Mark Twain Quotes

Very few of us are what we seem.

You need to be real enough to be believable, but you don't necessarily have to be real enough to be real. There is a distinction.

Seeming and being are not one and the same.

We are what we seem to be.

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

As a son of a man who pretended to be one thing for 33 years of my life and then was another thing, the questions of 'what is real' and 'what is not real' are very blurrily vivid to me.

Dandyism is a lie which reveals the truth, and the truth is that we are what we pretend to be.

Image is what people perceive my life to be. It's nothing like the truth.

Marilyn Monroe wasn't even her real name, Charles Manson isn't his real name, and now, I'm taking that to be my real name. But what's real? You can't find the truth, you just pick the lie you like the best.

Truth: An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance …

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

I am who I am, you are who you are, and everything else is a perception based on acceptance, deception, smoke, mirrors, and so on. It's what's between us that seems to justify our accidental identities.

The dead see what they believe they will see. So do the living. That is the secret.

Generally, a lot of the things people think are made up are real, a lot of the things people think are real are made up, a lot of the things people think are spontaneous are cleverly faked, and a lot of the things people think are fake are spontaneous.

Pictures can be pretty deceptive.

Even if a man should chance to speak the most complete truth, yet he himself does not know it; all things are wrapped in appearances

Appearances are not held to be a clue to the truth,' said his cousin. 'But we seem to have no other.

But an Adrian also knew that an Adrian's lies were real: they were lived and felt and acted out as thoroughly as another man's truths - if other men had truths - and he believed it possible that this last lie might see him through to the grave.

I am not what you see and hear.

I’m not anything that you think I am.

We live, after all, in a world where illusions are sacred and truth profane.

It was a dance of masks and every mask was perfect because every mask was a real face and every face was a real mask so there was no mask and there was no face for there was but one dance in which there was but one mask but one true face which was the same and which was a thing without a name which changed and changed into itself over and over.

There are some as are what they are. And there are some as aren't what they seem to be. And there are some as only seem to be what they seem to be.

We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream.

A thing either is what it appears to be; or it is not, but yet appears to be; or it is, but does not appear to be; or it is not, and does not appear to be.