C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Delusion
The worst deluded are the self-deluded.
Delusions, like dreams, are dispelled by our awaking to the stern realities of life.
Delusion produces not one mischief the less because it is universal.
When our vices quit us, we flatter ourselves with the belief that it is we who quit them.
Were we perfectly acquainted with the object, we should never passionately desire it.
No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.
You think a man to be your dupe; if he pretends to be so, who is the greatest dupe—he or you?
We are always living under some delusion, and instead of taking things as they are, and making the best of them, we follow an ignis fatuus, and lose, in its pursuit, the joy we might attain.