
“Secrets. Need to disguise. The novel was born of this.”
Source: Delta of Venus
Opening lines to the preface, p. 9
Memoirs, Unreliable Memoirs (1980)
“Secrets. Need to disguise. The novel was born of this.”
Source: Delta of Venus
"An Interview with Mr. John Dos Passos," New York Times, Nov 23 1941
First Week, Second Day. Compare: "Report of fashions in proud Italy, Whose manners still our apish nation Limps after in base imitation", William Shakespeare, Richard II, act ii. sc. 1.
La Semaine; ou, Création du monde (1578)
“Our virtues are most frequently but vices in disguise.”
Nos vertus ne sont, le plus souvent, que de vices déguisés.
Epigraph. Note: "This epigraph, which is the key to the system of La Rochefoucauld, is found in another form as No. 179 of the Maxims of the first edition, 1665; it is omitted from the second and third, and reappears for the first time in the fourth edition at the head of the Reflections". Aime Martin, editor, Bartlett's Quotations, 1919 edition.
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)
“Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.”
1950s, What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)
Context: I do not wish to seem to end upon a note of cynicism. I do not deny that there are better things than selfishness, and that some people achieve these things. I maintain, however, on the one hand, that there are few occasions upon which large bodies of men, such as politics is concerned with, can rise above selfishness, while, on the other hand, there are a very great many circumstances in which populations will fall below selfishness, if selfishness is interpreted as enlightened self-interest.
And among those occasions on which people fall below self-interest are most of the occasions on which they are convinced that they are acting from idealistic motives. Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power. When you see large masses of men swayed by what appear to be noble motives, it is as well to look below the surface and ask yourself what it is that makes these motives effective. It is partly because it is so easy to be taken in by a facade of nobility that a psychological inquiry, such as I have been attempting, is worth making. I would say, in conclusion, that if what I have said is right, the main thing needed to make the world happy is intelligence. And this, after all, is an optimistic conclusion, because intelligence is a thing that can be fostered by known methods of education.
“New media are new archetypes, at first disguised as degradations of older media.”
Arts in society, Volume 3, 1964, p. 240
1960s
Source: The Autobiography of Wilhelm Stekel (1950), p. 52
“Endings are not always bad. Most times they're just beginnings in disguise.”
Source: Something Deadly This Way Comes
“Political abstractions can disguise or change the meaning of the most elementary realities.”
Gillray’s Ungloomy Morality http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_1_oh_to_be.html (Winter 2002).
City Journal (1998 - 2008)