Quotes about mask (383 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Take off all the mask, manners, fancy clothes, all the devices you use and be the most honest person you can be with yourself, then whatever love you get then is real. All the false approaches, like trying to be a player, only bring false results…”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

Clothes , Personality , Falseness , Love

“Tattoos are interesting, but at the same time they are also a mask – you are exhibiting your past life on your body.”

Keanu Reeves (1964) Canadian actor, director, producer and musician

Past , Life , Time , Tattoo

“Truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not shew the masks and mummeries and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candlelights.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Truth
Essays (1625)

Truth , World

“I think it's quite an extreme statement - it might be my ultimate attempt to put the corset to bed. But I think I've still got a bit of a sado-masochistic streak in me, because if I'm not going to be restricted by corsets and covered in lace, then I still wind up wearing an ape-mask over my face. I do wonder how I get myself in these situations!”

Helena Bonham Carter (1966) British actress

Interview on Cinema.com, 2001 http://www.cinema.com/articles/547/planet-of-the-apes-interview-with-helena-bonham-carter.phtml

Thinking

“That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is. Most people love you for who you pretend to be. To keep their love, you keep pretending - performing. You get to love your pretence. It's true, we're locked in an image, an act - and the sad thing is, people get so used to their image, they grow attached to their masks. They love their chains. They forget all about who they really are. And if you try to remind them, they hate you for it, they feel like you're trying to steal their most precious possession.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Love , Hate , People , Sadness

“She was not crying
Which surprised me very much
But I understand now
That she had found places
For her melancholy
That were behind more masks
Than only her eyes”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Everything Is Illuminated

Source: Everything Is Illuminated

Understanding , Cry

“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade for a role, you give up your ability to feel and in exchange put up a mask”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Feeling , Freedom

“First of all, we have to understand what communism is. I mean, to me, real communism, the Soviet communism, is basically a mask for Bolshevism, which is a mask for Judaism.”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

Press Conference, September 1 1992 http://www.mark-weeks.com/chess/92fs$$.htm
1990s

Communication , Understanding

“Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. As soon as one is aware of being “somebody,” to be watched and listened to with extra interest, input ceases, and the performer goes blind and deaf in his overanimation. One can either see or be seen.”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Source: Self-Consciousness : Memoirs (1989), Ch. 6

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

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

Source: V for Vendetta

Idea

“If you want to say something and have people listen then you have to
wear a mask. If you want to be honest then you have to live a lie.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

People , Lie

“He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.”

George Orwell book Shooting an Elephant

Source: Shooting an Elephant

For Men

“We can all pretend to be cynical and scheming, but when we’re faced with purity and innocence, the cynical mask drops off.”

Federico Fellini (1920–1993) Italian filmmaker

“I tore off my mask so as not to lose one of her tears… and she did not run away!… and she did not die!… She remained alive, weeping over me, weeping with me. We cried together! I have tasted all the happiness the world can offer.”

Gaston Leroux book The Phantom of the Opera

Source: The Phantom of the Opera

World , Tear , Happiness

“There is a life behind the personality that uses personalities as masks. There are times when life puts off the mask and deep answers unto deep.”

Dion Fortune (1890–1946) British occultist and author

Source: The Goat-Foot God

Life , Time , Personality

“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

Feeling , Reality , Sense , Freedom

“The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.”

Chinua Achebe book Arrow of God

Arrow of God (1988)

World , Dance

“Wack job in the back with a black stocking cap/Jacking off to a hockey mask in a boxing match”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Underground".
2000s, Relapse (2009)

Box , Hockey

“Be willing to expose your unhappiness. Give a voice to the sorrow, the anger, the fear, the deep loneliness burning at your core. Break some taboos. Say the ‘wrong’ thing. Shatter the false image. You may lose followers. You may lose friends. You may lose your job. You will certainly lose your mask.

