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Literary notes about Delusion (AI summary)

The term “delusion” appears in literature with a striking versatility, often used to question the nature of truth and the reliability of one’s perceptions. Philosophical writers cast it as a false comfort that masks life’s inherent negativities, as seen when happiness itself is dismissed as a mere delusion [1]. In narrative fiction, characters voice doubts that blur the boundary between dreams and reality, challenging whether their experiences are authentic or merely illusions [2]. Moreover, the word is employed in both personal and societal contexts to critique self-deception and widespread misconceptions that sway human behavior, appearing as an impetus for both tragic downfall and critical introspection [3] [4]. Authors further utilize “delusion” to illuminate the interplay between external forces and internal misbeliefs, enriching their explorations of identity and fate [5] [6] [7].
  1. For pleasures are and remain something negative; that they produce happiness is a delusion, cherished by envy to its own punishment.
    — from The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Counsels and Maxims by Arthur Schopenhauer
  2. exclaimed Renaldo, starting from the couch, “am I under the delusion of a dream; or are these things really so, as my friend has represented them?
    — from The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom — Complete by T. Smollett
  3. The powerful delusion of alchymy seized upon a mind still greater than that of Raymond Lulli.
    — from Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay
  4. The fourfold antinomy of Kant will be shown, in the criticism of his philosophy appended to this volume, to be a groundless delusion.
    — from The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 1 of 3) by Arthur Schopenhauer
  5. The rescuing party were speedily able to convince the two castaways that their appearance was no delusion.
    — from A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle
  6. She dwells within the dark, damp walls before me, And all her crime was a delusion dear!
    — from Faust [part 1]. Translated Into English in the Original Metres by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  7. Cases have been observed by physicians in which a psychosis begins with a dream and holds to a delusion which originated in it.
    — from A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud

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