Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.

Two things control men’s nature, instinct and experience.

Heathenism is a state of mind. You can take it that I’m referring to one who does not see his world. He has no mental light. He destroys almost unwittingly. He cannot feel any Gods presence in his life. He is the 21st century man.

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

I have all the emotions that everyone has; it just appears that I don’t.

Most of us enter adult life with great ambitions for how we will start our own ventures, but the harshness of life wears us down. We settle into some job and slowly give in to the illusion that our bosses care about us and our future, that they spend time thinking of our welfare.

Men willingly believe what they wish.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you.

I’m pretty calculating. I take stuff that I know appeals to people’s bad sides and match it up with stuff that appeals to their good sides.

In so far as the mind is stronger than the body, so are the ills contracted by the mind more severe than those contracted by the body.

People always say when they meet me that I’m not what they expect. I assume they think I’m this super dark and depressing guy, but I like to channel all of those emotions into my work.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

Eyes and ears are poor witnesses to people if they have uncultured souls.

Actions are visible, though motives are secret.

I don’t notice anybody unless they look great, and every now and again they do, and they are usually 70.

Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.

Hatred is settled anger.

It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.

I’m not really concerned with portraying this tough warrior – I mean, that’s part of my job and I take that very seriously. But I don’t have anything to hide, and I’m not concerned with what people think.

For people who may think they know, or have snippets of who I am, you can attack that person. That’s part of being a public figure.

Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love; it could not do so alone, but since it unconsciously has the element of heavenly love within it, it can do so.

There are many sham diamonds in this life which pass for real, and vice versa.

It’s human nature to blame someone else for your shortcomings or upsets.

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.

The real danger is not inaction. The real danger is when politicians and CEOs are making it look like action is happening when in fact nothing is being done.

The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.

The human mind is our fundamental resource.

I think Buddhism should open the door of psychology and healing to penetrate more easily into the Western world.

Aggression unopposed becomes a contagious disease.

It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason.

It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.

I don’t have this feeling that 70 is really old.

The collective unconscious consists of the sum of the instincts and their correlates, the archetypes. Just as everybody possesses instincts, so he also possesses a stock of archetypal images.

Fear is the thought of admitted inferiority.

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

We do not see people as they are, but as they appear to us. And these appearances are usually misleading.

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.

Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child’s eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.

If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.

I don’t think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.

When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.

If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.

The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

Who is richer? The man who is seen, but cannot see? Or the man who is not being seen, but can see?

When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you… Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you.

O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

Faith certainly tells us what the senses do not, but not the contrary of what they see; it is above, not against them.

If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

Defined in psychological terms, a fanatic is a man who consciously over-compensates a secret doubt.

The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.

To us also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not God made visible if we will open our minds and our eyes.

If you have enough people sitting around telling you you’re wonderful, then you start believing you’re fabulous, then someone tells you you stink and you believe that too!

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?

In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.

When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it’s done so I would recognise when I was being lied to.

I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.

It amazes me sometimes that even intelligent people will analyze a situation or make a judgement after only recognizing the standard or traditional structure of a piece.

People see things differently and remember things differently. It’s why if somebody robs a liquor store and there are four witnesses they’ll often disagree.