Masquerade Quotes - Page 2

• I believe my friends think I'm funny. All the books are full of humor. Maybe it is a quiet sort of humor that masquerades as not-much-at-all. It is certainly easy to miss.

  Jesse Ball

  Believe, Book, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

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• What a story is, is devious. It pretends transparency, forthrightness. It engages with ordinary people, ordinary matters, recognizable stuff. But this is all a masquerade. What good stories deal with is the horror and incomprehensibility of time, the dark encroachment of old catastrophes...

  Joy Williams

  Dark, People, Ordinary

  "Joy Williams, The Art of Fiction No. 223". Interview with Paul Winner, www.theparisreview.org. 2014.

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• Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics. Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say no. But saying “yes” begins things. Saying “yes” is how things grow. Saying “yes” leads to knowledge. “Yes” is for young people. So for as long as you have the strength to, say “yes'.

  Stephen Colbert

  Wise, Hurt, Optimistic

  Knox College Commencement Address, departments.knox.edu. June 03, 2006.

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• I am at war... with the principal personage of traditional philosophy, that abstract subject who masquerades as everyone and anyone, but is really a male subject in disguise.

  Pam Gems

  Philosophy, War, Males

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• It is kind of tedious after a while, to parse politicians doing the same thing over and over again. The facts change from week to week, but the sort of masquerade doesn't.

  Frank Rich

  Facts, Kind, Politician

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• Why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Past, Dry Bones, Generations

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.32, Penguin

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• Because these consequences are distributed globally, the problem masquerades as a distraction. Because the length of time between causes and consequences stretches out longer than we're used to dealing with, it gives us the illusion that we have the luxury of time. Neither of those things is true.

  Al Gore

  Luxury, Giving, Causes

  ""What in the Hell Do They Think Is Causing It?"". Interview with John Dickerson, www.slate.com. December 8, 2009.

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• Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country.

  John McCain

  Country, Russia, Gas Stations

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• As in 1925, creationists are not battling for religion. They have been disowned by leading church men of all persuasions, for they debase religion even more than they misconstrue science. They are a motley collection to be sure, but their core of practical support lies with the evangelical right, and creationism is a mere stalking horse or subsidiary issue in a political program...The enemy is not fundamentalism; it is intolerance. In this case, the intolerance is perverse since it masquerades under the 'liberal' rhetoric of 'equal time'.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Horse, Lying, Men

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• I still can't believe," Michael said, sotto voce, "that you came to the Vampires' Masquerade Ball dressed as a vampire.

  Jim Butcher

  Believe, Vampire, Balls

  Jim Butcher (2008). “Grave Peril: Book three of The Dresden Files”, p.159, Penguin

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• Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us.

  Stephen Colbert

  Hurt, Optimistic, Self

  "Stephen Colbert Commencement Address". Transcript of remarks to graduating seniors at Knox College, departments.knox.edu. June 2006.

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• Remember, you cannot be both young and wise. Young people who pretend to be wise to the ways of the world are mostly just cynics.

  Stephen Colbert

  Wise, Remember You, Remembers You

  Stephen Colbert Commencement Address, departments.knox.edu. June 2006.

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• Being young and trying to catch a glimpse of the depths, of the true self, of the soul, or whatever human beings have called it over the centuries, we often find ourselves surrounded by bossy, hectoring voices trying to short-circuit our personal experience by super-imposing their own disappointments. Much of this bossiness masquerades as an education.

  David Whyte

  Inspirational, Disappointment, Self

  David Whyte (2009). “The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship”, p.59, Penguin

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• When cowardice becomes a fashion its adherents are without number, and it masquerades as forbearance, reasonableness and whatnot.

  Eric Hoffer

  Fashion, Numbers, Cowardice

  "First Things, Last Things". Book by Eric Hoffer. Chapter 8: "Thoughts on the Present", 1971.

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• The discouragement masquerades as the impossibility.

  Diane Arbus

  Discouragement, Impossibility

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• He had fangs. So what? Plenty of things not a Dark-Hunter have fangs, including Hollywood actors and kids playing vampire. You should have checked his membership card before you attacked. Good grief, what if you’d run across a Masquerade group?” – Sundown

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Running, Grief, Kids

  Sherrilyn Kenyon (2011). “Retribution”, p.99, Macmillan

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• The reader may ask himself if this is not cruelty and injustice of a kind so terrible that it beggars the imagination, and whether these poor people would not fare far better if they were entrusted to the devils in Hell than they do at the hands of the devils of the New World who masquerade as Christians.

  Bartolome de las Casas

  Christian, Hands, Imagination

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• In a sense, New Age gurus are akin to postmodernists within academia. They dispense meaningless drivel that masquerades as profound truths whilst in reality it is a mere exercise in obscurantism

  Gad Saad

  Exercise, Reality, Profound

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• Pity is like lust ... both like to masquerade as love and it's powerfully hard to know the difference when you're in the throes of it.

  Michelle Black

  Differences, Lust, Pity

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• If we consider what happens in conversation, in reveries, in remorse, in times of passion, in surprises, in the instructions of dreams, wherein often we see ourselves in masquerade,--the droll disguises only magnifying and enhancing a real element, and forcing it on our distinct notice,--we shall catch many hints that will broaden and lighten into knowledge of the secret of nature.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dream, Real, Passion

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1851). “Essays, lectures and orations”, p.122

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• Euphemisms, like fashions, have their day and pass, perhaps to return at another time. Like the guests at a masquerade ball, they enjoy social approval only so long as they retain the capacity for deception.

  Freda Adler

  Fashion, Long, Deception

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• The Times are the masquerade of the eternities; trivial to the dull, tokens of noble and majestic agents to the wise; the receptacle in which the Past leaves its history; the quarry out of which the genius of today is building up the Future.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wise, Future, Past

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1175, Delphi Classics

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• I think there has to be an underlying sexuality. There has to be a perverseness to the clothes. There is a hidden agenda in the fragility of romance. It's like a Story of O. I am not big on women looking naive. There has to be a sinister aspect, whether it's melancholy of sadomasochist. I think everyone has a deep sexuality, and sometimes it's good to use a little of it-and sometimes a lot of it-like a masquerade.

  Alexander McQueen

  Thinking, Clothes, Romance

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• You get quick money, it's beautiful, there's sunshine, but at the end of the day, you find out it's all a masquerade, baby. It's not what it seems.

  Wyclef Jean

  Beautiful, Baby, Sunshine

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• When most people looked at Josie Tyrell, they only saw a certain collection of bones, a selection of forms filling space. But Michael saw past the mouth and the eyes, the architecture of the body, her fleshly masquerade. Other boys were happy enough to enjoy the show, they just wanted to be entertained in the body's shadow theater. But Michael had to come backstage. He went down into the mines, into the dark, and brought up the gold, your new self, a better self. But what good was it if he was just going to leave her behind?

  Janet Fitch

  Eye, Dark, Boys

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