Julia Quinn Quotes

We own up to minor failings, but only so as to convince others that we have no major ones.

When I paint, I seriously consider the public presence of a person - the surface facade. I am less concerned with how people look when they wake up or how they act at home. A person's public presence reflects his own efforts at image development.

Give a man a reputation as an early riser and he can sleep 'til noon.

I know I have to keep up my image. It's all about how you handle the situation.

Keep up appearances; there lies the test. The world will give thee credit for the rest.

I think anyone doing an interview is to some extent on show. And therefore, we always want to put on our best face.

I try to look cool. I strategize. Sometimes it's like - that's part of the strategizing, to make it seem like I don't think about it.

We all put on faces, as Walter White does. We put on faces when we meet our friends, when we meet new people, when we present ourselves in interviews. We try to be who the people we meet want us to be, or who we want to truly be.

I'm intrigued by people who are super adept at manipulating their own image. We all do it to a certain extent.

People share things that make them look good.

We're a walking billboard... You want to look good to everyone who is watching.

Should we become so proficient at self-presentation that we can dissemble without anyone suspecting?

In civilized life, where the happiness, and indeed almost the existence, of man depends so much upon the opinion of his fellow men, he is constantly acting a studied part.

And even though people like to furrow their brow like they suspect you're not being honest about yourself, the truth is that they worry that you're not serving their idea of you.

I've always been taught to care what other people think. My grandmother and mother taught me to project a positive image of myself.

Isana laughed. "And you, lady? Are you a woman of conscience or of ambition?" The lady smiled. "That's a question rarely asked here at court." "And why is that?" "Because a woman of conscience would tell you that she is a person of conscience. A woman of ambition would tell you that she is a person of conscience—only much more convincingly.

There needs no small degree of address to gain the reputation of benevolence without incurring the expense.

We tend to tell strangers what we think will make us sound good. I myself, to my utter amazement, informed a telephone pollster that I exercised regularly, a bare-faced lie.

I'm super-popular, so I had to pretend to be a loser, which was super-hard.

Appear tougher or cooler or funnier than you feel and there is a chance you'll make it.

What does it mean that social structures among young people are so often predicated upon trying really, really hard to appear to not-be-trying?

Those who seek to impress upon us that they are gentlemen will usually be found mistaken.

Pope had been flattered till he thought himself one of the moving powers of the system of life. When he talked of laying down his pen, those who sat round him intreated and implored; and self-love did not suffer him to suspect that they went away and laughed.

Human life is thus only an endless illusion. Men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does when we are gone. Society is based on mutual hypocrisy.

It is better to be seen as cruel than foolish.