“ LOOKING-GLASS, n. A vitreous plane upon which to display a fleeting show for man's disillusion given. The King of Manchuria had a magic looking-glass, whereon whoso looked saw, not his own image, but only that of the king. A certain courtier who had long enjoyed the king's favor and was thereby enriched beyond any other subject of the realm, said to the king: "Give me, I pray, thy wonderful mirror, so that when absent out of thine august presence I may yet do homage before thy visible shadow, prostrating myself night and morning in the glory of thy benign countenance, as which nothing has so divine splendor, O Noonday Sun of the Universe!" Please with the speech, the king commanded that the mirror be conveyed to the courtier's palace; but after, having gone thither without apprisal, he found it in an apartment where was naught but idle lumber… ”
- Ambrose Bierce- Copy
- 1.8K
“ There is no need to waste pity on young girls who are having their moments of disillusionment, for in another moment they will recover their illusion. ”
- Sidonie Gabrielle Colette- Copy
- 1.9K
“ He had one illusion - France; and one disillusion - mankind. ”
- John Maynard Keynes- Copy
- 42
“ What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet. ”
- Woody Allen- Copy
- 624
“ We could hardly believe that after so many ordeals, after all the trials of modern skepticism, there was still so much left in our souls to destroy. ”
- Alexander Herzen- Copy
- 2.8K
“ I saw that all beings are fated to happiness: action is not life, but a way of wasting some force, an enervation. Morality is the weakness of the brain. ”
- Arthur Rimbaud- Copy
- 2.4K
“ It is only a step from boredom to disillusionment, which leads naturally to self-pity, which in turn ends in chaos. ”
- Manly Hall- Copy
- 3K
“ We can destroy ourselves by cynicism and disillusion, just as effectively as by bombs. ”
- Lord Clark Kenneth- Copy
- 2.2K
“ The longer you stay in one place, the greater your chances of disillusionment. ”
- Art Spander- Copy
- 4K
“ The beauty myth moves for men as a mirage; its power lies in its ever-receding nature. When the gap is closed, the lover embraces only his own disillusion. ”
- Naomi Wolf- Copy
- 67
“ The attainment of an ideal is often the beginning of a disillusion. ”
- Stanley Baldwin- Copy
- 2.4K
“ One of the most devastating experiences in human life is disillusionment. ”
- Art Sisson- Copy
- 1.9K
“ Old friends, we say, are best, when some sudden disillusionment shakes our faith in a new comrade. ”
- Frank Gelett Burgess- Copy
- 3.3K
“ Disillusion is a natural stage that follows the holding of an illusion. ”
- Susan Shaughnessy- Copy
- 2.6K
“ Any new venture goes through the following stages: enthusiasm, complication, disillusionment, search for the guilty, punishment of the innocent, and decoration of those who did nothing. ”
- Unknown- Copy
- 1.5K
“ The wise man, knowing how to enjoy achieved results without having constantly to replace them with others, finds in them an attachment to life in the hour of difficulty. But the man who has always pinned all his hopes on the future and lived with his eyes fixed upon it, has nothing in the past as a comfort against the present's afflictions, for the past was nothing to him but a series of hastily experienced stages… ”
- Emile Durkheim- Copy
- 1.1K
“ Melanctha Herbert was always losing what she had in all the things she saw. Melanctha was always being left when she was not leaving others. Melanctha Herbert always loved too hard and much too often. She was always full with mystery and subtle movements and denials and vague distrusts and complicated disillusions… ”
- Gertrude Stein- Copy
- 168
“ We cannot see that enormous apparatus of force that the modern orchestra represents without feeling the most profound and total disillusion at the paltry acoustic results. Do you know of any sight more ridiculous than that of twenty men furiously bent on redoubling the mewing of a violin? ”
- Luigi Russolo- Copy
- 2.5K
“ Nagging questions remain: Where is the line between making the most of one's potential and reaching for the unattainable? Where is the line between education as a tool and education as a kind of magic? The line is blurred and that is why when education fails, disillusionment is so bitter. ”
- Henry Anatole Grunwald- Copy
- 2.5K
“ Lose/Win people bury a lot of feelings. And unexpressed feelings come forth later in uglier ways. Psychosomatic illnesses often are the reincarnation of cumulative resentment, deep disappointment and disillusionment repressed by the Lose/Win mentality… ”
- Stephen R. Covey- Copy
- 57
“ A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in. ”
- Henry Miller- Copy
- 2.7K
- 1