Claudia Gray Quotes

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

A neurosis is a secret that you don't know you are keeping.

The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry.

Ornament is but the guiled shore to a most dangerous sea.

There comes a point when things are undeniable and can't be hidden any longer. Even from yourself.

He that hath hornes in his bosom, let him not put them on his head.

Seven times have I despised my soul: The sixth time when she despised the ugliness of a face, and knew not that it was one of her own masks.

The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it.

Whoever aims publicly at great things and at length perceives secretly that he is too weak to achieve them, has usually also insufficient strength to renounce his aims publicly, and then inevitably becomes a hypocrite.

Arraigned at my own bar, Memory having given her evidence of the hopes, wishes, sentiments I had been cherishing since last night-- of the general state of mind which I have indulged for nearly a fortnight past; Reason having come forward and told in her own quiet way , a plain, unvarnished tale, showing how I had rejected the real, and rabidly devoured the ideal;-- I pronounced judgment to this effect:-- That a greater fool than Jane Eyre had never breathed the breath of life: that a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself on sweet lies, and swallowed the poison as if it were nectar.

Smooth and smiling faces everywhere, but ruin in their eyes.

We are inconsolable at being deceived by our enemies and being betrayed by our friends, yet we are often content in be being treated like that by our own selves.

Cause I rely on my illusions, to keep me warm at night. I've denied in my capacity to love, and I am willing to give up this fight

I am a wicked man... But do you know, gentlemen, what was the main point about my wickedness? The whole thing, precisely was, the greatest nastiness precisely lay in my being shamefully conscious every moment, even in moments of the greatest bile, that I was not only not a wicked man but was not even an embittered man, that I was simply frightening sparrows in vain, and pleasing myself with it.

I think all men know better than they do; know that the institutions we so volubly commend are go-carts and baubles; but they darenot trust their presentiments.

Most of us are aware of and pretend to detest the barefaced instances of that hypocrisy by which men deceive others, but few of us are upon our guard or see that more fatal hypocrisy by which we deceive and over-reach our own hearts.

Our vanity would have just that which we do best count as that which is hardest for us. The origin of many a morality.

Men are inconsolable concerning the treachery of their friends or the deceptions of their enemies; and yet they are often very highly satisfied to be both deceived and betrayed by their own selves.

Oh, the lies that I have told myself and others. I knew it yet I didn't know.

But which was the real me? Let me be perfectly honest: I was a man of many faces. (p.33)

There's more danger in the violence you don't face.

I'm a monster, you know. I'm one of the dangerous ones. No you aren't, he promised. Your one of us.

Into what dangers would you lead me, Cassius, That you would have me seek into myself For that which is not in me?

by thus keeping one pace ahead of myself I need never catch up with the truth.