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.

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

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

Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.

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

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

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

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.

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

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