Willard Gaylin Quotes

We pass for what we are.

There is no frontier between being and appearing.

A man may not always be what he appears to be, but what he appears to be is always a significant part of what he is.

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

Very few of us are what we seem.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

The two basic topics which fascinate me are 'What is reality?' and 'What constitutes the authentic human being?'

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.

Seeming and being are not one and the same.

I’m not anything that you think I am.

Be what you would seem to be - or, if you'd like it put more simply - never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.

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.

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.

If they [the dead] should speak, it would be found that in matters of opinion no departed person was exactly what he had passed for in life. They would realise, deep down, that they, and whole nations along with them, are not really what they seem to be-and never can be.

What you see is what you get. What you hear is who I am.

Most of what we say about ourselves is a wonderful piece of storytelling.

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.

You are what you pretend to be.

Esse quam videri," Celia says. "To be, rather than to seem.

To be rather than to seem.

Be your character what it will, it will be known, and nobody will take it upon your word.

I am not what you see and hear.

Everybody has that thing where they need to look one way but they come out looking another way and that's what people observe.

It is in most cases more difficult to make intelligent people believe that you are what you are not, than really to become what you would appear to be.

...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.