Quotes about masks
Molière - The Misanthrope
You may plainly perceive the traitor through his mask he is well-known everywhere in his true colors his rolling eyes and his honeyed tones impose only on those who do not know him.
Donna Lynn Hope -
We deny more than we confess. We hide more than we reveal. We assume because it makes us feel exposed if we have to ask. It's easier to say "I feel nothing" than to admit "I feel something." It takes no courage to say, "I hate you" but it takes a great deal of moxie to declare its opposite. Masks are elaborate and everyone has one. It takes a while to get to know people. This doesn't make them special, it makes them like everyone else. Sometimes our hearts scream yes while our heads say run; and
Sanhita Baruah -
No matter how "normal" people look, living "ordinary" lives, everyone has a story to tell. And may be, just like you, everyone else is a misfit too.
Molière - The Misanthrope
You may plainly perceive the traitor through his mask; he is well known every-where in his true colors; his rolling eyes and his honeyed tones impose only on those who do not know him. People are aware that this low-bred fellow, who deserves to be pilloried, has, by the dirtiest jobs, made his way in the world; and that the splendid position he has acquired makes merit repine and virtue blush. Yet whatever dishonourable epithets may be launched against him everywhere, nobody defends his wretched
Tarun Shanker - These Vicious Masks
Do you act the same in society as you do in private? Do you speak to everyone the same way?""No, no quite," I replied, wincing. "Of course. No one does. You put on one disguise for society. You put on another for your sister. For your parents. Your customer the other night." I felt my face warm. "But what about in private? Anyone can be themselves then without--ah! Ow!-- without putting on an act." “We do not remain the same each minute to the next. Every word you hear, every sight you see, ever
Marie Lu - The Rose Society
The irony of life is that those who wear masks often tell us more truths than those with open faces.
Wilkie Collins - The Woman in White
I say what other people only think, and when all the rest of the world is in a conspiracy to accept the mask for the true face, mine is the rash hand that tears off the plump pasteboard, and shows the bare bones beneath.
Emily Dickinson - The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
A charm invests a faceImperfectly beheld,—The lady dare not lift her veilFor fear it be dispelled.But peers beyond her mesh,And wishes, and denies,—Lest interview annul a wantThat image satisfies.
Catherine Doyle - Vendetta
Do you think you wear a mask?’‘I’m wearing one right now.’ Valentino smiled softly. ‘We both are.’‘It’s a sad thought.’‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But sometimes I wonder about the alternative. Imagine if we had no secrets, no respite from the truth. What if everything was laid bare the moment we introduced ourselves?
Shel Silverstein - Every Thing on It
She had blue skin,And so did he.He kept it hidAnd so did she.They searched for blueTheir whole life through,Then passed right by-And never knew.
Hayden Thorne - Curse of Arachnaman
I hated meatloaf. It was like something that Satan pooped out after an eternity of constipation. So I told Mom because I was honest that way. I sat back, squared my shoulders, and met her eyes, all confident-like."Mom, meatloaf's like something that Satan pooped out after an eternity of constipation. It should be outlawed, frankly, and serving it for dinner is like child abuse and should carry with it some pretty stiff penalties.
Sheila Walsh - Loved Back to Life: How I Found the Courage to Live Free
I know it all, and I still love you." That is the convicting, convincing, liberating truth that comes from an encounter with Christ: all is known; there is no need to pretend anymore. I wrestled with that truth. It's hard to lay aside a mask when it looks just like you, and you have worn it for so long that you can't remember what you look like without it.
Francine Rivers - An Echo in the Darkness
Leaving the group, he reclined on a couch, drank morosely, and watched people. He noticed the games they played with one another. They put on masks of civility, all while spewing their venom.
Sam Shepard -
I believe in my mask-- The man I made up is meI believe in my dance-- And my destiny
Ljupka Cvetanova - The New Land
Be a man! Put on a mask.
Emilie Autumn - The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls
Perfume was first created to mask the stench of foul and offensive odors...Spices and bold flavorings were created to mask the taste of putrid and rotting meat...What then was music created for?Was it to drown out the voices of others, or the voices within ourselves?I think I know.
John Mark Green -
Let's burn our masks at midnightand as flickering flames ascend,under the witness of star-clouds,let us vow to reclaim our true selves.Done with hiding and weary of lying,we'll reconcile without and within.Then, like naked squint-eyed newborns,we'll greet the glorious birth of dawn;blinking at the blazing, wondrous colorswe somehow failed to notice before.
