The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul.
~
A Room With A View
by
E. M. Forster
Paint stripes on a toad, he does not become a tiger.
~
A Clash of Kings
by
George R. R. Martin
There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely - or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands.
~
Lady Windermere's Fan
by
Oscar Wilde
He was among men who cloaked their lives with religion in order to follow their real purposes unseen of men.
~
Secret Worship
by
Algernon Blackwood
"It's the people who try to be clever who never are; the people who are clever never think of trying to be."
~
The Battle Of The Strong
by
Gilbert Parker
He had a certain air of being a handsome man--which he was not; and a certain air of being a well-bred man--which he was not. It was mere swagger and challenge; but in this particular, as in many others, blustering assertion goes for proof, half over the world.
~
Little Dorrit
by
Charles Dickens
"If you lived in London, where the whole system is one of false good-fellowship, and you may know a man for twenty years without finding out that he hates you like poison, you would soon have your eyes opened. There we do unkind things in a kind way: we say bitter things in a sweet voice: we always give our friends chloroform when we tear them to pieces."
~
You Never Can Tell
by
George Bernard Shaw
She stood for some moments gazing at the sisters, with affection beaming in one eye, and calculation out of the other.
~
Martin Chuzzlewit
by
Charles Dickens
No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.
~
The Scarlet Letter
by
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.
~
The Moon and Sixpence
by
W. Somerset Maugham