No Disguised Quotes & Sayings

There is no lie. The world is presented as it is. Nothing is concealed, except for perhaps the identity of the Creator, which is not so much a lie as it is a reasonable omission. No view is, however, disguised. No composition of the natural landscape is purposefully twisted or deformed so as to deliberately deceive, and no function of the natural world is dressed in sweet deception. No scream is muffled, no laceration sanitised, and the pain of hunger and thirst are naked for all to see and be sickened by. Diseases of every ghastly flavour are on loathsome display, the blights of parasitism are laid bare, and the crippling agonies of old age are public property. The terror of predation is revealed in every anguished look, the fear of infanticide written on every mother's face, and the misery of earthquakes, landslides, cyclones, floods, volcanoes, tsunamis, droughts, heat waves, and wild fires conferred uncensored upon stunned and appropriately intimidated audiences. — John Zande

When we acknowledge the kingdom of the self, we will no longer accept slavery either for ourselves or for others, no matter how it is disguised. — Gerry Spence

The good thing about my part in 'Harry Potter' was that I was pretty well disguised. When I was walking down the street, there was no real recognition factor. Parents would sometimes call their children to come say hello to Mad-Eye, and the kids wouldn't know what they were looking at. — Brendan Gleeson

Man doth usurp all space,
Stares thee, in rock, bush, river, in the face.
Never thine eyes behold a tree;
'Tis no sea thou seest in the sea,
'Tis but a disguised humanity.
To avoid thy fellow, vain thy plan;
All that interests man, is man. — Henry Sutton

Our virtues are often, in reality, no better than vices disguised. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Kit," said a female voice, "what's wrong with the fridge? All the food's gone. No, wait, there's a really ugly alien in here disguised as a leaky lettuce. Hey, I guess I shouldn't be rude to it; it's a visitor. Welcome to our planet, Mr. Alien!"
This was followed by some muffled remark that Nita couldn't make out, possibly something Kit was saying. A moment later, Kit's sister Carmela's voice came out of Nita's refrigerator again. "Hola, Nita, are your phone bills getting too big? This is a weird way to deal with it ... — Diane Duane

I consider it presumption in anyone to pretend to decide what women are or are not, can or cannot be, by natural constitution. They have always hitherto been kept, as far as regards spontaneous development, in so unnatural a state, that their nature cannot but have been greatly distorted and disguised; and no one can safely pronounce that if women's nature were left to choose its direction as freely as men's, and if no artificial bent were attempted to be given to it except that required by the conditions of human society, and given to both sexes alike, there would be any material difference, or perhaps any difference at all, in the character and capacities which would unfold themselves. — John Stuart Mill

Is that it?"
"No. That's a wall."
"It could be disguised."
"You're not very good at looking for things, are you?"
"I'm good at looking for walls. Look, I found another one. — Derek Landy

They used to pour millet on graves or poppy seeds To feed the dead who would come disguised as birds. I put this book here for you, who once lived So that you should visit us no more. — Czeslaw Milosz

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

No, it was the livid red lines scoring Will's wrists, the long, jagged scars that couldn't be disguised, no matter how swiftly Nathan pulled down Will's sleeves. — Jojo Moyes

The complexity of the language of images is disguised by the ease and rapidity with which we read them. I've tried to make work that is as transparent and simple as possible. No matter how much I strip away the result is always more complex to me than I expect. — Michael Craig-Martin

My heavily-cleverly disguised low self-regard manifested itself in my constant showing off, my addiction for publicity, and my intolerable 'me-me-me' attitudes and actions. But it's done, isn't it? And no one can really change, can they? And, hey, it has been a lot of fun being the life-long irresponsible, snarky, nasty art scamp. — Thomas Hoving

What we take for high-mindedness is very often no other than ambition well disguised, that scorns means interests, only to pursuegreater. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

To sum up what is most crucial in Japanese political culture: the Japanese have never been encouraged to think that the force of an idea could measure up to the physical forces of a government. The key to understanding Japanese power relations is that they are unregulated by transcendental concepts. The public has no intellectual means to a consistent judgement of the political aspects of life. The weaker, ideologically inspired political groups or individuals have no leverage of any kind over the status quo other than the little material pressure they are sometimes able to muster. In short, Japanese political practice is a matter of 'might is right' disguised by assurances and tokens of 'benevolence'. — Karel Van Wolferen

What seems to be generosity is often no more than disguised ambition, which overlooks a small interest in order to secure a great one. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

