Delusions Of Grandeur Quotes

He surveyed me, his eyes half closed, as if wondering if I were a delicious snack. I had an image of a massive dragon circling me slowly, eyes full of magic fixed on me as he moved, considering if he should bite me in half.
"Dragons." Rogan snapped his fingers.
Oh crap.
"I wondered why I kept getting dragons around you." He leaned forward. His eyes lit up, turning back to their clear sky blue. "You think I'm a dragon."
"Don't be ridiculous." My face felt hot. I was probably blushing. Damn it.
His smile went from amused to sexual, so charged with promise that carnal was the only way to describe it. I almost bolted out of my chair.
"Big powerful scary dragon."
"You have delusions of grandeur."
"Do I have a lair? Did I kidnap you to it from your castle?"
I stared straight at him, trying to frost my voice. "You have some strange fantasies, Rogan. You may need professional help."
"Would you like to volunteer?"
"No. Besides, dragons kidnap virgins, so I'm out." And why had I just told him I was not a virgin? Why did I even go there?
"It doesn't matter if I'm the first. It only matters that I'll be the last."
"You won't be the first, the last, or anything in between. Not in a million years."
He laughed.
"Rogan," I ground out through my teeth. "I'm on the clock. My client is in the next room mourning his wife. Stop flirting with me."
"Stop? I haven't even started. ~ Ilona Andrews

It was evident that he had nothing around him but the simplest necessaries, for everything that I remarked upon turned out to have been sent in on my account....Yet, having already made his fortune in his own mind, he was so unassuming with it that I felt quite grateful to him for not being puffed up. ~ Charles Dickens

When one takes into account also His reiterated assertions about His Divinity - such as asking us to love Him above parents, to believe in Him even in the face of persecution, to be ready to sacrifice our bodies in order to save our souls in union with Him - to call Him just a good man ignores the facts. No man is good unless he is humble; and humility is a recognition of truth concerning oneself. A man who thinks he is greater than he actually is is not humble, but a vain and boastful fool. How can any man claim prerogatives over conscience, and over history, and over society and the world and still claim he is 'meek and humble of heart'? But if He is God as well as man, His language falls into place and everything that He says is intelligible. But if He is not what He claimed to be, then some of His most precious sayings are nothing but bombastic outburts of self-adulation that breathe rather the spirit of Lucifer than the spirit of a good man. What avails Him to proclam the law of self-renouncement, if He Himself renounces truth to call Himself God? Even His sacrifice on the Cross becomes a suspect and dated thing, when it goes hand in hand with delusions of grandeur and infernal conceit. He could not be called even a sincere teacher, for no sincere teacher would allow anyone to construe his claims to share the rank and the name of the Great God in heaven. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

You could not open a book in this library that I have not looked into...it is as much as you can expect from a poor man's daughter. ~ Emily Bronte

The spark of life is not gain. Nor is it luxury. The spark of life is movement. Color. Love. And furthermore ... if you really want to enjoy life, you must work quietly and humbly to realize your delusions of grandeur. ~ Mark Helprin

My name is Catherine Elizabeth Hunter,' Cat declared loudly, staring Fox dead in the eye. 'And I ran away from home because my father is an arrogant git with delusions of grandeur and plans to betroth to some brutish boy I can't stand. ~ Lucy Saxon

The same wakefulness the individual Calvinist was to use to keep watch over his own sins Winthrop and Cotton called for also in the group at large. This humility, this fear, was what kept their delusions of grandeur in check. That's what subsequent generations lost. From New England's Puritans we inherited the idea that America is blessed and ordained by God above all nations, but lost the fear of wrath and retribution. ~ Sarah Vowell

I'm not a comedian. I'm what you call a good, old-fashioned working actor who has had delusions of grandeur for my entire career and has known what I want to do. ~ Chris Diamantopoulos

You know, I get it. Being raised as a superstar must be really, really difficult for you. Always a commodity, never a human being, not a single person in your family thinking you're worth a damn off the court - yeah, sounds rough. Kevin and I talk about your intricate and endless daddy issues all the time. I know it's not entirely your fault that you are mentally unbalanced and infected with these delusions of grandeur, and I know you're physically incapable of holding a decent conversation with anyone like every other normal human being can, but I don't think any of us should have to put up with this much of your bullshit. Pity only gets you so many concessions, and you used yours up about six insults ago. So please, please, just shut the fuck up and leave us alone. ~ Nora Sakavic

I'm what you call a good, old-fashioned working actor who has had delusions of grandeur for my entire career and has known what I want to do, but there's a lot going on out there. There are a lot fewer films being made, and there's a lot of competition. ~ Chris Diamantopoulos

