Phyllis Bottome Quotes

You think the shadow is the substance.

Things are NEVER what they seem, Pa, I thought. I used to think they were, but I was wrong or stupid or blind or something. Old folks are forever complaining about their failing eyesight, but I think your vision gets better as you get older. Mine surely was.

I knew nothing but shadows and I thought them to be real.

Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It's everyone's, come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

Things are not always as they seem; the first appearance deceives many.

You see through love, and that deludes your sight, As what is straight seems crooked through the water.

Things do not pass for what they are, but for what they seem. Most things are judged by their jackets.

Great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion.

Pray look better, Sir... those things yonder are no giants, but windmills.

It may not be impossible, but that our Faculties may be so construed, as always to deceive us in the things we judge most certain and assured.

It's so easy for us to misperceive and see the things in others that we want to see. And, when we're wrong, and often we're dead wrong, we miss the truth.

There is a condition worse than blindness, and that is, seeing something that isn't there.

Sometimes people think I'm wearing a wig when I'm not wearing a wig, and then sometimes they think I'm not wearing a wig when I am wearing a wig.

How little do they see what really is, who frame their hasty judgment upon that which seems.

If you understand everything, you must be misinformed.

Belief and seeing: They are both often wrong.

There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.

Things are not always as they seem.

When a man in a forest thinks he is going forward in a straight line, in reality he is going in a circle, I did my best to go in a circle, hoping to go in a straight line.

It's funny how you can think you know someone pretty well, and then something happens or they do something that makes you understand that you didn't really know them at all.

Did you ever think that maybe what you see isn't really what's true?

People in this world look at things mistakenly, and think that what they do not understand must be the void. This is not the true void. It is bewilderment.

We live in a house of mirrors and think we are looking out the windows.

Nonsense, when earnest, is impressive, and sometimes takes you in. If you are in a hurry, you occasionally mistake it for sense.