False Mask Quotes

Seeing the truth was never easy, especially when it revealed those closest to us could be monsters hidden in plain sight. ~ Kerri Maniscalco

It hardly mattered. She was tired of waiting for him to acknowledge who he was. Tired of donning a false mask of gaiety when she was so much more - felt so much more - beneath. No one had ever noticed her mask. No one but him. If he couldn't or wouldn't make the first move, then damn it, she would. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

Things change as minds change. Egos and prides vanish in the darkness of night. The false mask of vanity burns in the natural propensity to be happy. Who wants to be sad, after all? ~ Girdhar Joshi

Every truth in this world stretched beyond its limits will become a false doctrine. ~ K.P. Yohannan

Change will come slowly, across generations, because old beliefs die hard even when demonstrably false. ~ E. O. Wilson

The belief that public works necessarily create new jobs is false. If the money was raised by taxation, we saw, then for every dollar that the government spent on public works one less dollar was spent by the taxpayers to meet their own wants, and for every public job created one private job was destroyed. ~ Henry Hazlitt

True transformation occurs only when we can look at ourselves squarely and face our attachments and inner demons, free from the buzz of commercial distraction and false social realities. We have to retreat into our own cocoons and come face-to-face with who we are. We have to turn toward our own inner darkness. For only by abandoning its attachments and facing the darkness does the caterpillar's body begin to spread out and its light, beautiful wings begin to form. ~ Julia Hill

Her hand tightened around the handle of the serving spoon.
"Don't do it," he warned.
"Do what?"
"Throw the spoon."
"I wouldn't dream of it," she said tightly.
He laughed aloud. "Oh,yes you would. You're dreaming of it right now. You just wouldn't do it."
Sophie's hand was gripping the spoon so hard it shook.
Benedict was chuckling so hard his bed shook.
Sophie stood,still holding the spoon.
Benedict smiled. "Are you planning to take that with you?"
Remember your place, Sophie was screaming at herself. Remember your place.
"Whatever could you be thinking." Benedict mused, "to look so adorably ferocious? No,don't tell me," he added. "I'm sure it involves my untimely and painful demise."
Slowly and carefully, Sophie turned her back to him and put the spoon down on the table. She didn't want to risk any sudden movements. One false move and she knew she'd be hurling it at his head.
Benedict raised his brows approvingly. "That was very mature of you."
Sophie turned around slowly. "Are you this charming with everyone or only me?"
"Oh,only you." He grinned. "I shall have to make sure you take me up on my offer to find you employment with my mother.You do bring out the best in me, Miss Sophie Beckett."
"This is the best?" she asked with obvious disbelief.
"I'm afraid so. ~ Julia Quinn

Charles Darnay had yesterday pleaded Not Guilty to an indictment denouncing him (with infinite jingle and jangle) for that he was a false traitor to our serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, prince, our Lord the King, by reason of his having, on divers occasions, and by divers means and ways, assisted Lewis, the French King, in his wars against our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth; that was to say, by coming and going, between the dominions of our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, and those of the said French Lewis, and wickedly, falsely, traitorously, and otherwise evil-adverbiously, revealing to the said French Lewis what forces our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, had in preparation to send to Canada and North America. ~ Charles Dickens

One evening, at the time of the Six-Day War, I [Christopher Hitchens] had my wicked way with a lovely lady, who had earlier intimated that she did not perhaps find me entirely repulsive. We procured a decent room, as I remember, at the Cadogan Hotel. Perhaps a little flown with wine, I asked her to don a Martin Amis face mask which I had - with a combination of sticky tape, elastic bands, cardboard, and a much-treasured photograph - prepared earlier. The fair damsel was happy to oblige, and thus attired she permitted me to embark on the hugely agreeable pathway to libidinous fulfillment. ~ Craig Brown

But they need to worry and betray time with urgencies false and otherwise, purely anxious and whiny, their souls really won't be at peace unless they can latch to an established and proven worry and having once found it they assume facial expressions to fit and go with it, which is, you see, unhappiness, and all the time it all flies by them and they know it and that too worries them no end. ~ Jack Kerouac

…there are continually turning up in life moral and rational persons, sages and lovers of humanity who make it their object to live all their lives as morally and rationally as possible, to be, so to speak, a light to their neighbours simply in order to show them that it is possible to live morally and rationally in this world. And yet we all know that those very people sooner or later have been false to themselves, playing some queer trick, often a most unseemly one. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

A man who thinks a great deal about himself will try to be many-sided, attempt a theatrical excellence at all points, will try to be an encyclopaedia of culture, and his own real personality will be lost in that false universalism. ~ G.K. Chesterton

She placed a hand on my cheek and softly kissed the other one, then whispered, Remember this moment, then, Sage, when someone of my status offered a kindness to someone of yours. Because next time we meet, if Darius is dead, I will no longer be anyone of importance. ~ Jennifer A. Nielsen

In those moments of unnaming when we have lost ourselves, we must remember to return to our past redemptions to find God's mark of glory on our abandonment, betrayal, and shame. We wrongly believe that we will be happy if we can escape the past. But without our past we are hollow and plastic beings who have only common names and conventional stories. When we enter into our story at the point we lost our name, we are most likely to hear the whisper of our new name. ~ Dan B. Allender