Weapons, at least, were predictable; weapons made sense. A sword was just a knife with delusions of grandeur. A trident was a really big fork... ~ Seanan McGuire

Such delusions of grandeur to think that a God with a hundred billion galaxies on his mind would give a tuppenny damn who you sleep with, or indeed whether you believe in him. ~ Richard Dawkins

I don't have any delusions of grandeur. I just want to make music that doesn't make me bored. ~ El-P

A ladder's a flag pole with delusions of grandeur. ~ Peter Clines

I can remember when
delusions of grandeur
entailed wanting to
be a rock star, movie star,
a millionaire; to make it
as a writer
now it seems that it's
to want to earn a
decent living ~ Phil Volatile

There's a whole lot of people in trouble tonight From the disease of conceit Whole lot of people seeing double tonight From the disease of conceit Give ya delusions of grandeur And a evil eye Give you the idea that You're too good to die Then they bury you from your head to your feet From the disease of conceit ~ Bob Dylan

To express himself well, the artist should be hidden ... The trouble is that if an artist knows he has genius, he's done for. The only salvation is to work like a labourer, and not have delusions of grandeur. ~ Pierre-Auguste Renoir

When faced with unbridled wildness of reality, dinosaurs fall into fevered delusions of grandeur. In fits of madness, they recreate the world in their own overblown image, bull-dozing the wild and replacing it with a wasteland that reflects their own emptiness. Where there was once the incredibly complex diversity of nature, there is now the dead simplicity of asphalt and concrete. ~ Curious George Brigade

I'm trying to consciously evolve myself. I have no delusions of grandeur. ~ El-P

Neurotics, proceed with delusions of grandeur. Napoleon Bonaparte, take the lead. Jesus Christ, bring up the rear. Simulate severe depression. Non-communicative with repressed hostility. ~ Samuel R. Delany

In this city, the victors had delusions of grandeur. It was visual. Across the street from the hotel stood City Hall, sporting an oversized Serb flag that hung from the roof to the ground, a hundred feet tall, fifty feet wide, three horizontal stripes of blue, white and red, so large that only a strong breeze could make it flap. The flag, hanging over a building where, fifty years earlier, Kurt Waldheim worked as a lieutenant in the Wehrmacht, was meant as a projection of Serb nationalism, as though size were all that mattered, rather than content. I had never thought of flags as weapons, but in Bosnia, as in the rest of Europe, they were becoming the deadliest weapons of all.

p. 80 ~ Peter Maass

He informed Byrdie that his social engineering ambitions betrayed all the delusions of grandeur that you might expect from the son of a poet. ~ Nell Zink

The United States were a 35-year-old man, I think he'd be in a mental institution. Violent tendencies - delusions of grandeur - medicate heavily. ~ Rick Mercer

Since it was there, Larkin got another bowl, spooned up stew for himself.
"He fights with us. We're an army."
"An army? Talk about delusions of grandeur. What are you?" she asked Glenna.
"Witch."
"So, we've got a witch, a sorcerer, a couple of refugees from Geall and a vampire. Some army. ~ Nora Roberts

Who am I trying to fool? I'm well aware that at every stage of history there have been crimes against humanity, and they couldn't have happened without humans to commit them. The crimes that have been visited on my children have been committed, and still are being committed, by young people just like them, by people stirring up their delusions, giving them delusions of grandeur. So why do I imagine that people might improve? Everything going on around us seems to indicate that the values our forebears passed down to us no longer apply. Instead, we have sown the seeds of mistrust, scepticism and resignation, which will grow into a jungle of nihilism and cynicism, a jungle in which you will never find the courage to even mention the names of goodness, truth and common humanity, a corp that is now bearing fruit with remarkable speed. We're obliged to dig our own children's graves, but what's even more shocking is that these crimes are creating a future in which there is no place for truth and human decency. Nobody dare to speak truth anymore. Oh, my poor children ... we are burying you, but you should realize that we are also digging a grave for our future. Can you hear me? ~ Mahmoud Dowlatabadi

Delusions of grandeur make me feel a lot better about myself. ~ Jane Wagner

It is practically an axiom in psychiatry that precocious intellect combined with physical weakness can give rise to many unpleasant character traits - avarice, delusions of grandeur , and obsessive masturbation, to name just a few. ~ Sam Savage

Tell you?" Sunder's eyebrows winged up toward his hairline. "Tell you, an ignorant, unreliable, loudmouthed provincial with delusions of grandeur and an entitlement complex as big as this château? Your grasp of the intricacies of intrigue boggles the mind. ~ Lyra Selene

