Dissimulation Quotes

However, these communities were also subject to the infusion of the world around them and their notion of tradition became altered in the very act of dissimulation. They 'falsely' believed they were protecting something old when, in fact, they were creating something new. ~ Shaul Magid

There is such malice, treachery, and dissimulation, even among professed friends and intimate companions, as cannot fail to strike a virtuous mind with horror; and when Vice quits the stage for a moment, her place is immediately occupied by Folly... ~ Tobias Smollett

It is not in the power of even the most crafty dissimulation to conceal love long, where it really is, nor to counterfeit it long where it is not. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

As children's inquiries are not to be slighted, so also great care is to be taken, that they never receive deceitful and illuding answers. They easily perceive when they are slighted or deceived, and quickly learn the trick of neglect, dissimulation, and falsehood, which they observe others to make use of. We are not to intrench upon truth in any conversation, but least of all with children; since, if we play false with them, we not only deceive their expectation, and hinder their knowledge, but corrupt their innocence, and teach them the worst of vices. ~ John Locke

... He was a bad courtier and painted an ambiguous picture entitled La Menzogna or Falsehood, to show what he felt about the need for dissimulation to achieve success; a man holds up a mask to indicate to his companion that he must adopt it if he wants to make progress at court... ... The clear message was that Rosa was not prepared to demean himself in that way. ~ Jonathan Scott

One who is publicly honest about himself ends up by priding himself somewhat on this honesty: for he knows only too well why he is honest-for the same reasons another person prefers illusion and dissimulation. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Dissimulation is innate in woman, and almost as much a quality of the stupid as of the clever. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

It is too often forgotten that the gift of speech, so centrally employed, has been elaborated as much for the purpose of concealing thought by dissimulation and lying as for the purpose of elucidating and communicating thought. ~ Wilfred Bion

Dissimulation creeps gradually into the minds of men. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!
Give me back my book and take my kiss instead.
Was it my enemy or my friend I heard,
"What a big book for such a little head!"
Come, I will show you now my newest hat,
And you may watch me purse my mouth and prink!
Oh, I shall love you still, and all of that.
I never again shall tell you what I think.
I shall be sweet and crafty, soft and sly;
You will not catch me reading any more:
I shall be called a wife to pattern by;
And some day when you knock and push the door,
Some sane day, not too bright and not too stormy,
I shall be gone, and you may whistle for me. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

To feel everything in every way; to be able to think with the emotions and feel with the mind; not to desire much except with the imagination; to suffer with haughtiness; to see clearly so as to write accurately; to know oneself through diplomacy and dissimulation; to become naturalized as a different person, with all the necessary documents; in short, to use all sensations but only on the inside, peeling them all down to God and then wrapping everything up again and putting it back in the shop window like the sales assistant I can see from here with the small tins of a new brand of shoe polish. ~ Fernando Pessoa

The fundamental defect of the female character is a lack of a sense of justice. This originates first and foremost in their want of rationality and capacity for reflexion but it is strengthened by the fact that, as the weaker sex, they are driven to rely not on force but on cunning: hence their instinctive subtlety and their ineradicable tendency to tell lies: for, as nature has equipped the lion with claws and teeth, the elephant with tusks, the wild boar with fangs, the bull with horns and the cuttlefish with ink, so it has equipped woman with the power of dissimulation as her means of attack and defence, and has transformed into this gift all the strength it has bestowed on man in the form of physical strength and the power of reasoning. Dissimulation is thus inborn in her and consequently to be found in the stupid woman almost as often as in the clever one. To make use of it at every opportunity is as natural to her as it is for an animal to employ its means of defence whenever it is attacked, and when she does so she feels that to some extent she is only exercising her rights. A completely truthful woman who does not practice dissimulation is perhaps an impossibility, which is why women see through the dissimulation of others so easily it is inadvisable to attempt it with them. – But this fundamental defect which I have said they possess, together with all that is associated with it, gives rise to falsity, unfaithfulness, treachery, ingratitude, etc. Women are guilty of ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Slander is the revenge of a coward, and dissimulation of his defense. ~ Samuel Johnson

The intemperately wrathful man is less obnoxious than the intemperately lustful one, while the immoderate pleasure-seeker, intent on dissimulation and camouflage, is unable to give or take a straight look in the eye. ~ Josef Pieper

