Masks And Identity Quotes & Sayings

We all want to live in a world where we can make a difference ... That's why Spider-Man fights the good fight. Or Captain Marvel. Or me. Or ... There are a lot of us. And we don't all wear masks these days. Iron Man went public. So did Captain America. Others. Probably because it's harder to keep secrets in an internet surveillance age. But I think some of it, too, is that the ethical paradox can wear you down. No one on the white-hat side has ever hidden his or her identity with less than noble intent: to make the fight about something bigger than us. To represent a greater justice, where the focus can be on right and wrong ... and not on whether the bad guys will exact reprisal on those close to us. And sometimes you have to lie ... because you can justify a lie if lives are riding on it. Even as you fight for, as the saying goes, truth and justice ... even if you're a lawyer who has sworn to live by the truth ... you willingly bear false witness. — Mark Waid

As a good girl, my worship was small and my service was toxic because I didn't understand the completeness of my rescue. I knew I was going to heaven when I died, but I thought my life on earth was all up to me. Jesus saved me, and now he was standing back with his arms crossed, waiting to see how I would live my life. Service seemed a burden. Worship felt contrived. I had received Christ by faith for my salvation, but I was working hard for the rest. Until he said *enough*. When I began to understand that my true identity was not in how I looked, how I felt, or the lies I believed, my masks began to lose their staying power. It wasn't because I was trying hard to remove them. It was because I was seeing Jesus for who he really is, and in turn I was letting him see me. — Emily P. Freeman

The essence of true love is mutual recognition-two individuals seeing each other as they really are. We all know that the usual approach is to meet someone we like and put our best self forward, or even at times a false self, one we believe will be more appealing to the person we want to attract. When our real self appears in its entirety, when the good behavior becomes too much to maintain or the masks are taken away, disappointment comes. All too often individuals feel, after the fact-when feelings are hurt and hearts are broken-that it was a case of mistaken identity, that the loved one is a stranger. They saw what they wanted to see rather than what was really there. — Bell Hooks

My mother said the bizarre name Raccoona had surely been inspired, at least on a subliminal level, by the masks raccoons don't wear but simply have - the ones given them by nature ... [S]he pointed out that Le Guin had suspected all along that Raccoona and Tiptree were two authors that came from the same source, but in a letter to Alice she wrote that she preferred Tiptree to Raccoona: 'Raccoona, I think, has less control, thus less wit and power.'
Le Guin, Mother said, had understood something deep. 'When you take on a male persona, something happens.'
When I asked her what that was, she sat back in her chair, waved her arm, and smiled. 'You get to be the father. — Siri Hustvedt

The new cosmic story emerging into human awareness overwhelms all previous conceptions of the universe for the simple reason that it draws them all into its comprehensive fullness. Who can learn what this means and remain calm? — Brian Swimme

Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them
the one, in fact, which is not a mask. — W. H. Auden

Theater will always be a huge part of my life. The high I get from doing theater is not, quite honestly, matched by many things. I like the fact that when you step out on the stage, for that given night, for better or for worse, you are the master of the boards. I love it to death. — Chris Pine

Either we can be victimized and become victims, or we can be victimized and rise above it. Often it is easier to play the victim than take off our masks and ask for help. We get comfortable with our victim status. It becomes our identity and is hard to give up. The Israelites often played the victim card, and I love what God finally tells them, "You have circled this mountain long enough. Now turn north" (Deuteronomy 2:3 [NASB]). Turn north! It's time to move on! Self-pity, fear, pride, and negativity paralyze us. Taking off our masks takes courage, but if we don't do it, we will remain in our victim status and end up stunted.6 — Lysa TerKeurst

You should never give up on your dreams, no matter how farfetched they seem. — Vi Keeland

There was a closet somewhere inside me. Every day I went near that just to open the door and see all the masks of my face that I hid there.
To select one which isn't me but still would look like me, which would hide me from the world in a better way. Day after day I stored so many masks in that closet that one day I searched for my real face in it and it wasn't there. I never understood whether I lost it or I forgot how it looked like, the more I searched the most lost I felt. — Akshay Vasu

You must remember, family is often born of blood, but it doesn't depend on blood. Nor is it exclusive of friendship. Family members can be your best friends, you know. And best friends, whether or not they are related to you, can be your family. — Trenton Lee Stewart

Boys will be boys, that's what people say. No one ever mentions how girls have to be something other than themselves altogether. We are to stifle the same feelings that boys are encouraged to display. We are to use gossip as a means of policing ourselves
this way those who do succumb to sex but are not damaged by it are damaged instead by peer malice. Girls demand a covenant because if one gives in, others will be expected to do the same. We are to remain united in cruelty, ignorance, and aversion. Or we are to starve the flesh from our bones, penalizing the body for its nature, castigating ourselves for advances we are powerless to prevent. We are to make false promises then resist the attentions solicited. Basically we are to become expert liars. (p. 65) — Hilary Thayer Hamann

The basis of effective government is public confidence, and that confidence is endangered when ethical standards falter or appear to falter. — John F. Kennedy

Who was the real me? I can only repeat: I was a man of many faces.

At meetings I was earnest, enthusiastic, and committed; among friends, unconstrained and given to teasing; with Marketa, cynical and fitfully witty; and alone (and thinking of Marketa), unsure of myself and as agitated as a schoolboy.

Was the last face the real one?

No. They were all real: I was not a hypocrite, with one real face and several false ones. I had several faces because I was young and didn't know who I was or wanted to be. (I was frightened by the differences between one face and the next; none of them seemed to fit me properly, and I groped my way clumsily among them.) — Milan Kundera

Spiderman and Superman were closeted bodybuilders: they wore bodysuits that decently covered their flesh and masks that disguised their identity; their lives were rigidly divided between body-less bourgeois respectability and muscular super-hero fantasy; they led a 'double-life' that no one knew about and were never to be seen at the gym. — Mark Simpson

Artists hide their identities in the brushstrokes of their paintings, the verses in their cantos, and the sentences in their novels. The true face of an artist is never on his face and this is what he prefers. Others misunderstand this displaced melancholy with an absence of melancholy. — Bruce Crown

sometimes we wear masks so long
to hide what we truly feel
that those layers become
an extra skin, a part of our identity — R H Sin

The home is the center of life. It is a refuge from the grind of work, the pressure of school, and the menace of the streets. We say that at home, we can "be ourselves." Everywhere else, we are someone else. At home, we remove our masks.

The home is the wellspring of personhood. It is where our identity takes root and blossoms, where as children, we imagine, play, and question, and as adolescents, we retreat and try. As we grow older, we hope to settle into a place to raise a family or pursue work. When we try to understand ourselves, we often begin by considering the kind of home in which we were raised. — Matthew Desmond

There were only 170 neurologists in Britain then and, whether spoken or unspoken, there was this insidious feeling. How can Bannister, a mere athlete, probably spoilt by all the publicity and fame, dare aspire to neurology? But I'd done a lot of research, and my academic record was very good. — Roger Bannister

No matter what identity we cling to, it takes great courage to step out of the old masks we wear and the old scripts that we live by, and open ourselves to the mysterious inner core of our being. — Adyashanti