Kenneth Clark Quotes

Illusion is the dust the devil throws in the eyes of the foolish

We have a never sated appetite for self deception.

Nothing is easier than self-deceit.

But the penciled sheets did not seem like nor smell like the library book so she had given it up, consoling herself with the vow that when she grew up, she would work hard, save money and buy every single book that she liked.

It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us.

Don't you ever mind," she asked suddenly, "not being rich enough to buy all the books you want?

If ignorance were enough to make things not exist, the world would be more like a lot of people think it is. But it's not. And it's not.

The world isn't what you think it is.

I think the easiest people to fool are ourselves. Fooling ourselves may even be a necessary precondition for fooling others.

Every man looks out for himself, and he has the happiest life who manages to hoodwink himself best of all.

A man’s greatest treasures are his illusions - Durzo Blint

Calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg.

I am not at all the sort of person you and I took me for.

I hate giving away tricks, you have to create an impression and not an image. You want audiences to look at certain places and not look at other places. And when you've got the help of modern-day abilities with technology, it's a much more natural look.

Where happiness was not a possibility, the illusion of it was always more important.

There were two sets of double doors leading out of the antechamber, one marked STACKS and the other TOMES. Not knowing the difference between the two, I headed to the ones labeled STACKS. That was what I wanted. Stacks of books. Great heaps of books. Shelf after endless shelf of books.

Too young,too young,she chanted to herself. Wrong,of course. I was older than her grandfather but according to my driver's license,she was right.

Art' is the same word as 'artifice,' that is to say, something deceitful. It must succeed in giving the impression of nature by false means.

False hopes are more dangerous than fears.

I think that, like anything, people take their image and what they want somebody else to be and then people just run with it. And when you really know the person and really love the person, you recognize that that person is nothing like that.

An illusion which makes me happy is worth a verity which drags me to the ground.

For this quiet, unprepossessing, passive man who has no garden in front of his subsidised flat, books are like flowers. He loves to line them up on the shelf in multicoloured rows: he watches over each of them with an old-fashioned gardener's delight, holds them like fragile objects in his thin, bloodless hands.

We fool ourselves so much we could do it for a living.

...but the enchantment of error that you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes.

The dawn of knowledge is usually the false dawn.