ways to interpret the same situation.

Several things I had come to believe were mirages, and when I expected them closer they disappeared, leaving absolutely nothing. I quickly realized that almost without exception this was true about everything in my life. A lot of the stories I had recently been spinning about my life were illusions - gaps occupied by part of my brain to fill in a hole, the same way our brain will sometimes fill in gaps in an optical illusion.

The desire to reach the destination is a natural process, but it is not a natural way that you leave it deliberately behind you. It now means ahead of you, is only the mirage, and it is an endless circle of an optical illusion to the end of your life.

John Vernall lifted up his head, the milk locks that had given him his nickname stirring in the third floor winds, and stared with pale grey eyes out over Lambeth, over London. Snowy's dad had once explained to him and his young sister Thursa how by altering one's altitude, one's level on the upright axis of this seemingly three-planed existence, it was possible to catch a glimpse of the elusive fourth plane, the fourth axis, which was time. Or was at any rate, at least in Snowy's understanding of their father's Bedlam lectures, what most people saw as time from the perspective of a world impermanent and fragile, vanished into nothingness and made anew from nothing with each passing instant, all its substance disappeared into a past that was invisible from their new angle and which thus appeared no longer to be there. For the majority of people, Snowy realised, the previous hour was gone forever and the next did not exist yet. They-were trapped in their thin, moving pane of Now: a filmy membrane that might fatally disintegrate at any moment, stretched between two dreadful absences. This view of life and being as frail, flimsy things that were soon ended did not match in any way with Snowy Vernall's own, especially not from a glorious vantage like his current one, mucky nativity below and only reefs of hurtling cloud above. His increased elevation had proportionately shrunken and reduced the landscape, squashing down the buildings so that if he were by some means to rise higher still, he knew that all the houses, churches and hotels would be eventually compressed in only two dimensions, flattened to a street map or a plan, a smouldering mosaic where the roads and lanes were cobbled silver lines binding factory-black ceramic chips in a Miltonic tableau. From the roof-ridge where he perched, soles angled inwards gripping the damp tiles, the rolling Thames was motionless, a seam of iron amongst the city's dusty strata. He could see from here a river, not just shifting liquid in a stupefying volume. He could see the watercourse's history bound in its form, its snaking path of least resistance through a valley made by the collapse of a great chalk fault somewhere to the south behind him, white scarps crashing in white billows a few hundred feet uphill and a few million years ago. The bulge of Waterloo, off to his north, was simply where the slide of rock and mud had stopped and hardened, mammoth-trodden to a pasture where a thousand chimneys had eventually blossomed, tarry-throated tubeworms gathering around the warm miasma of the railway station. Snowy saw the thumbprint of a giant mathematic power, untold generations caught up in the magnet-pattern of its loops and whorls. On the loose-shoelace stream's far side was banked the scorched metropolis, its edifices rising floor by floor into a different kind of time, the more enduring continuity of architecture, markedly distinct from the clock-governed scurry of humanity occurring on the ground. In London's variously styled and weathered spires or bridges there were interrupted conversations with the dead, with Trinovantes, Romans, Saxons, Normans, their forgotten and obscure agendas told in stone. In celebrated landmarks Snowy heard the lonely, self-infatuated monologues of kings and queens, fraught with anxieties concerning their significance, lives squandered in pursuit of legacy, an optical illusion of the temporary world which they inhabited. The avenues and monuments he overlooked were barricades' against oblivion, ornate breastwork flung up to defer a future in which both the glorious structures and the memories of those who'd founded them did not exist.

The desire to reach the destination is a natural process, but it is not nature that you deliberately leave behind you. It now means ahead of you, is only the mirage, and it is an endless circle of an optical illusion to the end of your life.