C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Illusion
Illusion is the first of all pleasures.
In youth we feel richer for every new illusion; in maturer years, for every one we lose.
A pleasant illusion is better than a harsh reality.
Women are happier in their illusions than in their most agreeable experiences.
The loss of our illusions is the only loss from which we never recover.
Illusion and wisdom combined are the charm of life and art.
Time is indeed the theater and seat of illusions; nothing is so ductile and elastic. The mind stretches an hour to a century, and dwarfs an age to an hour.
There is no such thing as real happiness in life. The justest definition that was ever given of it was “a tranquil acquiescence under an agreeable delusion”—I forget where.
When the boys come into my yard for leave to gather horse-chestnuts, I own I enter into nature’s game, and affect to grant the permission reluctantly, fearing that any moment they will find out the imposture of that showy chaff. But this tenderness is quite unnecessary; the enchantments are laid on very thick. Their young life is thatched with them. Bare and grim to tears is the lot of the children in the hovel I saw yesterday; yet not the less they hang it round with frippery romance, like the children of the happiest fortune.
Every generous illusion of youth leaves a wrinkle as it departs. Experience is the successive disenchanting of the things of life; it is reason enriched with the heart’s spoils.