Disguise Quotes - Page 7

• Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery," said I, "still thou art a bitter draught.

  Laurence Sterne

  Art, Slavery, Bitterness

  Laurence Sterne, John Hall-Stevenson (1792). “A Sentimental Journey: Through France and Italy”, p.97

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• In peace there's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility: But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger; Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage; Then lend the eye a terrible aspect; . . . . Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide, Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.

  William Shakespeare

  Peace, War, Humility

  William Shakespeare (1996). “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare”, p.496, Wordsworth Editions

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• I believe that almost all important, useful ideas are simple. Peter Whittle has recently put it nicely in an autobiographical essay. "If a piece of work is heavy and complicated then it is wrong." . . . Some writers feel that to express their ideas in simple terms is degrading. Some use complexity to disguise the paucity of their material. In fact, simplicity is a virtue and when, as here, it is both original and useful, it can represent a real advance in knowledge.

  Dennis Lindley

  Real, Work, Believe

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• Young people are more hopeful at a certain age than adults, but I suspect that's glandular. As for children, I keep as far from them as possible. I don't like the sight of them. The scale is all wrongs. The heads tend to be too big for the bodies, and the hands and feet are a disaster. They keep falling into things. The nakedness of their bad character! We adults have learned how to disguise our terrible character, but children, well, they are like grotesque drawings of us. They should be neither seen nor heard, and no one must make another one.

  Gore Vidal

  Children, Fall, Drinking

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• The problem is, of course, that not only is economics bankrupt but it has always been nothing more than politics in disguise ... economics is a form of brain damage.

  Hazel Henderson

  Brain, Damage, Problem

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• To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude. (The sight of it as an object stimulates the use of it as an object.) Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. To be naked is to be without disguises.

  John Berger

  Sight, Order, Naked

  "John Berger obituary" by Michael McNay, www.theguardian.com. January 2, 2017.

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• Economics is really politics in disguise.

  Hazel Henderson

  Economics, Capitalism

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• I think cynicism often disguises itself as humour.

  Michka Assayas

  Thinking, Cynicism, Humour

  Michka Assayas (2006). “Bono”, p.108, Penguin

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• Remember: The best deceivers do everything they can to cloak their roguish qualities. They cultivate an air of honesty in one area to disguise their dishonesty in others. Honesty is merely another decoy in their arsenal of weapons.

  Robert Greene

  Honesty, Air, Quality

  Robert Greene (2010). “The 48 Laws Of Power”, p.22, Profile Books

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• The Wickans know that the gift of power is never free. They know enough not to envy the chosen among them, for power is never a game, nor are glittering standards raised to glory and wealth. They disguise nothing in trappings, and so we all see what we'd rather not, that power is cruel, hard as iron and bone, and thrives on destruction. ~ Deadhouse Gates

  Steven Erikson

  Games, Iron, Envy

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• Dear fatal name! rest ever unreveal'd, Nor pass these lips in holy silence seal'd. Hide it, my heart, within that close disguise, Where mixed with Gods, his lov'd idea lies: O write it not, my hand - the name appears Already written - wash it out, my tears! In vain lost Eloisa weeps and prays, Her heart still dictates, and her hand obeyes.

  Alexander Pope

  Lying, Writing, Heart

  Alexander Pope (1808). “The poetical works of Alexander Pope. To which is prefixed the life of the author”, p.108

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• How to forgive the world for its beauty, which merely disguises its ugliness; for its gentleness, which merely cloaks its cruelty; for its illusion of continuity, seamlessly, as the night follows the day, so to speak- whereas in reality life is a series of brutal raptures, falling upon your defenseless hands, like the blows of a woodman's axe?

  Salman Rushdie

  Life, Fall, Blow

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• You still haven't managed to heal the scars left by some of the injustices committed against you in your life and it doesn't do you any good. All it does is feed a constant desire to feel sorry for yourself, because you were the victim of people stronger than you. Or else it makes you go to the other extreme and disguise yourself as an avenger ready to strike out at the people who hurt you. Isn't that a waste of time?...It is human, but it's not intelligent or reasonable.

  Paulo Coelho

  Hurt, Sorry, Intelligent

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• In mythos and fairy tales, deities and other great spirits test the hearts of humans by showing up in various forms that disguise their divinity. They show up in robes, rags, silver sashes, or with muddy feet. They show up with skin dark as old wood, or in scales made of rose petal, as a frail child, as a lime-yellow old woman, as a man who cannot speak, or as an animal who can. The great powers are testing to see if humans have yet learned to recognize the greatness of soul in all its varying forms.

