#guise

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests. ↗

— Gore Vidal

#against #city #confuse #decadent #destroying

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache. ↗

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

#always #disguised #doubts #god #himself

I trust it will not be giving away professional secrets to say that many readers would be surprised, perhaps shocked, at the questions which some newspaper editors will put to a defenseless woman under the guise of flattery. ↗

— Kate Chopin

#defenseless #editors #flattery #giving #guise

All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness. ↗

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

#consistent #disguised #selfishness #sympathy #virtue

Sometimes I go out disguised, but people still recognize me, so I find there is no point in even trying. It would be nice to get away from it, from time to time, but the fact is, there is no place on earth where I can go unrecognized. ↗

— Jonathan Davis

#be nice #disguised #earth #even #fact

But truth is most likely to be exhibited by the general sense of contemporaries, when the feelings of the heart can be expressed without suffering itself to be disguised by the prejudices of man. ↗

— Mercy Otis Warren

#disguised #exhibited #expressed #feelings #general

Though lust do masque in ne'er so strange disguise she's oft found witty, but is never wise. ↗

— John Webster

#found #lust #never #oft #she

Naked is the best disguise. ↗

— Jeanette Winterson

#disguise #naked

Progress everywhere today does seem to come so very heavily disguised as Chaos. ↗

— Joyce Grenfell

#come #disguised #does #everywhere #heavily

Political conflicts distort and disturb a people's sense of distinction between matters of importance and matters of urgency. What is vital is disguised by what is merely a matter of well being. ↗

— John Grierson

#between #conflicts #disguised #distinction #distort