Change may scare the shit out of you. Good. It’s supposed to. You may lose everything and you may have to begin life again. But the soul will rejoice. It has been through myriad deaths and rebirths. It couldn’t give a fuck about protecting itself from change. It finds change thrilling, life-giving, erotic even.

Yes, there is a bigger Happiness that embraces and celebrates even our deepest unhappiness!”

Jeff Foster (1980) Spiritual teacher

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/B5RcCpknF7y/

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

Agatha Christie book Sad Cypress

Source: Sad Cypress

“Truth at last cannot be hidden. Dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a judge. Falsehood puts on a mask. Nothing is hidden under the sun.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), X Studies and Sketches for Pictures and Decorations

Truth , Sun

“Every profound spirit needs a mask: even more, around every profound spirit a mask is continually growing.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“The smug mask of virtue triumphant could be almost as horrible as the face of wickedness revealed.”

Terry Pratchett book Carpe Jugulum

Source: Carpe Jugulum

“Give a man a mask and he’ll tell you the truth.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Truth

“Cecily. This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners. When I see a spade I call it a spade.
Gwendolen. [Satirically. ] I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

Time

“Life is too short to spend hoping that the perfectly arched eyebrow or hottest new lip shade will mask an ugly heart.”

Kevyn Aucoin (1962–2002) American make-up artist and photographer

Life , Hope , Heart

“America's greatest crime against the black man was not slavery or lynching, but that he was taught to wear a mask of self-hate and self-doubt.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Hate

“All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Heart

“I think all happiness depends on the energy to assume the mask of some other life, on a re-birth as something not one's self.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Life , Birth , Thinking , Dependency

“A mask tells us more than a face.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“Tell me, when you are alone with him [ Max Beerbohm ] Sphinx, does he take off his face and reveal his mask?”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

In a letter to Ada Leverson [Sphinx] recorded in her book Letters To The Sphinx From Oscar Wilde and Reminiscences of the Author (1930)

“Neither at things, nor at people should one look. Only in mirrors should one look, for mirrors do but show us masks.”

Oscar Wilde Salome

Source: Salomé

People

“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.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Birth of Tragedy

Source: The Birth of Tragedy

Life , Faith

“Nihilism is a natural consequence of a culture (or civilization) ruled and regulated by categories that mask manipulation, mastery and domination of peoples and nature.”

Cornel West (1953) African-American philosopher and political/civil rights activist

Source: The Cornel West Reader

People , Nature

“his mysterious resources had awakened in her a curiosity that was difficult to resist, but she had never imagined that curiosity was one of the many masks of love.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera

Source: Love in the Time of Cholera

Love , Imagination

“If you want a lover
I'll do anything you ask me to.
And if you want another kind of love
I'll wear a mask for you.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

"I'm Your Man"
I'm Your Man (1988)

Love , Lovers

“In our society, defecation involves an individual in activity which is defined as inconsistent with the cleanliness and purity standards expressed in many of our performances. Such activity also causes the individual to disarrange his clothing and to 'go out of play," that is, to drop from his face the expressive mask that he employs in face-to-face interaction. At the same time it becomes difficult for him to reassemble his personal front should the need to enter into interaction suddenly occur. Perhaps that is a reason why toilet doors in our society have locks on them.”

Erving Goffman book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Source: 1950s-1960s, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1959, p. 121 (1973 edition)

Time , Personality , Clothes

“The character I have in view when I say "smug vulgarian" is, thus, not the part-time philistine, but the total type, the genteel bourgeois, the complete universal product of triteness and mediocrity. He is the conformist, the man who conforms to his group, and he also is typified by something else: he is a pseudo-idealist, he is pseudo-compassionate, he is pseudo-wise. The fraud is the closest ally of the true philistine. All such great words as "Beauty," "Love," "Nature," "Truth," and so on become masks and dupes when the smug vulgarian employs them. … The philistine likes to impress and he likes to be impressed, in consequence of which a world of deception, of mutual cheating, is formed by him and around him.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lectures on Russian Literature

Lectures on Russian Literature (1982)