Many people have delusions of grandeur but you're deluded by triviality. ~ Eugene Ionesco

In short, none of the destructive fantasies that have taken possession of leaders in our own age, from Kemal Ataturk to Stalin, from the Khans of the Kremlin to the Kahns of the Pentagon, were foreign to the souls of the divinely appointed founders of the first machine civilization. With every increase of effective power, extravagantly sadistic and murderous impulses erupted out of the unconscious. This is the trauma that has distorted the subsequent development of all 'civilized' societies. And it is this fact that punctuates the entire history of mankind with outbursts of collective paranoia and tribal delusions of grandeur, mingled with malevolent suspicions, murderous hatreds, and atrociously inhumane acts. ~ Lewis Mumford

If we make an effort to engage in conscious evolution of our awareness, we will realize that we are One with the cosmos at the very moment we realize we are One with the Earth. Earth simply provides us with a more concrete target for the path of our conscious evolution. You could call it a secret path to enlightenment, paved with only the best intentions.
Just as the Earth is the tiniest of the tiniest part of the universe, humanity is only a small segment of the life that populates her, despite our delusions of grandeur. A human being can elevate his or her consciousness enough to feel the Earth's entirety in his or her heart and to realize the Oneness that connects all of life in a web of live, pulsating energy. ~ Ilchi Lee

Google is neither God nor Satan, and if there are shadows in the Googleplex they're no more than the delusions of grandeur. What's disturbing about the company's founders is not their boyish desire to create an amazingly cool machine that will be able to outthink its creators, but the pinched conception of the human mind that gives rise to such a desire. ~ Nicholas Carr

I did not have any delusions of grandeur as a kid. ~ Jimmy Kimmel

Right now there's a commonly-held view among scientists that we know about only four percent of all the matter in the universe. Four percent!"
"So what about the other 96 percent?"
"We astrophysicists call it 'dark matter' and 'dark energy.' Maybe we should just call it ignorance. There's so much that we don't know. It's shocking how little we know. And yet we behave like little gods who think we're in control of everything. Like kids with delusions of grandeur. Isn't that what we've made ourselves into? It's as if we're trying to make ourselves believe that four percent is all there is. That everything else, all that we don't know, doesn't exist. But it does. We know it's there; we just don't understand it. ~ A.J. Kazinski

I believe that the shocking toll of AIDS on gay men in the West was partly due to their Seventies delusions that a world without women was possible. All-male energies, unbalanced and ravenous, literally tore the body apart. ~ Camille Paglia

Opportunities are like drops of rain ... you have to welcome them, harvest them and make them turn around. If you carry an umbrella all the time, you will miss the fun of soaking in their grandeur. They make you the person you would like to be, one day! ~ Balroop Singh

Convince a man that he is an animal, that his own dignity and selfrespect are delusions, that there is no 'beyond' to aspire to, no higher potential self to achieve, and you have a slave. Let a man know he is himself, a spiritual being, that he is capable of the power of choice and has the right to aspire to greater wisdom and you have started him up a higher road. ~ L. Ron Hubbard

I mean, you can't walk down the aisle in Westminster Abbey in a strapless dress, it just won't happen - it has to suit the grandeur of that aisle, it's enormous. ~ Bruce Oldfield

Calmness of will is a sign of grandeur. ~ Johann Kaspar Lavater

For new atheists, the science is settled, the data is conclusive and the book (no, not the "Good Book") has been written. Time for everyone else to pack up and move on to other business, like, presumably, accumulating wealth and fulminating at the sight of the nearest Christmas tree. The militant atheist wants nothing more than to spoil the believer's spiritual journey. That's both mean-spirited and radically unenlightened. Though more than 95% of the world finds some meaning in faith, God-hating comic Bill Maher shrugs this off as a "neurological disorder." His version of a quest for knowledge was a series of scathing jokes at the faithfuls' expense in the documentary "Religulous." The latest incarnation of the thought-eschewing secularist is American Atheists spokesman Dave Silverman, who sums up the argument this way on atheistnexus.org: "Religion is my bitch." He has also tweeted, "Yes it is a myth. Deal with it. All delusions are myths." It's these snarky and condescending rejections, not of faith itself but of those who profess it, that reflect a total unwillingness to learn something new about human nature, the world around us and even of science itself. While the neo-atheists pay only cursory attention to dismantling arguments for God, they spend most of their time painting his followers as uncultured rubes. The fact that religion has inexplicably persisted, even despite Copernicus, Darwin and the Enlightenment, doesn't seem to have much sociological meaning for them. ~ S.E. Cupp

For Longing

Blessed be the longing that brought you here
And quickens your soul with wonder.

