Gabriela Mistral Quotes

Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.

Secretly, I'm a 5-year-old.

Secrets are kept from children, a lid on top of the soup kettle, so they do not boil over with too much truth.

Lord Tyrawley and I have been dead these two years, but we don't choose to have it known.

All words are masks and the lovelier they are, the more they are meant to conceal.

All these years I kept my true nature hidden, running along like a small shadow so nobody could catch me. -Ying Ying

When you use sleep mask, no one's gonna recognize you. You're gonna look like an idiot, but it's so worth it.

When you put on a clown suit and a rubber nose, nobody has any idea what you look like inside.

Masks are what they seem to be; not so the faces beneath them.

The truth about a man lies first and foremost in what he hides.

I am sorry I didn’t tell you the truth before. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to. You kept asking about Romeo and what he was really like. I was hoping that”—he smiled wistfully—“you would recognize me.

I wondered if that was true: if they were all really children wrapped up in adult bodies, like children's books hidden in the middle of dull, long adult books, the kind with no pictures or conversations.

In each of us there is another whom we do not know.

...In another time, What cannot be seen will define us, and we shall be prompted To say that language is error, and all things are wronged By representation. The self, we shall say, can never be Seen with a disguise, and never be seen without one.

An item that looks perfectly normal on the surface might only be disguised.

Masks beneath masks until suddenly the bare bloodless skull.

If no one figures out you are pretending to be retarded, your life will be greeted with treasure.

Every profound spirit needs a mask.

A man is hid under his tongue.

The child in us is always there, you know, and it's the best part of us, the winged part that travels farthest.

We have the choice of two identities: the external mask which seems to be real...and the hidden, inner person who seems to us to be nothing, but who can give himself eternally to the truth in whom he subsists. (295)

I've felt that if I just used initials nobody would know whether I was a man or a woman, a dog or a tiger. I could hide from view, like a bat on the underside of a branch.

Being a shy child, I always longed for a mask. Even in my adult life, I have glasses, they are my mask.

She had so mastered the strategies of camouflage that her own history had seemed a series of well-placed mirrors that kept her hidden from herself.

Not all of us know what we are. Some of us die without ever knowing. Some of us know, and never get caught. But we're out there. Trust me.