Illusory Happiness Quotes

If I dream I have you, I have you, for all our joys are but fantastical.

Many times people come to me to be reassured. They ask, they say, 'I'm feeling very happy and blissful. What do you say?' What is the need to say anything? The very need shows that the happiness is unreal and imaginary.

Dreaming was only nice while it lasted.

Many a man has a kind of a kaleidoscope, where the bits of broken glass are his own merits and fortunes; and they fall into harmonious arrangements, and delight him, often most mischievously and to his ultimate detriment; but they are a present pleasure.

You've heard of people living in a fool's paradise? Well, Leonora has a duplex there.

The fundamental deception of Satan is the lie that obedience can never bring happiness.

Many deceive themselves, imagining they'll find happiness in change.

Our pleasance here is all vain glory, This false world is but transitory.

They like to tell us that it is important to speak the truth, but it has been my experience that real happiness lies in having people tell you what you want to believe, usually not the same thing at all, and if you have to stub your toe on the truth later, so be it.

The fiction of happiness is propagated by every tongue and confirmed by every look till at last all profess the joy which they do not feel and consent to yield to the general delusion.

Turns out it was mostly a lie. But, at least for a short while, it was a beautiful one.

When you compare the sorrows of real life to the pleasures of the imaginary one, you will never want to live again, only to dream forever.

But then, my entire life is bullshit. The best things in it have vanished, ghosts. Ghosts I'll admit I created.

Sometimes,” he says, sliding his arm across my shoulders, “people just want to be happy, even if it’s not real.

It's only before realities set in that we can treasure our delusions.

When I consider life, 't is all a cheat. Yet fool'd with hope, men favour the deceit; Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay. To-morrow 's falser than the former day; Lies worse, and while it says we shall be blest With some new joys, cuts off what we possest. Strange cozenage! none would live past years again, Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain; And from the dregs of life think to receive What the first sprightly running could not give.

Everyone knows that (1) happiness is the goal of life, and (2) happiness is a chimera.

The public pleasures of far the greater part of mankind are counterfeit.

Fantasy is seductive and much more wonderful than reality, but you can't take it to the bank. It's always an escape. And if used as an escape, as in attending a movie or a show for a circumscribed period of time, it's fine. When it starts to become undifferentiated from reality, it leads to big trouble.

Wives invariably flourish when deserted; ... it is the deserting male, the reckless idealist rushing about the world seeking a non-existent felicity, who often ends in disaster.

Hope is but a charlatan that ceases not to deceive us. For myself happiness only began when I had lost it.

Life cheats us with shadows. We ask it for pleasure. It gives it to us with bitterness and disappointment in its train.

Yet, sluggard, wake, and gull thy soul no more With earth's false pleasures, and the world's delight, Whose fruit is fair and pleasing to the sight, But sour in taste, false as the putrid core: Thy flaring glass is gems at her half light; She makes thee seeming rich, but truly poor: She boasts a kernel, and bestows a shell; Performs an inch of her fair-promis'd ell: Her words protest a heav'n; her works produce a hell.

Seeks painted trifles and fantastic toys, and eagerly pursues imaginary joys.