All writers on the science of policy are agreed, and they agree with experience, that all governments must frequently infringe the rules of justice to support themselves; that truth must give way to dissimulation, honesty to convenience, and humanity itself to the reigning of interest. The whole of this mystery of iniquity is called the reason of state. ~ Edmund Burke

Sincerity is a certain openness of heart. It is to be found in very few, and what we commonly look upon to be so is only a cunningsort of dissimulation, to insinuate ourselves into the confidence of others. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

By the time we grow up we become masters at dissimulation, at cultivating a self that the world cannot probe. But we pay a price. After years of turning people away, of protecting our inner self, of cultivating it by living in a different world, of furnishing this world with our fantasies and dreams - lo and behold we find that we are hopelessly separated from everyone else. We have become victims of our own art. We touch people on the outsides of their bodies, and they us, but we cannot get at their insides and cannot reveal our insides to them. This is one of the great tragedies of our interiority - it is utterly personal and unrevealable. Often we want to say something unusually intimate to a spouse, a parent, a friend, communicate something of how we are really feeling about a sunset, who we really feel we are - only to fall strangely and miserably flat. Once in a great while we succeed, sometimes more with one person, less or never with others. But the occasional break-through only proves the rule. You reach out with a disclosure, fail, and fall back bitterly into yourself. We emit huge globs of love to our parents and spouses, and the glob slithers away in exchange of words that are somehow beside the point of what we are trying to say. People seem to keep bumping up against each other with their exteriors and falling away from each other. The cartoonist Jules Feiffer is the modern master of this aspect of the human tragedy. Take even the sexual act - the most intimate ~ Ernest Becker

Do not make passion an argument for truth! - O you good-natured and even noble enthusiasts, I know you! You want to win your argument against us, but also against yourself, and above all against yourself!and a subtle and tender bad conscience so often incites you against your enthusiasm! How ingenious you then become in the outwitting and deadening of this conscience! How you hate the honest, the simple, the pure, how you avoid their innocent eyes! That knowing better whose representatives they are and whose voice you hear all too loudly within you, how it casts doubt on your belief- how you seek to make it suspect as a bad habit, as a sickness of the age, as neglect and infection of your own spiritual health! You drive yourself to the point of hating criticism, science, reason! You have to falsify history so that it may bear witness for you, you have to deny virtues so that they shall not cast into the shade those of your idols and ideals! Coloured pictures where what is needed is rational grounds! Ardour and power of expression! Silvery mists! Ambrosial nights! You understand how to illuminate and how to obscure, and how to obscure with light! And truly, when your passion rises to the point of frenzy, there comes a moment when you say to yourself: now I have conquered the good conscience, now I am light of heart, courageous, self-denying, magnificent, now I am honest! How you thirst for those moments when your passion bestows on you perfect self-justification and as it were ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The world is grown so full of dissimulation and compliment, that men's words are hardly any signification of their thoughts. ~ Richard Steele

Where pride and stupidity unite there can be no dissimulation worthy notice, ~ Jane Austen

Employees hate meetings because they reveal that self-promotion, sycophancy, dissimulation and constantly talking nonsense in a loud confident voice are more impressive than merely being good at the job - and it is depressing to lack these skills but even more depressing to discover one's self using them. ~ Michael Foley

The less manifest the work, the stronger: as though a secret law demanded it always be hidden in what it shows, thus showing what must remain hidden, only showing it, in the end, by dissimulation. ~ Maurice Blanchot

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

And still the text will remain, if it is really cryptic and parodying (and I tell you that it is so through and through. I might as well tell you since it won't be of any help to you. Even my admission can very well be a lie because there is dissimulation only if one tells the truth, only if one tells that one is telling the truth), still the text will remain indefinitely open, cryptic and parodying. ~ Jacques Derrida

Dissimulation was his masterpiece; in which he so much excelled that men were not ashamed of being deceived but twice by him. ~ Edward Hyde, 1st Earl Of Clarendon