Martina Boone - Illusion
Family is always a mirror. You can hide from other people, you can even hide from yourself, but your family is going to reflect what you’re doing right back at you.
Salman Rushdie - The Satanic Verses
He needed her so badly, to reassure himself of his own existence, that he never comprehended the desperation in her dazzling, permanent smile, the terror in the brightness with which she faced the world, or the reasons why she hid when she couldn't manage to beam... every moment she spent in the world was full of panic, so she smiled and smiled and maybe once a week she locked the door and shook and felt like a husk, like an empty peanut-shell, a monkey without a nut.
Jasleen Kaur Gumber -
So it became,the law of universe,to have the,profoundest,of the words,cloaked in the,darkest of the masks.
Kahlil Gibran -
Seven times have I despised my soul: The sixth time when she despised the ugliness of a face, and knew not that it was one of her own masks.
Tad Williams - Shadowrise
Was Briony the only person who could hear the venom dripping from the woman’s tongue? What good was beauty — a mature beauty, but beauty nonetheless — if it cloaked such a viperous soul?
Osho - Creativity: Unleashing the Forces Within
The whole of history is the history of murderers. If you become a murderer, fame will be very easy. You can become a prime minister, you can become a president—but these are all masks. Behind them you will find very violent people, terribly violent people hiding, smiling. Those smiles are political, diplomatic. If the mask slips, you will always see Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadir Shah, Napoleon, Alexander, Hitler, hiding behind.
Nuno Roque -
A red nose is the clown's mask and my moustache is mine.
Bruce Crown - How Dim the Promised Land
A successful actor is praised for never giving up his dreams to become someone else for a living but to dream to be an unmasked artist is a mortal sin in a consumerist society. Artists don't consume; they create things that can’t be consumed with riches. You consume art by seeing, by listening, by feeling, never by buying.
Gyomay M. Kubose - Everyday Suchness: Buddhist Essays on Everyday Living
Modern man has too many masks to wear. We must unmask and be ourselves, sincerely, earnestly and live truly as we are,
E'yen A. Gardner -
When we know Love, fear has no value in our presence. There is no pressure to perform and mask our humanity. We can BE and when we BE. We can inspire others to BE.
Ahmed Mostafa -
Lie long enough and eventually you'll believe yourself.
Tarjei Vesaas - The Birds
His face was neither handsome nor anything else. It just was.
Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal - The Silver Age of Russian Culture: An Anthology
How beautiful the tragic seems when it is beneath a mask, but when it appears so nakedly before me and... when I am so forcibly implicated... I don't know whether I care for it so much. Somehow or other it is as though I were torturing myself.("Thirty-Three Abominations")
Deyth Banger -
Let's don't join the mask to say the truth and without a mask to say the lie. DON't BE a such pussy, people which are an idiots, stupid and... they do this. You aren't one of them, unless you join them and you be part of them. Truth always goes with us, it follows and always can be found, the lie is just masks, one over another, over another and what happens in the end... You even don't know with which guy did you sleep, was this guy with you yesterday or you were in date with other??
Bruno Schulz - The Street of Crocodiles
On Saturday afternoons I used to go for a walk with my mother. From the dusk of the hallway, we stepped at once into the brightness of the day. The passerby, bathed in melting gold, had their eyes half-closed against the glare, as if they were drenched with honey, upper lips were drawn back, exposing the teeth. Everyone in this golden day wore that grimace of heat–as if the sun had forced his worshippers to wear identical masks of gold. The old and the young, women and children, greeted each oth
Suzy Kassem - Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Typically, in politics, more than one horse is owned and managed by the same team in an election. There's always and extra candidate who will slightly mimic the views of their team's opposing horse, to cancel out that person by stealing their votes just so the main horse can win. Elections are puppet shows. Regardless of their rainbow coats and many smiles, the agenda is one and the same.
Rick Riordan - The Blood of Olympus
Michael Varus drew his sword. ''My father is Janus, the god of two faces. I am used to seeing through masks and deceptions.
Leigh Hershkovich -
It comes down to this: If you want to be seen, heard and understood in the most genuine way possible, be open to the possiblity of vulnerability. Allow yourself to be open. I know it’s a scary place, a place very few people dare to venture, but just try it. Try moving the masks away and really looking at a person the next time they engaged in conversation with you.
Lena Coakley -
I wonder. If I had you wear that mask today, Anne, would you find the courage to tell me what is troubling you?" Anne would very much have liked to confide in her father, but where in the world would she begin? He leaned over and whispered in her ear. "I will tell you a secret, my dear. All of my children are shy. They have simply learned the art of wearing masks.