May you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire
That disturbs you when you have settled for something safe.

May you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease
To discover the new direction your longing wants you to take.

May the forms of your belonging - in love, creativity, and friendship -
Be equal to the grandeur and the call of your soul.

May the one you long for long for you.

May your dreams gradually reveal the destination of your desire.

May a secret Providence guide your thought and nurture your feeling.

May your mind inhabit life with the sureness with which your body inhabits the world.

May your heart never be haunted by ghost-structures of old damage.

May you come to accept your longing as divine urgency.

May you know the urgency with which God longs for you. ~ John O'Donohue

History has been witness to heart wrenching barbaric violations from time immemorial throughout the world where battles and wars have been fought, not just among States but even the Big Powers, megalomania, 'folie de grandeur' .All this lead us only to understand of the meager contribution to the subject of International Humanitarian Laws, and all these failures have built and would continue to lay precedents and build the laws. ~ Henrietta Newton Martin

Your delusions of persecution are a telltale sign of early stage paranoid schizophrenia. ~ Sue Sylvester

I wished to acquire the simplicity, native feelings, and virtues of savage life; to divest myself of the factitious habits, prejudices and imperfections of civilization; ... and to find, amidst the solitude and grandeur of the western wilds, more correct views of human nature and of the true interests of man. The season of snows was preferred, that I might experience the pleasure of suffering, and the novelty of danger. ~ Estwick Evans

From within that chipped gilt frame all the beauty, all the grandeur of religion looked darkly out upon the pink room. ~ Aldous Huxley

As long as men will not be freed from their errors and delusions, humanity will not be able to go towards ("marcher vers", Fr.) the accomplishment of its true destinies. ~ African Spir

We might find it easy to look at some majestic view like a glorious sunset or the grandeur of the mountains and ponder the magnificence of God's handiwork. But this sense needs to extend beyond the "wow" moments to encompass all of our experience of his world. We have the same problem when we only recognize God in some incredible occurrence in our lives and forget that he provides for us, cares for us and protects us moment by moment, day after day. God did not just create at some time in the past; he is the Creator - past, present and future." (The Lost World of Genesis One.) ~ John H. Walton

I don't believe in god. There's no proof he exists. In a world where there isn't even proof of the future, the past exists. Even if it's tainted with misunderstandings and delusions, if the people themselves believe in it, the past is the truth to them. And, if you base your actions or your life around it, in a way, it's a type of god itself. ~ Ryohgo Narita

Practically all writers and artists are aware of their destiny and see themselves as actors in a fateful drama. With me, nothing is momentous: obscure youth, glorious old age, fateful coincidences - nothing really matters. I have written a number of good sentences. I have kept free of delusions. I know I am going to die soon. ~ Eric Hoffer

There is no sin coveting things are of no great use or profit, but would show out good and have some grandeur around them. ~ Lady Gregory

The grandeur of the opera house thrilled Laura too. It took thousand of employees to keep such a vast place running. There were hundreds of artists involved behind the scenes - stagehands, electricians, set builders, property masters, costumers, dressers, wigmakers, and milliners.
There is a beehive under every pot of honey on the island of Manhattan, thought Enza. ~ Adriana Trigiani

Our part is to pursue with steadiness what is right, turning neither to right nor left for the intrigues or popular delusions of the day, assured that the public approbation will in the end be with us. ~ Thomas Jefferson

But if thought is to become the possession of many, not the privilege of the few, we must have done with fear. It is fear that holds men back - fear lest their cherished beliefs should prove delusions, fear lest the institutions by which they live should prove harmful, fear lest they themselves should prove less worthy of respect than they have supposed themselves to be. ~ Bertrand Russell

Nothing had been the same; and this slight, all-pervading instability, had given her greater pain than if all had been too entirely changed for her to recognise it. I begin to understand now what heaven must be-and, oh! the grandeur and repose of the words-"The same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." Everlasting! "From everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God." That sky above me looks as though it could not change, and yet it will. I am so tired-so tired of being whirled on through all these phases of my life, in which nothing abides by me, no creature, no place; it is like the circle in which the victims of earthly passion eddy continually. I am in the mood in which women of another religion take the veil. I seek heavenly steadfastness in earthy monotony. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

