Quotes about appearances

It's a rare man who is taken for what he truly is … There is much misjudgment in the world. … We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream.

I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!

“Evil flourishes best in disguise,” said Otto grimly. His companions nodded in assent.

“And the best disguise is simple” said the youth, Federit Shaus. “Honest patriotism. Joyful idealism.”

“You’re a cynic, lad,” von Bek smiled at him. “But sadly my own experience would support your view. Show me a man who cries ‘my country right or wrong’, and I’ll show you one who’d cheerfully murder half his own nation in the name of patriotism.”

Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.

Appearances are signs of possibilities, at least when one remembers that what appears may be a sign by masking as easily as by manifesting.

People seen by the mind are exactly different to things seen by the eye. They grow smaller and smaller as you come nearer down to them, whereas things become bigger.

It may be that we have become so feckless as a people that we no longer care how things do work, but only what kind of quick, easy outer impression they give. If so, there is little hope for our cities or probably for much else in our society. But I do not think this is so.

We pretend to be whatever we must in order to survive.

No doubt it was all an elaborate pretense at normality, but in Valentine's experience, normality was always a pretense, people acting out what they thought were their expected roles.

Ignorance is a kind of insanity in the human animal. People who delight in torturing defenseless children or tiny creatures are in reality insane. The terrible thing is that people who are madmen in private may wear a totally bland and innocent expression in public.

"It's said that the worst thing one can do to a man is to kill his self-respect. But that's not true. Self-respect is something that can't be killed. The worst thing is to kill a man's pretense at it."

"There's nothing as significant as a human face. Nor as eloquent. We can never really know another person, except by our first glance at him. Because, in that glance, we know everything. Even though we're not always wise enough to unravel the knowledge. Have you ever thought about the style of a soul, Kiki?"

"The ... what?"

"The style of the soul. Do you remember the famous philosopher who spoke of the style of a civilization? He called it 'style.' He said it was the nearest word he could find for it. He said that every civilization has its one basic principle, one single, supreme, determining conception, and every endeavor of men within that civilization is true, unconsciously and irrevocably, to that one principle.... I think, Kiki, that every human soul has a style of its own, also. Its one basic theme. You'll see it reflected in every thought, every act, every wish of that person. The one absolute, the one imperative in that living creature. Years of studying a man won't show it to you. His face will. You'd have to write volumes to describe a person. Think of his face. You need nothing else."

"That sounds fantastic, Ellsworth. And unfair, if true. It would leave people naked before you."

"It's worse than that. It also leaves you naked before them. You betray yourself by the manner in which you react to a certain face."