Because it was raining outside the palace
Because there was no rain in her vicinity
Because people kept asking her questions
Because nobody ever asked her anything
Because marriage robbed her of her mother
Because she lost her daughters to the same tradition
Because her son laughed when she opened her mouth
Because he never delighted in anything she said
Because romance carried the rose inside a fist
Because she hungered for the fragrance of the rose
Because the jewels of her life did not belong to her
Because the glow of gold and silk disguised her soul
Because nothing she could say could change the melted music of her space
Because the privilege of her misery was something she could not disgrace
Because no one could imagine reasons for her grief
Because her grief required no magination
Because it was raining outside the alace
Because there was no rain in her vicinity. — June Jordan

I received in inheritance neither god nor a given spot on earth from where I can draw the attention of a god: no one either legated me the well disguised fury of the skeptic, the Sioux guiles of the rationalist or the burning innocence of the atheist. So I dare not throw the stone neither at the one who believes in things which inspire me only doubt, nor at the one who cultivates his doubt as if it was not, just as well, surrounded with darkness. This stone would hit me myself because I am well certain about one thing: the need of consolation that dwells within the human being is impossible to satisfy. — Stig Dagerman

I mean a global warming advocate is as wrong as anybody could be about anything, folks. It's a hoax. There is no man-made global warming. It has been thoroughly debunked. The fact that it's a hoax has been proven, by them. E-mails that were uncovered at East Anglia University in Great Britain show that they worked together to perpetuate the hoax, that they lied about data, that they eliminate data that contradicted their political belief. So you'd have to assume from that that they are political advocates disguised as scientists who are purposely engaging in misinformation. — Rush Limbaugh

We disguised our political demands behind religion and multiculturalism, and deliberately labeled any objection to our demands as racism. Even worse, we did this to the very generation who had been socialist sympathizers in their youth, people sympathetic to charges of racism, who like Dave Gomer were now in middle-career management posts. It is no wonder then that the authorities were unprepared to deal with politicized religion as ideological agitation; they felt racist if they tried to stop us. — Maajid Nawaz

We can form no idea of the millions of pounds that are spent every year in the making of dress in the West. The dress-making business has become a regular science. What colour of dress will suit with the complexion of the girl and the colour of her hair, what special feature of her body should be disguised, and what displayed to the best advantage-these and many other like important points, the dressmakers have seriously to consider. Again, the dress that ladies of very high position wear, others have to wear also, otherwise they lose their caste! This is FASHION. — Swami Vivekananda

Most of us have small, sad places somewhere in our hearts and my father was no exception. Sometimes we let our feelings escape in bursts of anger. Sometimes we make long, dismal faces. My father did neither. He felt deeply but he kept his feelings to himself. Or rather, being a writer, he let them escape in his writing. But even here he disguised them, unable even in fiction to allow himself to take himself too seriously. — Christopher Milne

She would be no match against those thugs disguised as women. When — Jamie Begley

Turning off all the lights, I went into the bathroom and closed the door. I stood in the darkness before the mirror, my hand on the light switch. I forced myself to flick it on.
In the flood of light against white tile, the face and shoulders of a strange
a fierce, bald, very dark Negro
glared at me from the glass. He in no way resembled me.
The transformation was total and shocking. I had expected to see myself disguised, but this was something else. I was imprisoned in the flesh of an utter stranger, an unsympathetic one with whom I felt no kinship. All traces of the John Griffin I had been were wiped from existence. — John Howard Griffin

All you imagined, no matter how wild it might seem, was no more than a disguised version of what you already knew. — Stephen King

What do they mean to you?" he asked, leaning back into the portable thicket of his gray vested suit. Beverly took back her pages and studied them. After a while, she looked up. "They mean to me that the universe . . . growls, and sings. No, shouts." The learned astronomer was shocked. In dealing with the public he was often confronted by lunatics and visionaries, some of whose theories were elegant, some absurd, and some, perhaps, right on the mark. But those were usually old bearded men who lived in lofts crowded with books and tools, eccentrics who walked around the city, pushing carts full of their belongings, madmen from state institutions that could not hold them. There was always something arresting and true about their thoughts, as if their lunacy were as much a gift as an affliction, though the heavy weight of the truth they sensed so strongly had clouded their reason, and all the wonder in what they said was shattered and disguised. He — Mark Helprin

What would happen if you set me free?"
"I can't," he said, shaking his head. "Even if I had the key to those chains and let you go, Nero would beat the snot out of me."
"Scratch that idea."
He lifted his chin and disguised an emotion I couldn't read. "You mean it?"
"No one takes a beating for me."
For the first time, Finn was silent.
His jeans rustled as he stood up to leave. When he was out of sight, I heard him mumble to himself, "I wish I could give you a blanket."
I loved that kid immediately. — Dannika Dark