Love , Truth , World , Beauty

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

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), X Studies and Sketches for Pictures and Decorations

Truth , Lying

“Theosophists have guessed at the awesome grandeur of the cosmic cycle wherein our world and human race form transient incidents. They have hinted at strange survivals in terms which would freeze the blood if not masked by a bland optimism. But it is not from them that there came the single glimpse of forbidden eons which chills me when I think of it and maddens me when I dream of it. That glimpse, like all dread glimpses of truth, flashed out from an accidental piecing together of separated things — in this case an old newspaper item and the notes of a dead professor….”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Fiction, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

Truth , World , Dreams , Optimism

“It seems to me proper to adorn the Author's thought here with its conformity to a conception of Plato's regarding the determination of the various speeds of equable motion in the celestial motions of revolution. …he said that God, after having created the movable celestial bodies, in order to assign to them those speeds with which they must be moved perpetually in equable circular motion, made them depart from rest and move through determinate spaces in that natural straight motion in which we sensibly see our moveables to be moved from the state of rest, successively accelerating. And he added that these having been made to gain that degree [of speed] which it pleased God that they should maintain forever, He turned their straight motion into circulation, the only kind [of motion] that is suitable to be conserved equably, turning always without retreat from or approach toward any pre-established goal desired by them. The conception is truly worthy of Plato, and it is to be more esteemed to the extent that its foundations, of which Plato remained silent, but which were discovered by our Author in removing their poetical mask or semblance, show it the guise of a true story.”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

I. Bernard Cohen's thesis: Galileo believed only circular (not straight line) motion may be conserved (perpetual), see The New Birth of Physics (1960).
Sagredo, Day Four, Stillman Drake translation (1974) pp.283-284
Dialogues and Mathematical Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences (1638)

God , Nature , Success , Speed

“A few guys with guns can spoil everything.
-- The Masked Rider ()”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

Rush Lyrics

Guy

“Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself — in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity — is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them. They are deeply immersed in illusions and in dream images; their eyes merely glide over the surface of things and see "forms."”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Variant translation: The constant fluttering around the single flame of vanity is so much the rule and the law that almost nothing is more incomprehensible than how an honest and pure urge for truth could make its appearance among men.
On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)

Men , Truth , Law , Dreams

“The operation itself is the social act that enabled the patient to come to terms with the immutability of his Jewish body. No matter what is done, the body will reveal itself to be that of a Jew. This crushing realization drives the patient beyond medicine for therapy. He eventually breaks with his racial-religious identity and converts to Catholicism, the ultimate form of passing in Catholic Vienna. Aesthetic surgery did not cure the patient of his Jewishness, it only masked it. Baptism became the answer….”

Sander Gilman (1944) American historian

page 118.
Creating Beauty to Cure the Soul (1998)

“Nothing moves young people so much as to witness a sublime and virile gloom. Michelangelo's thinker staring down into the abyss of his own thoughts, Beethoven's poignantly drawn lips; these tragical masks of universal suffering touch the crude emotions of youth far more than Mozart's silver melodies or the crystalline light that radiates from Leonardo's figures. Being itself beauty, youth has no need of transfiguration. In the superabundance of its vital forces, it is allured by the tragical, and in its inexperience, is prone to accept the embraces of melancholy. That, too, is why youth is always ready for danger, and ever willing to extend a brotherly hand towards mental pain.”

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) Austrian writer

Confusion of Feelings or Confusion: The Private Papers of Privy Councillor R. Von D (1927)

Pain , People , Youth , Beauty

“Their forms had no more influence on me than they did on Matisse. Or Derain. But for them, the masks were sculptures like all others. When Matisse showed me his first African head, he spoke to me of Egyptian art.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Andre Malraux cites Picasso in: Anatoliĭ Podoksik, ‎Marina Aleksandrovna Bessonova, ‎Pablo Picasso (1989), Picasso: The Artists Work in Soviet Museums. p. 13.
Picasso talking about his discovery of African art.
Attributed from posthumous publications

Art

“Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them — the one, in fact, which is not a mask.”