So often we think that Allah only tests us with hardships, but this isn't true. Allah also tests with ease. He tests us with na`im (blessings) and with the things we love, and it is often in these tests that so many of us fail. We fail because when Allah gives us these blessings, we unwittingly turn them into false idols of the heart. ~ Yasmin Mogahed

Alone in here, I could be any of that. I could feel every negative, terrible, aching feeling at once, and I didn't have to be self-conscious about it or try to put on a mask so someone else didn't feel dragged down. ~ Sophie Gonzales

The common and continual mischief's [sic] of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and the duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passion. ~ George Washington

The Mask of Sanity - An Attempt to Clarify Some Issues About the So-Called Psychopathic Personality.7 ~ Donald W. Black

I have no urns, no dusty monuments;
No broken images of ancestors,
Wanting an ear, or nose; no forged tales
Of long descents, to boast false honors from. ~ Ben Jonson

A man must first of all understand certain things. He has thousands of false ideas and false conceptions, chiefly about himself, and he must get rid of some of them before beginning to acquire anything new. Otherwise the new will be built on a wrong foundation and the result will be worse than before. To speak the truth is the most difficult thing in the world; one must study a great deal and for a long time in order to speak the truth. The wish alone is not enough. To speak the truth one must know what the truth is and what a lie is, and first of all in oneself. And this nobody wants to know. ~ G.I. Gurdjieff

The autumn months are my domain:
Mirrored in pools my castles dream
Of wars long past and out of mind
From towers with ivy garlands twined

Weak and with regret the sun
Drowns itself in the sluggish green
Water that marble fountains weep;
Trees open their nests to the wings of sleep.

The wind like a phantom seems to roar,
Returned to die of love once more
At the false meeting of the ways
Where a temple rounds its dome in the haze.

Sometimes a child is heard to laugh
In the house of the priest, far off;
His lamp on the ledge of the window gleams
Much as the Holy Spirit flames.

Then nothing. Only a plane tree sways
Its crown of leaves in the dark that graze
Slowly and with a sound so alight
They barely ripple the silent night.

I am the lord of this domain.
Through halls of hollow, echoing
Armor, I haul the heavy shame
Of not being able to be king. ~ Stuart Merrill

Dinah drew her sword, and with that, the former Princess of Wonderland and her black devil steed disappeared into the Twisted Wood, leaving nothing behind but a false trail and the distant whiff of a crown. ~ Colleen Oakes

Mis-information is rampant in this great age of mass-information. While we have more access to learning than ever before in the history of the world, we're actually getting dumber it seems. The amount of (mis)information at everyone's fingertips has lured us into a false sense of knowing. Whether it be information about science, politics, or theology, our society is suffering from an inability to research, process, filter, and apply. At the same time we seem entirely oblivious to the zeitgeist (spirit of the age) that is nihilistic and libertine, making everything relative and subjective. And Satan himself rushes to blur our vision, stirring up the dust of confusion. The church must respond by teaching the critical faculties of logic and spiritual discernment, embedded in a cohesive framework of fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding). We must obtain a reasonable faith that is consistent with historic Christianity and relevant for our post-modern age. Otherwise, those rejecting the blatant errors of religious fundamentalism will be susceptible to every wind of false doctrine and repackaged heresy imaginable. They will leave the orthodox faith and accept something that vaguely resembles Christianity, but in reality is a vile concoction of demonic lies. ~ David D. Flowers

I do play football no-holds-barred. Any edge I can get, I'll take. I'd grab a face mask only in a fit of anger. Uncontrolled anger is damn near insane. ~ Joe Greene

We all wear a mask. The trick is keeping it in place. ~ Catherine McKenzie

And this charge plays out with partners, parents, friends, families and even our children. Many parents unconsciously 'use' their children so the parent can feel loved, important, special, and needed under the mask of being unconditionally loving to their children. The parent needs the child in order for the parent to feel love. This need is not love, simply another excuse for the parent to not feel their own lack and wound, and of course when the child acts up and does not meet their expectations, then the child receives harmful projections and verbal and physical abuse. ~ Padma Aon Prakasha

Dilemmas always are a source of polarization. We quickly move over to simplistic either-or's … in which the fulness of truth is torn apart. And in the atmosphere of false polarities, we often stop listening to each other's words. With this, irritation and pique poison the theological discussion. But it is striking and, at the same time, reassuring that the clear intent of the gospel comes through even in the midst of theological polarization, especially when all the parties intend to be faithful to the gospel. ~ G.C. Berkouwer

And Desormie dragged the back of his hand back and forth across his mouth twice. And Brodsky coughed fakely to mask his laughter. And there was no more paste in the mouth-corners of Desormie. And Brodsky would not have to stare at paste while they talked in his office. That was nice of me.