It is my view that what is important is cutting government spending, however spending is financed. A so-called deficit is a disguised and hidden form of taxation. The real burden on the public is what government spends (and mandates others to spend). As I have said repeatedly, I would rather have government spend one trillion dollars with a deficit of a half a trillion than have government spend two trillion dollars with no deficit. — Milton Friedman

Why should I not love her? Harry, I do love her. She is everything to me in life. Night after night I go to see her play. One evening she is Rosalind, and the next evening she is Imogen. I have seen her die in the gloom of an Italian Tomb, sucking the poison from her lover's lips. I have watched her wandering through the forest of Arden, disguised as a pretty boy in hose and doublet and dainty cap. She has been mad, and has come into the presence of a guilty king, and given him rue to wear, and bitter herbs to taste of. She has been innocent, and the black hands of jealousy have crushed her reed-like throat. I have seen her in every age and in every costume. Ordinary women never appeal to one's imagination. They are limited to their century. No glamour ever transfigures them. One knows their minds as easily as one knows their bonnets. One can always find them. There is no mystery in one of them. — Oscar Wilde

No church that panders to the zeitgeist deserves respect, and very shortly it will not get respect, except from those who find it politically useful, and that is less respect than disguised contempt. — Robert Bork

Stillness is your essential nature. What is stillness? The inner space or awareness in which the words on this page are being perceived and become thoughts. Without that awareness, there would be no perception, no thoughts, no world. You are that awareness, disguised as a person. — Eckhart Tolle

There be delights that will fetch the day about from sun to sun and rock the tedious year as in a delightful dream ... For a garden is Arcady brought home. It is man's bit of gaudy make-believe - his well-disguised fiction of an unvexed Paradise ... a world where gayety knows no eclipse and winter and rough weather are held at bay. — J. D. Sedding

No cancer, if that's what you're thinking, she'd say if anyone commented on her runway-model thinness, which she ordinarily disguised with billowing dresses or caftans. I'm just in training for the final lap around the track. — Stephen King

A priest is an enemy of society disguised as a sheep."

Mother laughed.

"No, professor!" burst out Antonio. "Maybe they dressed up as sheep in your day. Now, they don't even bother anymore."

"You're right about that, young man. In my time, they were killers. Today, they can't kill anymore, so they terrorize people and inform on them instead. It comes to the same thing. — Agustin Gomez-Arcos

We, who had no designated safe havens where we could carry our vomit for other people to clean up for us - who were too urgently needed to afford to pause for occasional maintenance, too dignified to succumb to emotional fatigue - not for us the overpaid charlatans disguised as therapists, who would only poke at our scabs and suck our money. No. We, the unbreakable ones, we ourselves were all the therapy that we needed. — N. Maria Kwami

You're going to hell, you know," she hissed.
Scott turned abruptly. "No, lady, you've got it all wrong. I've been to hell. That angel pulled me out." He laughed out loud as the nasty woman's eyes widened and she ran away. It had just hit him.
Angel.
The name he'd always called Des. From day one. A name he'd never used on another woman.
"My angel disguised as a demon," he murmured to himself in wonder.
There was a whole lot of irony in there somewhere. — Heather R. Blair

Egos are drawn to bigger egos. Darkness cannot recognize light. Only light can recognize light. So don't believe that the light is outside you or that it can only come through one particular form. If only your master is an incarnation of God, then who are you? Any kind of exclusivity is identification with form, and identification with form means ego, no matter how well disguised. Use the master's presence to reflect your own identity beyond name and form back to you and to become more intensely present yourself. You will soon realize that there is no "mine" or "yours" in presence. Presence is one. — Eckhart Tolle

Unlike the student protests in the 1960s, by using religion and multiculturalism as a cover, we brought an entirely foreign lexicon to the table. We knowingly presented political demands disguised as religion and multiculturalism, and deliberately labelled any objection to our demands as racism and bigotry. Even worse, we did this to the very generation who had been socialist sympathisers in their youth, people sympathetic to charges of racism, who were now in middle-career management posts; people like Dave Gomer. It is no wonder then that the authorities were unprepared to deal with politicised religion as ideological agitation, and felt racist if they tried to stop us. — Maajid Nawaz