W. H. Auden book Forewords and Afterwords

"One of the Family", p. 369
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)

People , Hope , Success

“In the more sophisticated versions of the critics of ideology - that developed by the Frankfurt School, for example - it is not just a question of seeing things (that is, social reality) as they 'really are," of throwing away the distorting spectacles of ideology; the main point is to see how the reality itself cannot reproduce itself without this so-called ideological mystification. The mask is not simply hiding the real state of things; the ideological distortion is written into its very essence… the moment we see it 'as it really is,' this being dissolves itself into nothingness or, more precisely, it changes into another kind of reality. That is why we must avoid simple metaphors of demasking, of throwing away the veils which are supposed to hide the naked reality.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

24-25
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

School , Question , Reality , Change

“The directors of Synthank were eating an enormous luncheon to celebrate the launching of their new product. Some of them wore the plastic face-masks popular at the time. All were elegantly slender, despite the rich food and drink they were putting away. Their wives were elegantly slender, despite the food and drink they too were putting away. An earlier and less sophisticated generation would have regarded them as beautiful people, apart from their eyes.”

Brian W. Aldiss book Super-Toys Last All Summer Long

Super-Toys Last All Summer Long (1969)

People , Food , Beauty , Drink

“I love my fans, but no one ever puts a grasp on the fact I've sacrificed everything I have. I never dreamt I'd get to the level that I'm at. This is whack, this is more than I ever coulda asked. Everywhere I go, a hat, a sweater hood or mask, what about math, how come I wasn't ever good at that? It's like the boy in the bubble who never could adapt. I'm trapped, if I could go back, I never would've rapped.”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Say Goodbye Hollywood"
2000s, The Eminem Show (2002)

Love , Boy

“There also exists a constant tension between ideas and realities. Realities simply are, whereas ideas are worked out. There has to be continuous dialogue between the two, lest ideas become detached from realities. It is dangerous to dwell in the realm of words alone, of images and rhetoric. So a third principle comes into play: realities are greater than ideas. This calls for rejecting the various means of masking reality: angelic forms of purity, dictatorships of relativism, empty rhetoric, objectives more ideal than real, brands of ahistorical fundamentalism, ethical systems bereft of kindness, intellectual discourse bereft of wisdom.”

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Section 231
2010s, 2013, Evangelii Gaudium · The Joy of the Gospel

Wisdom , Angels , Idea , Reality

“Only fool! Only poet!
Merely speaking colorfully,
From fools' masks shouting colorfully,
Climbing about on deceptive word-bridges,
On misleading rainbows,
Between false heavens
Rambling, lurking —
Only fool! Only poet!”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Dionysian-Dithyrambs

Dionysian-Dithyrambs (1888)

Fools , Falseness

“Atheism may be, in some cases, just verbal behavior masking personal feelings that may be very different, perhaps even deeply religious.”

Raymond Moody (1944) American psychologist

Reflection on Life After Life (1977)

Behavior , Feeling , Personality

“We stand together because we believe that upholding peace and security is the responsibility of every nation. The days of empire and spheres of influence are over. Bigger nations must not be allowed to bully the small, or impose their will at the barrel of a gun or with masked men taking over buildings. And the stroke of a pen can never legitimize the theft of a neighbor’s land. So we will not accept Russia’s occupation of Crimea or its violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty. Our free nations will stand united so that further Russian provocations will only mean more isolation and costs for Russia. Because after investing so much blood and treasure to bring Europe together, how can we allow the dark tactics of the 20th century to define this new century?”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, 25th Anniversary of Polish Freedom Day Speech (June 2014)

Men , Peace

“Compared to the refined culture of sclerotic forms and frames, which mask everything, the lyrical mode is utterly barbarian in its expression. Its value resides precisely in its savage quality: it is only blood, sincerity, and fire.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

Sincerity

“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.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Mask
Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Light , Heart , Parting

