Quotes About Pretense

I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men,they are far superior and always have been. -William Golding

Mainline American Protestantism, as is often the case, plodded wearily along as if nothing had changed. Like an aging dowager, living in a decaying mansion on the edge of town, bankrupt and penniless, house decaying around her but acting as if her family still controlled the city, our theologians and church leaders continued to think and act as if we were in charge, as if the old arrangements were still valid.

If your face is swollen from the severe beatings of life, smile and pretend to be a fat man.

You don't always get what you expect. I wish someone, sometime when I was growing up, would have told me what expectations would get me. ... Our parents, schools, everyone tells us things will be a certain way when we're adults and if they're not that way, we should make them be; or at least pretend. But after a certain point that just doesn't work.

People liked to pretend, but when you knew the truth you could see nothing but the lie.

Salailemalla salaisuuksiaan käy tarpeettoman suureksi ero sen välillä, mitä on itselleen ja mitä teeskentelee olevansa muille.

And so it is that you learn how to pass, if you're lucky, to look like everyone else, even though you're broken inside.

She knows too well what it's like to tamp down your natural inclinations, to force a smile when you feel numb. [...] The expression of emotion does not come naturally, so you learn to fake it. To pretend. To display an empathy you don't really feel. And so it is that you learn to pass, if you're lucky, to look like everyone else, even though you're broken inside.

I have seen people at their worst, at their most desperate and selfish, and this knowledge makes me wary. So I'm learning to pretend, to smile and nod, to display empathy I do not feel. I am learning to pass, to look like everyone else, even though I feel broken inside.

notice." The false cheer in her voice is evidence of how

You've got to have brains to play dumb.

This girl had been looking on with her hair hanging over her face, only partly hiding a cruel-looking scar; her eyes shone with hatred. Not necessarily hatred of your father or of puppets or the other children, but a hatred of make-believe, which did not heal, but was only useful to the people who didn't need it.

It was like dancing with a mask that was attached to a stick—she dared not lower it, no matter how tiring it was to hold the mask up. She was the ugly girl at the ball.

Our house has never been anything but a playroom. I have been your doll wife, just as at home I was Daddy's doll child. And the children in turn have been my dolls. I thought it was fun when you came and played with me, just as they thought it was fun when I went and played with them. That's been our marriage, Torvald.

They are the affectation of affectation.

A man who pretends to understand women is bad manners. For him to really to understand them is bad morals.

When you title yourself, you immediately lend yourself to all kinds of pretension

It is foolish to pretend that one is fully recovered from a disappointed passion. Such wounds always leave a scar.

Between Countess Nordston and Levin there had been established those relations, not infrequent in society, in which two persons, while ostensibly remaining on friendly terms, are contemptuous of each other to such a degree that they cannot even treat each other seriously and cannot even insult each one another.

You're not racing?" joked the officer. "Mine is a harder race," Alexei Alexandrovich replied respectfully. And though the reply did not mean anything, the officer pretended that he had heard a clever phrase from a clever man and had perfectly understood.

I led the life of so many other so-called respectable people,—that is, in debauchery. And like the majority, while leading the life of a debauche, I was convinced that I was a man of irreproachable morality.

En realidad era lo mismo que suele haber en todas las casas de personas que no son muy ricas, pero que quieren parecerse a los ricos, con lo cual sólo logran parecerse entre sí.

It's a bad sort of young lady who's only alive when she's being admired, and as soon as she's alone lets herself go altogether and finds no charm in anything - who's all for show, and nothing for herself.

Despite their general disinterest in others' feelings, narcissists yearn to be admired; they need to win others' approval, even as they posture to keep a manipulative edge. They become masters at feigning interest, when in fact they are not interested at all. They can cover contempt for someone with seemingly genuine friendliness. So skilled are they at appearing likeable that even close associates can be fooled into assuming that all is well in the relationship even when it is not.