And he still had those two big nuts in his pocket that he'd picked up from the Purdys' barn workshop, the one with the green-and-yellow overspray on the floor, a green-and-yellow spray that didn't match the hard green and yellow of the John Deere, but did match the green and yellow of fair fire hydrants . . . and those nuts in his pocket. Why would you need a whole bag of big nuts, but no bolts? You wouldn't - unless they were shrapnel. And that nagging intuition he'd had by the Varied Industries building: he'd been walking by fire hydrants all morning, the same yellow and green as the overspray on the Purdys' barn floor. A bomb. The Purdys had built a bomb. The farm kid who'd been brain-injured by IEDs in Iraq had built himself an IED. A bomb disguised as a fire hydrant that was probably standing on the Concourse, right where the candidates would be marching by, right on the curb. — John Sandford

Try and travel alone, or - if you are married - with your spouse. It will be harder work, no one will be looking after you, but this is the only way of truly leaving your country. Group travel is just a disguised way of pretending to go abroad, where you speak your own language, obey the leader of the pack, and concern yourself more with the internal gossip of the group than with the place you are visiting. — Paulo Coelho

[Shakespeare realized that] Women are able to understand themselves better on a personal level and survive in the world if they dress in men's clothing, thus living underground, safe (...). The presence of women disguising themselves as men dictates that the play be a comedy; women remaining in their frocks, a tragedy. In four great tragedies -Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear- almost all the women die (...).
How much the women have to adhere to the rules and regulations of their enviroment makes a large difference. Once Rosalind [disguised as a man in As You Like It] has run away from the court, she has no institutional structures to deal with. Ophelia [in her frocks] is surrounded tightly by institutional structures of family, court, and politics; only by going mad can be get out of it all. — Tina Packer

While it would have been straightforward, and perfectly legal, to allow Irish banks or the Greek state to default to their private creditors (so as to respect the no-bailout clause), the authorities' guilty desire to bail out the German and French banks (without telling taxpayers that this was what they were doing) led to the need to violate the no-bailout rule by concocting another rule: the no-default rule, which was never part of Europe's original set of rules. (...) Both the freshly minted no-default rule and the original no-bailout clause were political whims of the strong disguised as legal constraints upon the weak. In reality, the strong break their rules at will and concoct new rules whenever they think it suits them. — Yanis Varoufakis

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

Look, it's easy to outsmart a werewolf or a vampire," Jace said. "They're no smarter than anyone else. But faeries live for hundreds of years and they're as cunning as snakes. They can't lie, but they love to engage in creative truth-telling. They'll find out whatever it is you want most in the world and give it to you - with a sting in the tail of the gift that will make you regret you ever wanted it in the first place."
He sighed. "They're not really about helping people. More about harm disguised as help. — Cassandra Clare

Though it is disguised by the illusion that a bureaucracy accountable to a majority of voters, and susceptible to the pressure of organized minorities, is not exercising compulsion, it is evident that the more varied and comprehensive the regulation becomes, the more the state becomes a despotic power as against the individual. For the fragment of control over the government which he exercises through his vote is in no effective sense proportionate to the authority exercised over him by the government. — Walter Lippmann

Survival, with honor, that outmoded and all-important word, is as difficult as ever and as all-important to a writer. Those who do not last are always more beloved since no one has to see them in their long, dull, unrelenting, no-quarter-given-and-no-quarter-received, fights that they make to do something as they believe it should be done before they die. Those who die or quit early and easy and with every good reason are preferred because they are understandable and human. Failure and well-disguised cowardice are more human and more beloved. — Ernest Hemingway,

She is everything to me in life. Night after night I go to see her play. One evening she is Rosalind, and the next evening she is Imogen. I have seen her the in the gloom of an Italian tomb, sucking the poison from her lover's lips. I have watched her wandering through the forest of Arden, disguised as a pretty boy in hose and doublet and dainty cap. She has been mad, and has come into the presence of a guilty king, and given him rue to wear, and bitter herbs to taste of. She has been innocent, and the black hands of jealousy have crushed her reed-like throat. I have seen her in every age and in every costume. Ordinary women never appeal to one's imagination. They are limited to their century. No glamour ever transfigures them. One knows their minds as easily as one knows their bonnets. One can always find them. There is no mystery in any of them: — Oscar Wilde

I have generally been denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious I am no Christian, except mere infant baptism make me one; and as to being a Deist, I know not, strictly speaking, whether I am one or not, for I have never read their writings; mine will therefore determine the matter; for I have not in the least disguised my sentiments, but have written freely without any conscious knowledge of prejudice for, or against any man, sectary or party whatever; but wish that good sense, truth and virtue may be promoted and flourish in the world, to the detection of delusion, superstition, and false religion; and therefore my errors in the succeeding treatise, which may be rationally pointed out, will be readily rescinded. — Ethan Allen