“I didn't want to mask variations; I didn't want to record a path. I wanted to get the paint out of the can and onto the canvas... I tried to keep the paint as good as it was in the can.”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

Source: Quotes, 1960 - 1970, Questions to Stella and Judd' - September 1966, p. 121

Painting

“The negro is fundamentally the biological inferior of all White and even Mongolian races, and the Northern people must occasionally be reminded of the danger which they incur in admitting him too freely to the privileges of society and government. …The Birth of a Nation, … is said to furnish a remarkable insight into the methods of the Ku-Klux-Klan, that noble but much maligned band of Southerners who saved half of our country from destruction at the close of the Civil War. The Conservative has not yet witnessed the picture in question, but he has seen both in literary and dramatic form The Clansman, that stirring, though crude and melodramatic story by Rev. Thomas Dixon, Jr., on which The Birth of a Nation is based, and has likewise made a close historical study of the Klu-Klux-Klan, finding as a result of his research nothing but Honour, Chivalry, and Patriotism in the activities of the Invisible Empire. The Klan merely did for the people what the law refused to do, removing the ballot from unfit hands and restoring to the victims of political vindictiveness their natural rights. The alleged lawbreaking of the Klan was committed only by irresponsible miscreants who, after the dissolution of the Order by its Grand Wizard, Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, used its weird masks and terrifying costumes to veil their unorganised villainies.
Race prejudice is a gift of Nature, intended to preserve in purity the various divisions of mankind which the ages have evolved.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Response to observations made in In A Minor Key by Charles D. Isaacson, in The Conservative, Vol. I, No. 2, (1915), p. 4
Non-Fiction

War , People , Age , Law

“And the silence of the struggle! … Oh! the peace of Nature, the tragic mask that covers the sorrowful and cruel face of Life!”

Romain Rolland (1866–1944) French author

Jean-Christophe (1904 - 1912), Journey's End: The Burning Bush (1911)
Context: The slaughter accomplished by man is so small a thing of itself in the carnage of the universe! The animals devour each other. The peaceful plants, the silent trees, are ferocious beasts one to another. The serenity of the forests is only a commonplace of easy rhetoric for the literary men who only know Nature through their books!... In the forest hard by, a few yards away from the house, there were frightful struggles always toward. The murderous beeches flung themselves upon the pines with their lovely pinkish stems, hemmed in their slenderness with antique columns, and stifled them. They rushed down upon the oaks and smashed them, and made themselves crutches of them. The beeches were like Briareus with his hundred arms, ten trees in one tree! They dealt death all about them. And when, failing foes, they came together, they became entangled, piercing, cleaving, twining round each other like antediluvian monsters. Lower down, in the forest, the acacias had left the outskirts and plunged into the thick of it and, attacked the pinewoods, strangling and tearing up the roots of their foes, poisoning them with their secretions. It was a struggle to the death in which the victors at once took possession of the room and the spoils of the vanquished. Then the smaller monsters would finish the work of the great. Fungi, growing between the roots, would suck at the sick tree, and gradually empty it of its vitality. Black ants would grind exceeding small the rotting wood. Millions of invisible insects were gnawing, boring, reducing to dust what had once been life.... And the silence of the struggle!... Oh! the peace of Nature, the tragic mask that covers the sorrowful and cruel face of Life!

Life , Peace , Nature , Silence

“The most effective pose is one in which there seems to be the least of posing, and Jawahar had learned well to act without the paint and powder of an actor … What is behind that mask of his?”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

Article in Modern Review (1936) by a pseudonymous author signing himself "Chanakya", later revealed to have been Nehru himself; as quoted in TIME magazine : "Clear-Eyed Sister" (3 January 1955) http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,892893,00.html & "The Uncertain Bellwether" (30 July 1956) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,867026-8,00.html
Context: The most effective pose is one in which there seems to be the least of posing, and Jawahar had learned well to act without the paint and powder of an actor … What is behind that mask of his? … what will to power? … He has the power in him to do great good for India or great injury … Men like Jawaharlal, with all their capacity for great and good work, are unsafe in a democracy.
He calls himself a democrat and a socialist, and no doubt he does so in all earnestness, but every psychologist knows that the mind is ultimately slave to the heart … Jawahar has all the makings of a dictator in him — vast popularity, a strong will, ability, hardness, an intolerance for others and a certain contempt for the weak and inefficient … In this revolutionary epoch, Caesarism is always at the door. Is it not possible that Jawahar might fancy himself as a Caesar? … He must be checked. We want no Caesars.

