“All words are masks and the lovelier they are, the more they are meant to conceal.”

“Fire is to represent truth because it destroys all sophistry and lies; and the mask is for lying and falsehood which conceal truth.”

“Amid all these things, beyond all these things every man and nation, every plant and animal, every god and demon, charges upward like an army inflamed by an incomprehensible, unconquerable Spirit.
We struggle to make this Spirit visible, to give it a face, to encase it in words, in allegories and thoughts and incantations, that it may not escape us.
But it cannot be contained in the twentysix letters of an alphabet which we string out in rows; we know that all these words, these allegories, these thoughts, and these incantations are, once more, but a new mask with which to conceal the Abyss.”

“Spirit, Patience, Gentleness,
All that can adorn and bless
Art thou — let deeds, not words, express
Thine exceeding loveliness.”

“Words, he decided, were inadequate at best, impossible at worst. They meant too many things. Or they meant nothing at all.”

“Christianity was from the beginning, essentially and fundamentally, life's nausea and disgust with life, merely concealed behind, masked by, dressed up as, faith in "another" or "better" life.”

“The human face is, after all, nothing more nor less than a mask.”

“All these words, words like 'evil' and 'vicious', they meant nothing to Nature. Yes, evil was a human invention.”

“Behind this mask there is more than just flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea… and ideas are bulletproof.”

“Unveil’d, unmask’d! not so, not so!
Ah! thine are closer worn
Than those which, in light mockery,
One evening thou hast borne.
The mask and veil which thou dost wear
Are of thyself a part;
No mask can ever hide thy face
As that conceals thy heart.”