Alexandra Ripley - New Orleans Legacy
Something happens to people when they're masked. They become too free, uncivilized. They may do anything.
Sarah J. Maas - The Assassin and the Underworld
What's your name?" he asked above the roar of the music.She leaned close. "My name is Wind," she whispered. "And Rain. And Bone and Dust. My name is a snippet of a half-remembered song."He chuckled a low, delightful sound. She was drunk and silly, and so full of the glory of being young and alive and in the capital of the world that she could hardly contain herself."I have no name," she purred. "I am whoever the keepers of my fate tell me to be."He grasped her by her wrist, running a thumb along
Barbara Ehrenreich - Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
In fact the "mask" theme has come up several times in my background reading. Richard Sennett, for example, in "The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism", and Robert Jackall, in "Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate managers", refer repeatedly to the "masks" that corporate functionaries are required to wear, like actors in an ancient Greek drama. According to Jackall, corporate managers stress the need to exercise iron self-control and to mask all emotion
Friedrich Nietzsche - All Too Human
Masks. - There are women who, however you may search them, prove to have no content but are purely masks. The man who associates with such almost spectral, necessarily unsatisfied beings is to be commiserated with, yet it is precisely they who are able to arouse the desire of the man most strongly: he seeks for her soul - and goes on seeking.
Austin Grossman - Soon I Will Be Invincible
One day you wake up and realize the world can be conquered... I'm going to put a mask on and scrawl my name across the face of the world, build cities of gold, come back and stomp this place flat, until even the bricks are just dust. So you can just shut up. All of you. I'm going to move the world.
Franco Santoro -
I hid my wound under my clothes. Nobody could see it, including myself, and I completely forgot about it. Then I met someone who, filled with love, held me tight in that point. The pain was devastating, and I hated him, o how much I hated him, the cause of all my suffering. Then I met someone, beautifully dressed, and I loved him so much, holding him tight with all my passion. And he suffered badly, and he hated me, o how much he hated me, the cause of all his pain. So the story went on till I m
Cory Duchesne -
A douchebag has an image to maintain. He is not real. He is the kind of guy who will change his last name into something cooler and more impressive.
Cory Duchesne -
Give a man a mask, and he'll tell you deeper and darker truths. But he'll also be more abusive, unaccountable, and demonic.
Robert Bloch -
Horror is the removal of masks.
Danika Stone - Edge of Wild
It was like a mask had been pulled away from his face, uncovering a monster hidden beneath his friendly façade.
Alice Hoffman - Property Of
Once I knew nothing about McKay and now I knew everything about him. This seemed as good as any reason for not walking out the door. There are so many ways to stop the knowing, and I tried them all. I tried silence, I tried heroin, I tried calling it love. And then I stopped trying to call my dumbness any one of ten thousand names.
Chelsey Philpot -
In the Empire, the Scholars are not allowed to read and, like so many bullies and power-seekers who hide behind ideologies to justify the terrible things they do, their oppressors wear masks. 'An Ember in the Ashes' suggests that such masks (literal or figurative) don’t work. Not forever, anyway. Masks only cover faces. It’s actions that show who we are.
Wynand de Beer -
Below the surface I lie dreaming,haunting images, in all colours and black.Sunlit sometimes there is no sun there.I keep the dream below the surface,the cracked mask absolute.
Ama H. Vanniarachchy -
Everybody put on masks, including you and me. We all wear masks.
Ama H. Vanniarachchy -
People do not change. It is just that they change the masks they wear and the acts they put on, with new costumes, new dialogues and new settings.That is human nature.
Alain de Botton - Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion
In our more arrogant moments, the sin of pride—or superbia, in Augustine's Latin formulation—takes over our personalities and shuts us off from those around us. We become dull to others when all we seek to do is assert how well things are going for us, just as friendship has a chance to grow only when we fare to share what we are afraid of and regret. The rest is merely showmanship. The flaws whose exposure we so dread, the indiscretions we know we would be mocked for, the secrets that keep our
Akshay Vasu -
There was a closet somewhere inside me. Every day I went near that just to open the door and see all the masks of my face that I hid there.To select one which isn't me but still would look like me, which would hide me from the world in a better way. Day after day I stored so many masks in that closet that one day I searched for my real face in it and it wasn't there. I never understood whether I lost it or I forgot how it looked like, the more I searched the most lost I felt.
