Quotes About Pretense

Being Zuckerman is one long performance and the very opposite of what is thought of as being oneself.

Arguments, like men, are often pretenders.

When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothing,—then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing.

Every woman knows there are only two kinds of men: those who feel and those who pretend. Always remember, my dear, though only the former can be loved, only the latter can be trusted. It is passion that blackens eyes, not calculation.

He would survive working with Helen Watt—even as the thought occurred to him, he recognized it as a stroke of genius—by pretending she was a different sort of person. He would act as though she were a woman with a sense of humor.

No one can genuinely love the world, which is too large to love entire. To love all the world at once is pretense or dangerous self-delusion. Loving the world is like loving the idea of love, which is perilous because, feeling virtuous about this grand affection, you are freed from the struggles and the duties that come

No one can genuinely love the world, which is too large to love entire. To love all the world at once is pretense or dangerous self-delusion. Loving the world is like loving the idea of love, which is perilous because, feeling virtuous about this grand affection, you are freed from the struggles and the duties that come with loving people as individuals, with loving one place—home—above all others.

full of classes he has never taken, grades he never earned

A lesser mind might try to hide its brilliance behind a mask of stupidity. He chooses, instead, to conceal his true wisdom under a flamboyant pretense of erudition that he is pleased to let people think is the best of him.

He was completely and openly a mess. Meanwhile the rest of us go on trying to fool each other.

I've masqueraded as a literary critic, and with a great deal more success, but criticism isn't real—it's not a real thing.

Everyone can lie, young Roger, given cause enough. Even me. It's only that it's harder for those of us who live in glass faces; we have to think up our lies ahead of time.

Cómo andan? -preguntó, pretendiendo demostrar cierta despreocupación. -¿Quiénes? ¿Te refieres a Brianna y Roger?. -¿A qué otros, si no? -dijo, dejando a un lado sus pretensiones-. ¿Va todo bien entre ellos?. -Creo que sí. Se están acostumbrando de nuevo el uno al otro. -¿ Lo hacen?. -Sí -dije, mirando de reojo a la cabaña--Roger acaba de vomitar en la falda de Brianna.

If I call myself an actor, it sounds like I'm trying to pass myself off as someone who went to drama school.

I simply don't know how to act as if I am drunk.

I can't play guitar or piano. I can't even play dumb to get through TSA in the airport.

We are always on stage, even when we are stabbed in earnest at the end.

I find it an effort to keep up appearances.

It is because we are all imposters that we endure each other.

There are words, looks that can kill, no one notices, everybody is clinging to a facade, a complete distortion.

Every inflection and every gesture a lie, every smile a grimace.

whole time. Partway through the night he began to keep so ostentatiously

I am always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though.

Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.