Learning , Painting

“Vice knows she's ugly, so puts on her mask. ”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

The Critic as Artist (1891), Part II

For Men , Truth , Personality

“Beauty can be mask for ugliness.”

Michael Harrington book The Other America

Source: The Other America (1962), Ch. 2

Beauty

“Thus it appeared, I say, but was not. It was my antagonist—it was Wilson, who then stood before me in the agonies of his dissolution. His mask and cloak lay, where he had thrown them, upon the floor. Not a thread in all his raiment—not a line in all the marked and singular lineaments of his face which was not, even in the most absolute identity, mine own!”

Edgar Allan Poe book William Wilson

William Wilson (1839)

Appearance

“It is an irony that the religious discourses which were intended to Kindle piety and religiosity in all listeners produced the opposite effect on Ramasami. As he grew up, he became convinced that some people used religion only as a mask to deceive innocent people. That was why he took it as one of the duties in his life to warn people against superstitious and priests.”

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (1879–1973) Tamil politician and social reformer

Mr M.D. Gopalakrishnan, in” Rationalist /Social Reformer/”.
About Periyar

Life , Religion , People

“People are more complicated than the masks they wear in society.”

Robert Greene book The Art of Seduction

Source: The Art of Seduction

People

“We have the choice of two identities: the external mask which seems to be real… and the hidden, inner person who seems to us to be nothing, but who can give himself eternally to the truth in whom he subsists. (295)”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Source: New Seeds of Contemplation

Truth , Personality

“Is there worse evil than that which goes in the mask of good?”

Lloyd Alexander book The High King

Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book V : The High King (1968), Chapter 11 (p. 142)

Evil

“Do not mistake me for my mask. You see light dappling on the water and forget the deep, cold dark beneath.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Source: The Name of the Wind

Light , Water , Forgetting

“Young people are cynical about love. Ultimately, cynicism is the great mask of the disappointed and betrayed heart.”

Bell Hooks book All About Love: New Visions

Source: All About Love: New Visions

Love , People , Disappointment , Heart

“If you want a lover I'll do anything you ask.

If you want a different kind of love I'll wear a mask.

If you want to strike me down in anger here I stand.

If you want a partner in life take my hand.

I'm your man.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Love , Life , Lovers , Anger

“We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind

Variant: We all become what we pretend to be.
Source: The Name of the Wind

Understanding

“All societies end up wearing masks.”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

Source: America

“There is absolutely no substitute for the best. Good food cannot be made of inferior ingredients masked with high flavor. It is true thrift to use the best ingredients available and to waste nothing.”

James Beard (1903–1985) American chef

Food

“Who knows what true loneliness is — not the conventional word, but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.”

Joseph Conrad book Under Western Eyes

Pt. I, ch. 2
Under Western Eyes (1911)

Memory , Loneliness

“I believe in my mask-- The man I made up is me
I believe in my dance-- And my destiny”

Sam Shepard (1943–2017) American playwright and actor

Dance

“But she wondered why beautiful things had to be wrapped up with evil history. Or was it the other way around? Maybe the evil history made it necessary to build beautiful things, to mask the darker aspects.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Beauty , Way , History , Evil

“We mask our needs as the needs of others.”

