Social Masks Quotes

God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.

Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding.

One of the most welcome aspects of office work is that you do not need to be fully yourself.

Pretending is the grease of non-relationships. Pretending is how you and I get through the day without ever having to know each other. When I walk in the room, you say to me, 'How are you?' Well, you don't want to know. And, frankly, I don't want to tell you. So I just say, 'Fine,' and you go, 'Fine.' And off we go.

As a rule, we go about with masks, we go about looking honest, and we are able to conceal ourselves all through the day.

I do believe at the end of the night when you're with your family, the character gets hung up on the door like a coat, and is there to be taken on the next morning.

I don't think Roger Dodger is really about men. I think it is more about relationships and about how you present yourself, not only to the opposite sex, but to yourself. What lies are you going to tell yourself in order to get through the day?

It's important to remember that you're born naked, and the rest is drag.

Women have been charged with deviousness and duplicity since the dawn of civilization so they have never been able to pretend that their masks were anything but masks. It is a slender case but perhaps it does mean that women have always been in closer contact with reality than men: it would seem to be the just recompense for being deprived of idealism.

People always say, 'My family is so normal,' and when you poke into them, they never are.

Humans are different in private than in the presence of others. While the private persona merges into the social persona in varying degrees, the union is never complete. Something is always held back.

In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight.

The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has as yet discovered.

You may live a long while with some people and be on friendly terms with them and never speak openly with them from your soul.

I am fascinated by that notion of people are never as they seem. And that doesn't make them good or bad. It's just we don't ever really show ourselves if we don't have to.

I think behind closed doors people behave differently no matter what period we're looking at, because people have to stand up straight in public but can slouch behind closed doors - can you imagine wearing those corsets?

If you can understand the inner life, then you can wear the uniform, the tattoos, or whatnot and realize that the things that are different about us become superficial.

After all, in private, we're all misfits

Pretending is the basis of civilised society, and it is sometimes necessary for all of us. Without it we are nothing more than a pack of snarling dogs.

A German writer observes: "The noblest characters only show themselves in their real light. All others act comedy with their fellow-men even unto the grave.

Isn't beer the holy libation of sincerity? The potion that dispels all hypocrisy, any charade of fine manners? The drink that does nothing worse than incite its fans to urinate in all innocence, to gain weight in all frankness?

The weakness of men is the facade of strength; the strength of women is the facade of weakness.

Private faces in public places Are wiser and nicer Than public faces in private places.

All societies end up wearing masks.

People might look great on the outside but they all have something that they're dealing with.