Quotes about appearances

The image, more interesting than its original, has become the original. The shadow has become the substance.

The American citizen thus lives in a world where fantasy is more real than reality, where the image has more dignity than its original. We hardly dare face our bewilderment, because our ambiguous experience is so pleasantly iridescent, and the solace of belief in contrived reality is so thoroughly real. We have become eager accessories to the great hoaxes of the age. These are the hoaxes we play on ourselves.

Many a man may look respectable, and yet be able to hide at will behind a spiral staircase.

In a scene where nobody with any ambition is really what he appears to be, there’s not much risk in acting like a king-hell freak.

“It goes to demonstrate,” said Reith, “that you can’t judge a man by the table he sets.”

Cauch asked shrewdly, “How then can a man judge his fellows? For example, what is the basis of your calculation?”

“Only one thing I know for certain,” said Reith. “First thoughts are always wrong.”

I can tell you this at least. The most convincing disguise for legitimacy is legitimacy itself.

You can’t convict or even accuse a man of criminal activity just because he looks peculiar; otherwise, three-quarters of us would be in jail.

Pretend to be good always, and even God will be fooled.

"My God — life! Who can understand even one little minute of it?""Don't try," [Castle] said. "Just pretend you understand."

"You go up to a man, and you say, 'How are things going, Joe?' And he says, 'Oh fine, fine—couldn't be better.' And you look into his eyes, and you see things really couldn't be much worse. When you get right down to it, everybody's having a perfectly lousy time of it, and I mean everybody. And the hell of it is, nothing seems to help much."

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

Anita had the mechanics of marriage down pat, even to the subtlest conventions. If her approach was disturbingly rational, systematic, she was thorough enough to turn out a credible counterfeit of warmth.