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

Source: When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

“So I learned to hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read my thoughts.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Katniss Everdeen, p. 5
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, The Hunger Games (2008)

Learning , Reading , Indifference

“It crosses my mind that Cinna's calm and normal demeanor masks a complete madman.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Cinna to Katniss Everdeen, p. 67
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, The Hunger Games (2008)
Context: "I want the audience to recognize you when you're in the arena," says Cinna dreamily. "Katniss, the girl who was on fire."
It crosses my mind that Cinna's calm and normal demeanor masks a complete madman.

“Masks beneath masks until suddenly the bare bloodless skull.”

Salman Rushdie book The Satanic Verses

Source: The Satanic Verses

“I guess this is what marriage is, or was, or could be. You drop the mask. You allow the fatigue in. You lean across and kiss the years because they're the things that matter.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin

Marriage , Kiss

“He often felt that too many people lived their lives acting and pretending, wearing masks and losing themselves in the process.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Choice

Travis Parker, Chapter 4, p. 51
Source: 2000s, The Choice (2007)

People

“Evil is no faceless stranger, living in a distant neighborhood. Evil has a wholesome, hometown face, with merry eyes and an open smile. Evil walks among us, wearing a mask which looks like all our faces.”

Dean Koontz (1945) American author

Smile , Distant , Evil

“Our lives are one masked ball.”

Gaston Leroux book The Phantom of the Opera

Source: The Phantom of the Opera

“The greatest temptations are not those that solicit our consent to obvious sin, but those that offer us great evils masking as the greatest goods.”

Thomas Merton book No Man Is an Island

Source: No Man Is an Island

Evil

“Why do you wear a mask and hood?"
I think everybody will in the near future," was the man in black's reply. "They're terribly comfortable.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

Thinking , Future

“As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Ethics of Ambiguity

Source: The Ethics of Ambiguity

Men

“I think that is why we stay close to our families, no matter how neurotic the members, how deeply annoying or dull- because when people have seen you at your worst, you don’t have to put on the mask as much.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

People , Family , Thinking

“Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Deep , love , Wise , Relationship

“There are people in this world who can wear whale masks and people who cannot, and the wise know to which group they belong.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Source: Jitterbug Perfume

People , World

“None will ever be a true Parisian who has not learned to wear a mask of gaiety over his sorrows and one of sadness, boredom, or indifference over his inward joy.”

Gaston Leroux book The Phantom of the Opera

Source: The Phantom of the Opera

Sadness , Learning , Joy , Indifference

“That boy hardly needed a mask when his naked face was already impenetrable.”

Lionel Shriver book We Need to Talk About Kevin

Source: We Need to Talk About Kevin

Boy

“You may plainly perceive the traitor through his mask; he is well-known everywhere in his true colors; his rolling eyes and his honeyed tones impose only on those who do not know him.”

Molière The Misanthrope

Source: The Misanthrope

Color

“He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Way , Girl , Happiness

“It didn't take a trauma to make you wear a mask. It didn't take your parents getting shot… or cosmic rays or a power ring… Just the perfect combination of loneliness and despair.”

Mark Millar Kick-Ass

Source: Kick-Ass

Parent , Loneliness , Perfection , Despair

“There's nothing grimmer than the tragedy that wears a comic mask.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

“People had a habit of looking at me as if I were some kind of mirror instead of a person. They didn't see me, they saw their own lewd thoughts, then they white-masked themselves by calling me the lewd one.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Variant: People had a habit of looking at me as if I were some kind of mirror instead of a person. They didn't see me, they saw their own lewd thoughts, then they white-masked themselves by calling me the lewd one.
Source: On Being Blonde (2007), p. 54

People , Personality

“The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere. That is why so much of social life is exhausting; one is wearing a mask. I have shed my mask.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh book Gift from the Sea

Source: Gift from the Sea

Life

“I say what other people only think, and when all the rest of the world is in a conspiracy to accept the mask for the true face, mine is the rash hand that tears off the plump pasteboard, and shows the bare bones beneath.”

Wilkie Collins book The Woman in White

Source: The Woman in White

People , World , Thinking , Tear