Mask Quotes - Page 2

We might feel that we must demonstrate explicitly when we’re upset, or not upset. This perceived need may stem from our family of origin, from how we learned to be heard when a simple “no” wasn’t enough. We may have learned to mask certain feelings, or portray feelings that weren’t ours. But as adults we each need to learn to state our personal truth without having to prove it or shout it.

How beautiful the tragic seems when it is beneath a mask, but when it appears so nakedly before me and... when I am so forcibly implicated... I don't know whether I care for it so much. Somehow or other it is as though I were torturing myself.("Thirty-Three Abominations")

People, generally, are equally insecure. They just show it (or hide it) differently.

The reason some people put on a mask is not in their blood but it is in their fear that we judge them too soon.

It's hard for a masked man to hide behind a mask when he isn't wearing one.

A red nose is the clown's mask and my moustache is mine.

The life that I have lived was no more than a mask covering the real me. What has happened was not to kill me but to reveal me.

Do not allow the negative of the past to mask your sight.

Snakes hide in grass, people behind their lies.

I wonder. If I had you wear that mask today, Anne, would you find the courage to tell me what is troubling you?" Anne would very much have liked to confide in her father, but where in the world would she begin? He leaned over and whispered in her ear. "I will tell you a secret, my dear. All of my children are shy. They have simply learned the art of wearing masks.

The problem was the mask... couldn't be taken off... so much time has been on my face...

In this world we are all pretenders, and Society is our game

Masks beneath masks until suddenly the bare bloodless skull.

The real comic muse is the one underwhose laughing mask tears roll down.

And who shall you be once you don your grand disguise?""La luna," she said with a smile."Then I shall be la notte to your moon" Archer lifted the hard black mask he held and slipped it over his thinner silk one

Most men who very seldom say a moral thing, very seldom do a wrong thing. Their immorality is simply a pose, an image that serves to differentiate them from the ‘morally perfect masses’. And as opposite to it, most men who very frequently say a moral thing, very frequently do a wrong thing. Their morality is simply a mask in order to gain the respect of the masses.

She represents something about the corporate world that repel me, some deep coldness masked as relentless cheerfulness.

Here too it’s masquerade, I find: As everywhere, the dance of mind.I grasped a lovely masked procession,And caught things from a horror show…I’d gladly settle for a false impression,If it would last a little longer, though.

But in the morning I would always rise and polish the surface of myself, a gleaming, confident young woman, an excellent student and good daughter starting her fourth year at the university, moving smoothly through the world, and even though inside the chaos scraped and railed I would push it into the crevices of the day so it could not be detected.

Her mask gave no sign of how this affected her.

Even I don’t know myself... In fact, I don’t know if I really have a self at all, as I’m constantly playing different roles and pretending – not so much on stage as in real life...

Everyone wears masks.They come in all different shapes and sizes.The only problem with trying one on is that it fits. How easily we fall into the trap that we don’t have to be who we really are.How easily we convince ourselves that we need to cover up what we were born to be.It’s a tragedy that fear keeps us from our destiny.It’s hell when the person you were created to be is covered up by some cheap imposter

Don’t despair nowyou fell in love with the maskand not what was behindit touched the chords inside your heartand made it beatand now that you have seen behind itdon’t despair

When my turn on the program comes, I am not nervous at all—because all this is happening out of time, out of space. I am, for a moment, a figure of my own fantasy, and I play my appointed role as if I were in the movies.

The essence of true love is mutual recognition-two individuals seeing each other as they really are. We all know that the usual approach is to meet someone we like and put our best self forward, or even at times a false self, one we believe will be more appealing to the person we want to attract. When our real self appears in its entirety, when the good behavior becomes too much to maintain or the masks are taken away, disappointment comes. All too often individuals feel, after the fact-when feelings are hurt and hearts are broken-that it was a case of mistaken identity, that the loved one is a stranger. They saw what they wanted to see rather than what was really there.

Do not hide behind any mask

I took on the shape of a girl.

It’s all society is, the repressed sex drives of men, the objectification of women, their paranoia, the posturing, the macho stances, the beauty standard, it’s all just one charade masking a never ending hard on.

We are too scared to be real!

Perfection can mask imperfection.

Most people play someone else's role or wear mask of other people because they don't think about what they are created for

People loved to think they were getting a deal. Four times out of five they would look right past what they didn’t want to see.

It is humiliating to realize that when you drive yourself underground, when you fake who you are, often you do so for people you do not even like or respect.

We all wear masksto veil the truth.Truth is nakedness.Truth is fear.Truth is the gardener making you sit on his lapasking you tolight his cigarette.Truth is father— with a limp cigarette on his lips —telling you to never use his matches to light it for him.Truth is father yelling:"It is not nice for little girls to do so”.Truth is a curious girlwanting to ignite a matchlike a woman.Truth is the maid watching from the kitchen,knowing.But knowing isn’t truth.Truth is the maid calling:Come. Come.Truth is the gardener understanding. But understanding isn’t truth.Truth is the maid saying,"Stay away!"Truth is a girl thinking she is in control.That nothing happened, nothing bad.But the truest truthis a girl knowing, a girl understanding thaton that daysomeone stole a little piece of her truth.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he'll tell you the truth

In fact the "mask" theme has come up several times in my background reading. Richard Sennett, for example, in "The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism", and Robert Jackall, in "Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate managers", refer repeatedly to the "masks" that corporate functionaries are required to wear, like actors in an ancient Greek drama. According to Jackall, corporate managers stress the need to exercise iron self-control and to mask all emotion and intention behind bland, smiling, and agreeable public faces. Kimberly seems to have perfected the requisite phoniness and even as I dislike her, my whole aim is to be welcomed into the same corporate culture that she seems to have mastered, meaning that I need to "get in the face" of my revulsion and overcome it. But until I reach that transcendent point, I seem to be stuck in an emotional space left over from my midteen years: I hate you; please love me.

I mask my hate. I mask my pain. One thing that I can't mask is my dwindling grade point average." -Dreams, Smiles, and Bloody Tears