And the City, in its own way, gets down for you, cooperates, smoothing its sidewalks, correcting its curbstones, offering you melons and green apples on the corner. Racks of yellow head scarves; strings of Egyptian beads. Kansas fried chicken and something with raisins call attention to an open window where the aroma seems to lurk. And if that's not enough, doors to speakeasies stand ajar and in that cool dark place a clarinet coughs and clears its throat waiting for the woman to decide on the key. She makes up her mind and as you pass by informs your back that she is daddy's little angel child. The City is smart at this: smelling and good and looking raunchy; sending secret messages disguised as public signs: this way, open here, danger to let colored only single men on sale woman wanted private room stop dog on premises absolutely no money down fresh chicken free delivery fast. And good at opening locks, dimming stairways. Covering your moans with its own. — Toni Morrison

During long, slow distance training, you should think of yourself as a thoroughbred disguised as a plow horse. No need to give yourself away by running fast. — Marty Liquori

Not long ago, I reread Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian. I was amazed to discover what she had written in her note about the difficult composition of the book
which had taken her many decades:
Another thing virtually impossible, to take a feminine character as a central figure ... Women's lives are much too limited or else too secret. If a woman does recount her own life she is promptly reproached for no longer being truly feminine.
We all struggle with this
still. The woman who chooses to write disguised as a male character is hoping to avoid the problem. But you cannot avoid the problem of being a woman. — Erica Jong

It is not pleasant to recall something they must view with regret. They are, therefore, unwilling to direct their thoughts backward to illspent
hours, and those whose vices become obvious if they review the past, even the vices which were disguised under some allurement of momentary pleasure, do not have the courage to revert to those hours. No one willingly turns his thought back to the past, unless all his acts have been submitted to the censorship of his
conscience, which is never deceived; he who has ambitiously coveted, proudly scorned, recklessly conquered, treacherously betrayed, greedily seized, or lavishly squandered, must needs fear his own memory. — Seneca.

A God who is trying to convince people that He is a God is not a God! He is just a clown disguised as a God! No supreme power can be in need of convincing men! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Unjust criticism is usually disguised compliment. It often means that you have aroused jealously and envy. Remember that no one ever kicks a dead log. — Dale Carnegie

There's no briefing sheet on what to do when a supernatural soul-sucking horror disguised as a beautiful woman starts crying on your shoulder. — Charles Stross

No chemical compound in the atmosphere has a worse reputation than CO2, thanks to the single-minded demonization of this natural and essential atmospheric gas by advocates of government control and energy production. The incredible list of supposed horrors that increasing carbon dioxide will bring the world is pure belief disguised as science. — William Happer

He wasn't a bad person. He didn't want to fight. The trouble was that he'd tried to be part of the larger questions, tried to become part of politics and history. Happiness had a smaller location, though this wasn't something to flaunt, of course; very few would stand up and announce, 'Actually, I'm a coward,' but his timidity might be disguised, well, in a perfectly ordinary existence situated between meek contours ... Cowardice needed its facade, its reasoning, like anything else if it was to be his life's principle. Contentment is no easy matter. One had to situate it cannily, camoflauge it, pretend it was something else. — Kiran Desai

It wasn't like in the storybooks. No witches lurked at crossroads disguised as crones, waiting to reward travelers who shared their bread. Genies didn't burst from lamps, and talking fish didn't bargain for their lives. In all the world, there was only one place humans could get wishes: Brimstone's shop. And there was only one currency he accepted. It wasn't gold, or riddles, or kindness, or any other fairy-tale nonsense, and no, it wasn't souls, either. It was weirder than any of that. It was teeth. — Laini Taylor

Berdyaev remarks that "no one ever proposes evil ends: evil is always disguised as good, and detracts from the good."[49] Yet the resort to violence is precisely where evil seeps in. Besides, — Alexandre Christoyannopoulos

To every reversal of people's soveregnity, to every disappearance of the Republic corresponds a frank or disguised restitution in force of the regal justice. 'Tell me, according to what you judge and I'll tell you who you are. [ ... ] No axiom in politics is more certain than this. — Francois Mitterrand

You will be taken through training, tests and practice of being about to tell the difference between what's counterfeit over what is real. During training you're not taught to study the thousands of fake bills, for example, you are taught to KNOW the authentic ones. So, no matter how the counterfeit is disguised, you will immediately discern that it's not real. — Yvonne Pierre

I didn't have a bad childhood, but there was no magic in it. No one hit me, no one neglected me, but there wasn't much that was childlike about it. Even fun involved barely disguised lessons about my future and my father's plans. It is only now, away from the presence of my family, that I can admit that to myself. — Amy Engel