Quotes About Pretense

I was in a play in elementary school and had to jump up and run away. I was nervous and tripped and fell down and everyone laughed. Their laughter made me relax, so I pretended it was part of the show.

A single moment spent in a business meeting or at a pub is more than enough to reveal the basic human truth that we are all faking it most of the time. We congratulate a rival on a triumph when actually we are choking on spite. We are cordial and attentive to crashing bores.

If I think I'm going to get into trouble I always say that I'm sick.

It's the misfortune of German authors that not a single one of them dares to expose his true character. Everyone thinks that he has to be better than he is.

The idea that Donald Trump is a conservative is a complete farce. He is a conman who pretends to be a conservative.

People assume actors are born liars, but I'd argue the actor's job is to tell the truth. And I've realised I'm not a good liar.

What happened in the missile crisis in October 1962 has been prettified to make it look as if acts of courage and thoughtfulness abounded. The truth is that the whole episode was almost insane.

Why, he wondered, did people who had been asleep always want to make out that they were extremely wide-awake?

To copy beauty forfeits all pretense to fame; to copy faults is want of sense

We're actors in our lives, pretendin' to be who we want people to think we are.

An ad that pretends to be art is – at absolute best – like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he wants something from you.

They try to make you think they care about what you do but they don't. They don't want you to act a certain way. So you're easy to understand. So you won't pose a threat to them.

Some people just chase the glittery stuff and they have no substance to their life whatsoever. Actually all they really want is power. But they pretend they're interested in enlightenment.

In truth, every one of us leads a double life. We act one way when the door is open, another when it's closed. We have certain impressions we try to make on others, pretenses we strive to keep up.

He could no longer be that Ed Larsen, but, through a lack of imagination or just sheer exhaustion, he couldn't come up with a new one, and faked his way through the days like a bad actor...

He felt that he was donning his other-life attire, he was making some kind of obvious invitation, which Owen would scorn.

Rav thought the forced smile on Bayard's face was full of cracks.

All the time he had been lying in wait, pretending to be something he wasn't.

These people look like actors and their domains are stage sets.

Verity grimaced, wondering whether she could stomach a whole evening of Barbara Eager's forced jollity

Girls," said Rostnikov. "Go into the other room and pretend you are doing homework. You can listen from there.

For decades, conservatives attacked liberals for living by "situational ethics," but the ease with which Republican leaders abandoned any pretense of being more than a whites-only party is the ultimate situational ethic.

Pretending to be 'normal' is a lot harder than you think.

Seek not equality with either white or any other nation open your eyes and see behind their pretended pleasure and power is only impotence and despair.