False Friendliness Quotes

The smile with the knife under the cloak.

Sometimes I can't tell that someone is a selective asshole because they're so nice to me and the people around me that I don't realize it until someone else says, "You know, that person is an asshole." So I'll be fooled by selective assholes sometimes . . . lately.

She was doing that thing some people do when they act nice and chipper and interested, while just below the surface they’re thinking really mean thoughts, and you can never call them on it because they’d just accuse you of being paranoid.

The most guileful amongst the reporters are those who appear friendly and smile and seem to be supportive. They are the ones who will seek to gut you on every occasion.

Never trust a species that grins all the time. It’s up to something.

It turns out that one can perpetrate all manner of heinous villainy under a cloak of courtesy and good cheer. . .a man will forfeit all sensible self-interest if he finds you affable enough to share your company over a flagon of ale.

Preserve me from such cordiality! It is like handling briar-roses and may-blossoms - bright enough to the eye, and outwardly soft to the touch, but you know there are thorns beneath, and every now and then you feel them too; and perhaps resent the injury by crushing them in till you have destroyed their power, though somewhat to the detriment of your own fingers.

Everybody who's been on television more than once wears in public an expression of fatuous affability. Because you may be addressed at any moment by somebody.

Many undoubtedly owe their good fortune to the circumstance that they possess a pleasing smile with which they win hearts. Yet these hearts would do better to beware and to learn from Hamlet's tables that one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.

She stretched out her hand, saying, “Vernon! My dear, what a delightful surprise!” “What’s surprising about it?” he enquired, lifting his black brows. “Didn’t you ask me to come?” The smile remained pinned to Lady Buxted’s lips, but she replied with more than a touch of acidity: “To be sure I did, but so many days ago that I supposed you had gone out of town!” “Oh, no!” he said, returning her smile with one of great sweetness.

There's daggers in men's smiles.

The days and weeks of screwed-up smiles and laboured courtesy, the mock geniality, the hearty shake of the filthy hand, the chuckling reply that must be made to the coarse joke, the loathsome, choking compliment that must be paid to the grimy wife and sluttish daughter, the indispensable flattery of the vilest religious prejudices, the wholesale deglutition of hypocritical pledges.

Meanwhile, the empty forms of social behavior survive inappropriately in business situations. We all know that when a business sends its customers 'friendly reminders,' it really means business.

Over-niceness may be under-niceness.

But even though there were plenty of teeth in the grin, there was no heart.

I have often seen people uncivil by too much civility, and tiresome in their courtesy.

There was a species of middle pretty who smiled at everything: happy smile, disappointed smile, you're-in-trouble smile.

But there is something very nice about coming to New York and how everyone smiles - even if they don't mean it. When I go back home to London and say hello to people, they look at me like I'm crazy.

Everyone comes up to me saying, 'Cooee, Julie! Hello!' as if I know them. Of course I don't bloody know them. Am I flummoxed by it? Sometimes. I think, 'Ooh, love, go easy.' For a time, I did feel this pressure that I had to be funny, but it passes.

The allure of Hollywood is huge when you don't know anything. You don't know the knives behind the smiles.

I see time away hasn’t made you any more charming. (Fang) Oh, I can be charming. I just choose not to. People start to think you like them, then when you stab them in the back, they take it so personally. Really pisses me off. (Thorn)

When you make successful movies, everyone on set takes care of you, everybody is so nice and you disconnect from reality.

A single moment spent in a business meeting or at a pub is more than enough to reveal the basic human truth that we are all faking it most of the time. We congratulate a rival on a triumph when actually we are choking on spite. We are cordial and attentive to crashing bores.

I think some of the scariest people I've met in my life have been some of the sweetest.

You have big names in Scientology running around pretending to be the nicest people, and they take the care to talk to you and look at you in the eye, but that's all part of the process. That's all part of being in the church - to be a good example, to ingratiate yourself to Hollywood so that they'll say, "Hey, I don't know why you're attacking Scientology." It's all purposeful. I did it, I know!