Rene Daumal Quotes

Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.

You know what ART stands for? Above Real Truth.

Sometimes my art is just an illusion - or is it?

As a son of a man who pretended to be one thing for 33 years of my life and then was another thing, the questions of 'what is real' and 'what is not real' are very blurrily vivid to me.

Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be.

What is called a sincere work is one that is endowed with enough strength to give reality to an illusion.

Reality has a way of intruding upon illusion.

Lying and art are very allied. But after you lie, you get to the truth.

Things are not what they appear to be: nor are they otherwise.

Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself.

An error becomes an error when born as truth.

Art is a never-ending dance of illusions.

We possess art lest we perish of the truth.

Art is as heavy as sorrow, as light as a breeze, as bright as an idea, as pretty as a picture, as funny as money, and as fugitive as fraud!

Photography is without mercy--though it's nonsense to say it does not lie. Rather, it lies in a particular, capricious way which makes beggars of ministers and gods of cat's meat men.

Art is the most beautiful deception of all!

There is a mask of theory over the whole face of nature.

Illusion - or rather appearance, semblance - is the theme of my life (could be theme of speech welcoming freshmen to the Academy). All that is, seems, and is visible to us because we perceive it by the reflected light of semblance. Nothing else is visible.

True poetry is truer than science, because it is synthetic, and seizes at once what the combination of all the sciences is able, at most, to attain as a final result.

You see but your shadow when you turn your back to the sun.

Words have to murder reality before they can hold it captive.

Illusion never changed into something real.

Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.

What, concretely, is Enlightenment ?" "Seeing Reality as it is," said the Master. "Doesn't everyone see Reality as it is?" "Oh, no! Most people see it as they think it is." "What's the difference?" "The difference between thinking you are drowning in a stormy sea and knowing you cannot drown because there isn't any water in sight for miles around.