One clear-cut fact does, however, emerge: placebos, prescribed for a paranoid schizophrenic by his authority referent, had served to inhibit for approximately two or three months, not imaginary pains, but somatic ones. This finding is probably the most striking of all the findings reported herein for either Joseph or Leon. It demonstrates most dramatically the positive effects which can be achieved by suggestions originating with the paranoid schizophrenic's own delusional authority figures. This finding is all the more remarkable when one remembers that paranoid schizophrenics are typically negativistic, that, because they view other people with suspicion and mistrust, they resist suggestions that others make. But our data clearly suggest that paranoid schizophrenics are, like everyone else, quite capable of following positive suggestions when they originate with positive referents. In this respect, the major difference between normal people and paranoid schizophrenics lies not so much in the fact that the schizophrenics are less suggestible but in the fact that they have no positive authorities or referents in the real world; if they have any at all, these positive referents exist only in the world of their delusions. ~ Milton Rokeach

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home! ~ Charles Dickens

If the outer world is diminished in its grandeur, then the emotional, imaginative, intellectual, and spiritual life of the human is diminished or extinguished. Without the soaring birds, the great forests, the sounds and coloration of the insects, the free-flowing streams, the flowering fields, the sight of clouds by day and the stars at night, we become impoverished in all that makes us human. ~ Thomas Berry

It's not about outward appearances but inward significance. A grandeur in the world, but not of the world, a grandeur that the world doesn't understand. That first glimpse of pure otherness, in whose presence you bloom out and out and out.
A self one does not want. A heart one cannot help. ~ Donna Tartt

However tiresome to others, the most indefatigable orator is never tedious to himself. The sound of his own voice never loses its harmony to his own ear; and among the delusions, which self-love is ever assiduous in attempting to pass upon virtue, he fancies himself to be sounding the sweetest tones ~ John Quincy Adams

Her imagination was pleased with the view of ancient grandeur, and an emotion of melancholy awe awakened all its powers, as she walked through rooms, obscure and desolate, where no footsteps had passed probably for many years, and remembered the strange history of the former possessor of the edifice. This ~ Ann Radcliffe

From the viewpoint of absolute truth, what we feel and experience in our ordinary daily life is all delusion. Of all the various delusions, the sense of discrimination between oneself and others is the worst form, as it creates nothing but unpleasantness for both sides. If we can realize and meditate on ultimate truth, it will cleanse our impurities of mind and thus eradicate the sense of discrimination. This will help to create true love for one another. The search for ultimate truth is, therefore, vitally important. ~ Dalai Lama

And what is this wild summons? What art is asked of us? The gift offered is different for each but all are equal in grandeur. To paint, draw, dance, compose. To write songs, poems, letters, diaries, prayers. To set a violet on the sill, stitch a quilt,; bake bread; plant marigolds, beans, apple trees. To follow the track of the forest elk, the neighborhood coyote, the cupboard mouse. To open the windows, air beds, sweep clean the corners. To hold the child's hand, listen to the vagrant's story, paint the elder friend's fingernails a delightful shade of pink while wrapped in a blanket she knit with deft young fingers of her past. To wander paths, nibble purslane, notice spiders. To be rained upon. To listen with changed ears and sing back what we hear. ~ Lyanda Lynn Haupt

There is nothing more deceptive, more grandeur, than the delusion of a single man. ~ Craig Stone

The Delusion of Lasting Success promises that building an enduring company is not only achievable but a worthwhile objective. Yet companies that have outperformed the market for long periods of time are not just rare, they are statistical artifacts that are observable only in retrospect. Companies that achieved lasting success may be best understood as having strung together many short-term successes. Pursuing a dream of enduring greatness may divert attention from the pressing need to win immediate battles.

The Delusion of Absolute Performance diverts our attention from the fact that success and failure always take place in a competitive environment. It may be comforting to believe that our success is entirely up to us, but as the example of Kmart demonstrated, a company can improve in absolute terms and still fall further behind in relative terms. Success in business means doing things better than rivals, not just doing things well. Believing that performance is absolute can cause us to take our eye off rivals and to avoid decisions that, while risky, may be essential for survival given the particular context of our industry and its competitive dynamics.

The Delusion of the Wrong End of the Stick lets us confuse causes and effects, actions and outcomes. We may look at a handful of extraordinarily successful companies and imagine that doing what they did can lead to success - when it might in fact lead mainly to higher volatility and a lower over ~ Philip M. Rosenzweig

There is a grandeur in the uniformity of the mass. When a fashion, a dance, a song, a slogan or a joke sweeps like wildfire from one end of the continent to the other, and a hundred million people roar with laughter, sway their bodies in unison, hum one song or break forth in anger and denunciation, there is the overpowering feeling that in this country we have come nearer the brotherhood of man than ever before. ~ Eric Hoffer