Presenting a humble façade gains trust; flattery appeals to ego; combine the two to gain an ego-based trust within someone, and you will find in your hands a judgement clouding tool second only to love.

A homely face does not guarantee a homely character. Appearance is the body, character is the spirit, and the soul bears the most vital qualities.

my mother, poor fish,wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times aweek, telling me to be happy: “Henry, smile!why don’t you ever smile?”and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was...

Find more

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...

All facades fall sometime, then the mask comes off and the real heart is seen.

I was like a chocolate in a box, looking well behaved and perfect in place, all the while harboring a secret center.

Now I understand why you grow so many flowers.”She shifted her head, not understanding.I said, “To cover the stink of sulphur.

Nightmares are seldom a foreshadowing of real events, but always a showing of real fears.

Façade. One, simple word. But, very complex portents. It’s like living a life of half-dead. You are neither fully inside a grave, nor completely out of it, beyond the oppressive calmness of the slabs, tombstones...

How is it that some celebrities, whom the average person would believe to have all the popularity a human being could want, still admit to feeling lonely? It is quite naive to assume that popularity...

Your silences remain; they are your biggest mask.

A leader is generally not more virtuous than most ordinary people. The opposite is usually true. Because people are reluctant to be led by those perceived as evil, a leader expertly creates a façade, behind...

it’s through the simple things in life, through its games, when our minds mature the most and we grow knowledgeable. It’s also when the cloth masks of our outer, false personalities are torn asunder, and...

I don’t know what is behind the curtain; only that I need to find out.

Will you let me go for Christ’s sake? Will you take that phony dream and burn it before something happens?

Every beautiful facade seemed to conceal rot and ruin that I could almost see.

A man’s work reveals him. In social intercourse he gives you the surface that he wishes the world to accept, but in his book or his picture the real man delivers himself defenceless. No affectation...

[…][I]f you adapted too much in order to deal with them, you ran the risk of forgetting who you were and you could end up being neither and nothing.

Because sometimes people who seem goodend up being not as good as you might have hoped.

The fundamental basis by which the court’s decision might be made is, in itself, imperfect and subject to contradictions. There is very little consideration given to a priori knowledge regarding the circumstances being presented and...

The truth has not so much set us free as it has ripped away a carefully constructed facade, leaving us naked to begin again.

The weakest link in any chain of security is not the technology itself, but the person operating it; iron gates have no compassion to appeal to, nor fears to exploit, nor insecurities to use to...

I was tired of pretending that I was someone else just to get along with people, just for the sake of having friendships.