There is such a thing as a hatred of lies and dissimulation, which is the outcome of a delicate sense of humor; there is also the selfsame hatred but as the result of cowardice, in so far as falsehood is forbidden by Divine law. Too cowardly to lie. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The cunningest dissimulation is when a man pretends to be caught in the traps others set for him; and a man is never so easily over-reached as when he is contriving to over-reach others. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Cottages have them (falsehood and dissimulation) as well as courts, only with worse manners. ~ Lord Chesterfield

Sincerity is an openness of heart; we find it in very few people; what we usually see is only an artful dissimulation to win the confidence of others. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

One admirable trait in women is their lack of illusions about themselves. They never reason about their most blameworthy actions; their feelings carry them away. Even their dissimulation comes naturally to them, and in them crime is free of all baseness. Most of the time they simply do not know how it happened. ~ Honore De Balzac

She met the pleasurable things of life with frank, open appreciation, and against distasteful conditions she rebelled. Dissimulation was as foreign to her nature as guile to the breast of a babe, and her rebellious outbreaks, by no means rare, had hitherto been quite open and aboveboard. ~ Kate Chopin

Perhaps this need to lie cost me something at first: but I soon realized that what are supposedly the worst things (lying, to mention only one) are hard to do only when you have never done them; but that each of them becomes, and so quickly! easy, pleasant, sweet in the repetition, and soon a second nature. Thus, as in each instance when an initial disgust is overcome, I ended by enjoying the dissimulation itself, savoring it as I savored the functioning of my unsuspected faculties. And I advanced every day into a richer, fuller life, toward a more delicious happiness. ~ Andre Gide

We live in an age of prejudice, dissimulation and paradox, wherein, like dry leaves caught in a whirlpool, some of us are tossed helpless ... ever struggling between our honest convictions and fear of that cruelest of tyrants
PUBLIC OPINION. ~ H. P. Blavatsky

Now as before, women must refuse to be meek and guileful, for truth cannot be served by dissimulation. Women who fancy that they manipulate the world by pussy power and gentle cajolery are fools. It is slavery to have to adopt such tactics. ~ Germaine Greer

Dissimulation is not fraud. It is an effort not to show things as they are. And it is a difficult effort: when we excel, others must not recognize our excellence. If someone were to become famous for his ability to disguise himself, as actors do, all would know that he is what he pretends to be. But concerning the true, excellent dissimulators, who have existed and exist still, we have no information. ~ Umberto Eco

I am Shiloh, whose box you stole. Your godmother's sickness lies in your own keeping, you can heal her in a moment. Make me your slave, and I must do your will.'

'You can do this,' Sheila said, 'without my taking a gift from you; you are wise and skilled. O do it, sir, and I will bless your name for ever.'

'Pooh! what is the good of that?' said he. 'No, I serve a master, the King of Kings, but we are emptiness itself without your mortal alloy. Do as I bid and I will serve you like a queen. And if you fear me you have only to put me to sleep and I shall sleep for seven hundred years.'

'No,' said the tempted girl slowly, 'not even for godmother can I do this; you are full of evil. Lies, lies! Why do you lie so?'

'O,' Shiloh said, 'because I am weary, and dissimulation is stimulation.'

'I don't understand that.'

'Well, it is so.' He yawned and yawned. 'Besides, I am the Other Side of things. All you think good may be bad, all you think bad may be good.'

'And I don't understand that.'

Shiloh replied: 'Strong meat for men and lily buds for maids; did Ajax feed on apples?'

'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Sheila. ~ A.E. Coppard

The great advantages of simulation and dissimulation are three. First to lay asleep opposition and to surprise. For where a man's intentions are published, it is an alarum to call up all that are against them. The second is to reserve a man's self a fair retreat: for if a man engage himself, by a manifest declaration, he must go through, or take a fall. The third is, the better to discover the mind of another. For to him that opens himself, men will hardly show themselves adverse; but will fair let him go on, and turn their freedom of speech to freedom of thought. ~ Francis Bacon

Our fellowman either may voluntarily reveal to us the truth about himself, or by dissimulation he may deceive us as to the truth. No other object of knowledge can thus of its own initiative, either enlighten us with reference to itself or conceal itself, as a human being can. No other knowable object modifies its conduct from consideration of its being understood or misunderstood. ~ Georg Simmel

15. In war, practice dissimulation, and you will succeed. ~ Sun Tzu