  Clarissa Pinkola Estes

  Children, Heart, Dark

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• She remembered that once, when she was a little girl, she had seen a pretty young woman with golden hair down to her knees in a long flowered dress, and had said to her, without thinking, "Are you a princess?" The girl had laughed very kindly at her and asked her what her name was. Blanche remembered going away from her, led by her mother's hand, thinking to herself that the girl really was a princess, but in disguise. And she had resolved that someday, she would dress as though she were a princess in disguise.

  Regina Doman

  Girl, Mother, Princess

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• Your soul is a chosen landscape Where charming masked and costumed figures go Playing the lute and dancing and almost Sad beneath their fantastic disguises. All sing in a minor key Of all-conquering love and careless fortune They do not seem to believe in their happiness And their song mingles with the moonlight. The still moonlight, sad and beautiful, Which gives the birds to dream in the trees And makes the fountain sprays sob in ecstasy, The tall, slender fountain sprays among the marble statues.

  Paul Verlaine

  Beautiful, Dream, Song

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• Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir'd, or coerc'd, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent, to be left within the reach of anyone in Power,- who need but touch her, and all her Credit is in the instant vanish'd, as if it had never been. She needs rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters, Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev'ry Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide her the Costume, Toilette, and Bearing, and Speech nimble enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or even the Curiosity, of Government.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Government, Curiosity, Desire

  "Mason & Dixon". Book by Thomas Pynchon, 1997.

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• Language disguises the thought; so that from the external form of the clothes one cannot infer the form of the thought they clothe, because the external form of the clothes is constructed with quite another object than to let the form of the body be recognized.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Clothes, Body, Language

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (2014). “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: German and English”, p.63, Routledge

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• At least we both know how shitty the world is. You wearing a beard as a mask to disguise it. I wearing my tired smile. I don't see how you do it. One hundred thousand university students marching with you. Toward A necessity which is not love but is a name.

  Jack Spicer

  Tired, University Students, Names

  Jack Spicer, Peter Gizzi, Kevin Killian (2008). “My Vocabulary Did this to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer”, p.426, Wesleyan University Press

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• And I'll dance with you in Vienna, I'll be wearing a river's disguise. The hyacinth wild on my shoulder my mouth on the dew of your thighs. And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook, with the photographs there and the moss. And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty, my cheap violin and my cross.

  Leonard Cohen

  Music, Yield, Rivers

  Song: Take This Waltz, Album: I'm Your Man, 1988

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• How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn't they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for a little while? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something we all hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise?

  Don DeLillo

  Morning, Real, Night

  Don DeLillo, Mark Osteen (1998). “White Noise: Text and Criticism”, Penguin Group USA

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• In the short summer night she learned so much. She would have thought a woman would have died of shame... She felt, now, she had come to the real bedrock of her nature, and was essentially shameless. She was her sensual self, naked an unashamed. She felt a triumph, almost a vainglory. So! That was how it was! That was life! That was how onself really was! There was nothing left to disguise or be ashamed of. She shared her ultimate nakedness with a man, another being.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Summer, Real, Night

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• Nothing is so easy as to deceive one’s self when one does not lack wit and is familiar with all the niceties of language. Language is a prostitute queen who descends and rises to all roles. Disguises herself, arrays herself in fine apparel, hides her head and effaces herself; an advocate who has an answer for everything, who has always foreseen everything, and who assumes a thousand forms in order to be right. The most honorable of men is he who thinks best and acts best, but the most powerful is he who is best able to talk and write

  George Sand

  Queens, Powerful, Writing

  George Sand “Les ëuvres Choisies de George Sand. The Selected Works of George Sand”, Library of Alexandria

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• I also think he is given to disguises...Sometimes he wears spectacles and sometimes he does not. And twice he has worn an extremely peculiar hat. Inside.

  Julia Quinn

  Thinking, Hats, Doe

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• The great end of prudence is to give cheerfulness to those hours which splendour cannot gild, and acclamation cannot exhilarate; those soft intervals of unbended amusement, in which a man shrinks to his natural dimensions, and throws aside the ornaments or disguises which he feels in privacy to be useless incumbrances, and to lose all effect when they become familiar. To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

  Samuel Johnson

  Home, Ambition, Men

  Samuel Johnson (1787). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Together with His Life, and Notes on His Lives of the Poets, by Sir John Hawkins, Knt. In Eleven Volumes ...”, p.431

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