Illusion of Grandeur Quotes

On the most exalted throne in the world, we are still seated on nothing but our arse.

I always liked the idea that America is a big facade. We are all insects crawling across on the shiny hood of a Cadillac. We're all looking at the wrapping. But we won't tear the wrapping to see what lies beneath.

O vanity, how little is thy force acknowledged or thy operations discerned! How wantonly dost thou deceive mankind under different disguises! Sometimes thou dost wear the face of pity; sometimes of generosity; nay, thou hast the assurance to put on those glorious ornaments which belong only to heroic virtue.

The world is full of Kings and Queens, Who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.

You see 'awesome' and I see 'lost.' It's very easy to lose touch with reality when you've got that many people thinking you are more than you really are.

The threat to men of great dignity, privilege and pretense is not from the radicals they revile; it is from accepting their own myth. Exposure to reality remains the nemesis of the great -- a little understood thing.

It's somehow symbolic of Hollywood that Tara was just a facade, with no rooms inside.

This was the tree, and it seemed to me standing there to resemble those men, the giants of your childhood, whom you encounter years later and find that they are not merely smaller in relation to your growth, but they are absolutely smaller, shrunken by age. In this double demotion the old giants have become pygmies while you were looking the other way.

To our real, naked selves there is not a thing on earth or in heaven worth dying for. It is only when we see ourselves as actors in a staged (and therefore unreal) performance that death loses its frightfulness and finality and becomes an act of make-believe and a theatrical gesture. It is one of the main tasks of a real leader to mask the grim reality of dying and killing by evoking in his followers the illusion that they are participating in a grandiose spectacle, a solemn or lighthearted dramatic performance.

People want to know everything, and so they put you in the limelight. Sometimes, I am not down to earth, and I think I am flying away from the outer realms of reality.

The Hollywood thing is - like, it feels like the biggest thing in the world, and yet it's the smallest town.

When I was child, I was intoxicated by celebrities, showbiz and theatre, but from a child's perspective, where they seem far away.

The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.

The sumptuous age of stars and images is reduced to a few artificial tornado effects, pathetic fake buildings, and childish tricks which the crowd pretends to be taken in by to avoid feeling too disappointed. Ghost towns, ghost people. The whole place has the same air of obsolescence about it as Sunset or Hollywood Boulevard.

I must be mad, or very tired, When the curve of a blue bay beyond a railroad track Is shrill and sweet to me like the sudden springing of a tune, And the sight of a white church above thin trees in a city square Amazes my eyes as though it were the Parthenon.

You get too excited over big flashes, Tunstall. Mages rely on that to make you think they have more power than you.