Quotes About Pretense

One can acquire some virtues by feigning them for a long time.

Sane and intelligent human beings are like all other human beings, and carefully and cautiously and diligently conceal their private real opinions from the world and give out fictitious ones in their stead for general consumption.

Oh, there spoke the human! He is always pretending that the eternal bliss of heaven is such a priceless boon! Yes, and always keeping out of heaven just as long as he can! At bottom, you see, he is far from being certain about heaven.

That kind of so-called housekeeping where they have six Bibles and no cork-screw.

whitewashed

Isn't human nature the most consummate sham & lie that was ever invented?

But you'll come and get me if he wakes up, won't you? Just make something up. Scream out like I've done something wrong. Start swearing at me. Everyone will believe it, don't worry.

Life had altered in the wildest possible way, but it was imperative that they act as if nothing at all had happened. Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day. That was the business of hiding a Jew.

Life had altered in the wildest possible way, but it was imperative that they act as if nothing at all had happened.

Está bien? Asiente con la cabeza y miente. —Sí.

they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.

If we rub a fabric too often, it will quickly grow threadbare; and Nobu's words had rasped against me so much, I could no longer maintain that finely lacquered surface Mameha had always counseled me to hide behind.

Our civilized world is nothing but a great masquerade. You encounter knights, parsons, soldiers, doctors, lawyers, priests, philosophers and a thousand more: but they are not what they appear - they are merely masks... Usually, as I say, there is nothing but industrialists, businessmen and speculators concealed behind all these masks.

Sometimes I speak to men and women just as a little girl speaks to her doll. She knows, of course, that the doll does not understand her, but she creates for herself the joy of communication through a pleasant and conscious self-deception.

For what is our civilised world but a big masquerade? where you meet knights, priests, soldiers, men of learning, barristers, clergymen, philosophers, and I don't know what all! But they are not what they pretend to be; they are only masks, and, as a rule, behind the masks you will find moneymakers.

The real meaning of persona is a mask, such as actors were accustomed to wear on the ancient stage; and it is quite true that no one shows himself as he is, but wears his mask and plays his part.

What I know for sure is only this: in our Kashmir the dead will live forever; and the living are only dead people, pretending.

What gets me about the United States is that it pretends to be honest and therefore has so little room to move toward hope.

As women, we have been taught either to ignore our differences, or to view them as causes for separation and suspicion rather than as forces for change. Without community there is no liberation, only the most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an individual and her oppression. But community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist.

Like cubic zirconia, I only look real. I'm an imposter.

Let us destroy, but don't let us pretend that we are commiting an act of virtue.

It's said that the worst thing one can do to a man is to kill his self-respect. But that's not true. Self-respect is something that can't be killed. The worst thing is to kill a man's pretense at it.

Let us destroy, but don't let us pretend that we are committing an act of virtue.

You never wanted me to be real. You never wanted anyone to be. But you didn't want me to show it. You wanted an act to help your act...