Bruce Crown - How Dim the Promised Land
Artists hide their identities in the brushstrokes of their paintings, the verses in their cantos, and the sentences in their novels. The true face of an artist is never on his face and this is what he prefers. Others misunderstand this displaced melancholy with an absence of melancholy.
Kate McGahan - JACK McAFGHAN: Reflections on Life with my Master
We tried to make a heaven of earth,But the earth is just a stage, a school,Where we wear our masks and play our rolesAnd teach each other how to love.
Nikki Sex - Fate
Like icebergs, people normally expose only a small part of themselves, and generally just the part they wish to show.
Moira Young - Rebel Heart
The mask's back in place. The heard-it-all smile. The seen-it-all eyes.
Neel Burton - Hide and Seek: The Psychology of Self-Deception
There are a great number of ego defenses, and the combinations and circumstances in which we use them reflect on our personality. Indeed, one could go so far as to argue that the self is nothing but the sum of its ego defenses, which are constantly shaping, upholding, protecting, and repairing it.The self is like a cracked mask that is in constant need of being pieced together. But behind the mask there is nobody at home.
Shannon L. Alder -
People seldom change. Only their masks do. It is only our perception of them and the perception they have of themselves that actually change.
George Eliot - Middlemarch
Doubtless some ancient Greek has observed that behind the big mask and the speaking-trumpet, there must always be our poor little eyes peeping as usual and our timorous lips more or less under anxious control.
Sahar Abdulaziz - Obsessive-Compulsive Dis
People with depression can't just snap out of it or "turn that frown upside down." Depression can be a painful and overwhelming state that makes one unable to function, to think clearly or reasonably, or to want to simply face another day. Many people suffer alone and in silence because they are scared or ashamed. They feel weak…or pitiful. How can a person be incapable of having joy? “Why can’t I just have a good time? Why can’t I get on with it?
Lena Coakley - Worlds of Ink and Shadow
If you could choose any mask to wear right now, what would it be?” Anne lay down her yarn. “I suppose if, as you say, I would grow into this mask, then I would make it of my own face . . . but a braver, better version of myself.” “And what would this braver Anne do?” The answer came quickly, as if it had been there all along. I’d save them, she thought.
Bruce Crown - How Dim the Promised Land
The sun tried to shine through the clouds but its light was dimmed even in us; high noon approached. I looked outside through the tinted windows at the people promenading down Madison. Couples held hands, bankers squeezed through crowds of window shoppers late for their daily thieving but all of them, even the poor, seemed content with existence, some even seemed happy. Nearly everyone’s outer shell was delicate and gracious that at the end of it all, on the border of nonexistence, each and ever
CrimethInc. - Contradictionary
Only by concealing our identities can we shed the masks we have to wear at school, at work, even at home - everywhere there is surveillance, policing, punishment - masks that are increasingly indistinguishable from ourselves.
Nuno Roque -
What I wear on and off stage is my mask. You see, a mask doesn't hide you, it exposes you.
Milan Kundera - The Joke
Who was the real me? I can only repeat: I was a man of many faces.At meetings I was earnest, enthusiastic, and committed; among friends, unconstrained and given to teasing; with Marketa, cynical and fitfully witty; and alone (and thinking of Marketa), unsure of myself and as agitated as a schoolboy.Was the last face the real one?No. They were all real: I was not a hypocrite, with one real face and several false ones. I had several faces because I was young and didn’t know who I was or wanted to
Ama H. Vanniarachchy -
I fear the many faces, many personalities in me. Sometimes I fail to understand my self and become deceived by my various selves.
André Berthiaume -
We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.
Simona Panova - Nightmarish Sacrifice
And I wasn’t playing a role – I was trying to be myself.But the harder I was striving, the more I was realizing that I had probably lost that ‘myself’ somewhere between two perfectly performed roles...
E.A. Bucchianeri - Phantom Phantasia: Poetry for the Phantom of the Opera Phan
A mask you ask? Optional I find!Masks lend appeal of a mysterious kind.
Jean Lorrain - Monsieur De Phocas
March 1898What a strange dream I had last night! I wandered in the warm streets of a port, in the low quarter of some Barcelona or Marseille. The streets were noisome, with their freshly-heaped piles of ordure outside the doors, in the blue shadows of their high roofs. They all led down towards the sea. The gold-spangled sea, seeming as if it had been polished by the sun, could be seen at the end of each thoroughfare, bristling with yard-arms and luminous masts. The implacable blue of the sky sh