I went to the gym. ~ Adam Levin

When you're kissing a woman and you want it to look realistic, you're thinking, 'Am I taking advantage of her? Is her boyfriend going to think I'm over-stepping the mark? Whereas when you are kissing a man, those thoughts don't cross your mind. I'm more scared of it looking false, so I went for it fully to make it look real and hopefully I've achieved that. ~ Rob James-Collier

For all this talk about us being a nation at war with child abuse, and for all the media hype about witch-hunts and false allegations - and don't ever let anyone use the word witch-hunts about this; there were no witches - the fact remains that in 1994, it is extremely difficult to come forward with allegations of sexual abuse. And the external forces of denial are almost overwhelming. If a case as verified as mine meets with denial, I dread to think about the experience of people who don't have the kind of corroboration that I do. And I really worry that we're getting close to a point where it's going to be impossible to prosecute child molesters, because we don't believe children, and now we don't believe adults. (Cheit "Paper presented at the Mississippi Statewide Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect" Jackson, April 29 1994.) ~ Ross Cheit

Clasped in his arms like some dead dancing partner was a bloated, festering corpse, a seaweed tangle of hair swirling around a fright mask of a face, ragged clothing hanging to an almost entirely skeletal frame.
David could almost hear mocking laughter issuing from the cavernous, busted hole mouth, and feel grasping bony fingers clinging to him, as the scream began to bubble out of him into the water. He dropped it and felt what was left of the bloated water-logged flesh began to come easily away from the bone.


From 'In the Darkest Hour'-as yet unpublished full length ~ Jim Goforth

Why did you come here tonight?" she asked. "Other than the fact that you've finally come to your senses and realize you love me."
Chuckling, Grey reached up and untied the ribbons that held her mask. The pretty silk fell away to reveal the beautiful face beneath. "I missed you," he replied honestly. "And you were right-about everything. I'm tired of drifting through life. I want to live again-with you."
A lone tear trickled down her cheek. "I think that might be the most romantic thing you've ever said to me."
He grinned. "I have more."
She pressed her fingers to his lips. "I'm tired of talking." She kissed him, teasing his lips with the ripe curves of hers, sliding her tongue inside to rub against his in a sensual rhythm that had him fisting his hands in her skirts.
By the time they reached Mayfair, Grey's hair was mussed, Rose's skirts crushed, and he was harder than an oratory competition for mutes.
"I can't believe you came," she told him as the entered the house, arms wrapped around each other. "I'm so proud of you."
"I wouldn't have done it without you."
She shook her head. "You did it for yourself not for me."
Perhaps that was true, and perhaps it wasn't. He had no interest in discussing it tonight. "It's just the beginning," he promised. "I'm going to go wherever you want to go from now on. Within reason."
She laughed. "Of course. We can't have you attending a musicale just to please me, can we?" She gazed up at him. " ~ Kathryn Smith

It was perhaps relief and confidence stemming from the opportunity to tempt you into being my accomplice, however indirectly, in the lonely work of producing the mask. For me, whatever you may say, you are the most important "other person." No, I do not mean it in a negative sense. I meant that the one who must first restore the roadway, the one whose name I had to write on the first letter, was first on my list of "others." (Under any circumstances, I simply did not want to lose you. To lose you would be symbolic of losing the world.) ~ Kobo Abe

When a woman is plain, people say, 'What beautiful eyes you have, beautiful hair. ~ Anton Chekhov

We must not make a false faith by hiding from our thoughts the causes of doubt, for faith is the highest achievement of the human intellect, the only gift man can make to God, and therefore it must be offered in sincerity. ~ William Butler Yeats

The wisdom of the most sagacious ancient Greeks, the wisdom of the most perceptive rabbis of ancient Canaan, and all the parables of Christ teach us to believe not in justice, but in truth. In a world of rampant lying, where so many lies are used to inflame passions and justify false grievances, the indiscriminate pursuit of justice leads sooner or later to insanity, mass murder, and the ruin of entire civilizations. ~ Dean Koontz

The indispensability of play-acting in the grim business of dying and killing is particularly evident in the case of armies. Their uniforms, flags, emblems, parades, music, and elaborate etiquette and ritual are designed to separate the soldier from his flesh-and-blood self and mask the overwhelming reality of life and death. ~ Eric Hoffer

Because of their lust for authority men are in constant turmoil. Those in authority are ever fighting to maintain it. Those out of authority are ever struggling to snatch it from the hands of those who hold it. While Man, the God in swaddling-bands, is trampled under foot and hoof
and left on the field of battle unnoticed, unattended and unsolved. So furious is the fight, and so blood crazed the fighters that none, alas, would stop to lift the painted mask off the face of the spurious bride and expose her monstrous ugliness to all.
Believe, O monks, that no authority is worth the flutter of an eyelash, except the authority of Holy Understanding which is priceless. For that no sacrifice is great. Attain it once, and you
shall hold it to the end of Time. And it shall charge your words with more power than all the armies of the world can ever command; and it shall bless your deeds with more beneficence than all the world authorities combined can ever dream of bringing to the world. ~ Mikhail Naimy

Murana is the name of the mask I have designed for Venini: a volume to wear for filtering the reality through the glass of its surfaces, a face without sexual or racial connotations able to represent every kind of humanity, a soul for an object that could be casually perceived as a vase ... ~ Fabio Novembre