The illusion and the Reality

Those who think the unreal is,and think the Real is not, they shall never reach the Truth, safe on the path of right thought.

But those who know the Real is, and know the unreal is not, they shall indeed reach the Truth, safe on the path of right thought.

The Dhammapada

Love is the ultimate Truth

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into songs by so many poets, proclaim as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way - an honorable way - in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemporary of an infinite glory."
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Love goes very far beyond the physical person of the beloved. It finds its deepest meaning in his spiritual being, his inner self. Whether or not he is actually present, whether or not he is still alive at all, ceases somehow to be of importance.

Viktor E. Frankl - Man's search for Meaning

Our construction of Reality is limited by our five senses

We have fashioned a truth by questioning our five senses working together; but perhaps we need to harmonize the contributions of eight or ten senses if we are ever to know, with certainty, what Truth is in essence.

Michel de Montaigne - An apology for Raymond Sebond (The Complete Essays II, 12)

Darius of Persia the predecessor of Machiavelli

' If a lie is necessary, why not speak it? We are all after the same thing, whether we lie or speak the truth: our own advantage. Men lie when they think to profit by deception, and tell the truth for the same reason - to get something they want, and to be the better trusted for their honesty. It is only two different roads to the same goal. Were there no question of advantage, the honest man would be as likely to lie as the liar is, and the liar would tell the truth as readily as the honest man. '

Herodotus - Histories (III, 72)