I have been finding treasures in places I did not want to search. I have been hearing wisdom from tongues I did not want to listen. I have been finding beauty where I did not want to look. And I have learned so much from journeys I did not want to take. Forgive me, O Gracious One; for I have been closing my ears and eyes for too long. I have learned that miracles are only called miracles because they are often witnessed by only those who can can see through all of life's illusions. I am ready to see what really exists on other side, what exists behind the blinds, and taste all the ugly fruit instead of all that looks right, plump and ripe.

~ Suzy Kassem

Suzy Kassem Awakening Beautiful Beauty Blind Closing Ears Closing Eyes Conformityredemption Creator Explore Eyes Facades Fake Fruit Fruitful Garden Fruits Garden God God S Garden Grateful Gratitude Illumination Illusion Illusions Journey Life Life Path Light Looking Miracle Miracles Mirage Nature Orchardgracious Path Prayer Quest Real Ripe Search Searching Truth Seeking Truth Sight Substance Superficial Surface Tongues Treasure Truth Truth Path Ugly Vision Wander Wisdom Wise Wonder

Plants are more courageous than almost all human beings: an orange tree would rather die than produce lemons, whereas instead of dying the average person would rather be someone they are not.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Mokokoma Mokhonoana Act Acting Actor Actors Adage Adages Animal Animals Aphorism Aphorisms Audacity Axiom Axioms Balls Be Yourself Boldness Brave Bravery Cojones Conform Conforming Conformity Courage Courageous Courageousness Daring Dead Death Deep Dictum Dictums Die Epigram Epigrams Facade Facades Fear Fearful Fearlessness Fit In Fitting In Fruit Fruits Gallantry Gnome Gnomes Grit Guts Hardihood Heroism Herself Himself Human Human Being Human Beings Humans Humor Humour Insightful Inspiration Inspirational Inspire Inspired Intrepidity Kill Killed Lemon Lemons Made Me Think Make You Think Maxim Maxims Motivated Motivational Motive Moxie Murder Murdered Nerve Nonconformity Oneself Orange People Peoples Person Persons Plant Plants Pluck Pluckiness Pretend Pretender Pretenders Pretending Produce Profound Proverb Proverbs Provoke Thought Quotation Quotations Quote Quotes Satire Satirical Saying Sayings Self Spunk Standing Out Standout Themselves Thought Provoking Thoughtful Tree Trees True Grit Valour Words To Live By Yourself

There’s no such thing as a good or bad person: there are just people who have each been or seem to have been good or bad to you, someone, or some people, thus far.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Mokokoma Mokhonoana Action Actions Aphorism Aphorisms Bad Bad People Bad Person Badness Character Characters Conceal Concealment Facade Facades Good Good People Good Person Goodness Humor Humour Illusion Illusions Impress Impression Impressions Mask Masks Personalities Personality Quotation Quotations Quote Quotes Satire

There are all these relationships that are like cookie cutter shapes; identical and repetitive. Then there are all these relationships that aren't even relationships! Just facades for show and tell. But every once and a while, you'll see this bird breaking out of this cage and it's so weird and it's so obscure and you've hardly ever seen it before so you don't even know at first if you should name it Ugly or Beautiful! Relationships, stories of love, that just shatter the walls around the mind. They made it. They broke through. Like Ugly-Beautiful birds bursting forth from rusty cages! And then suddenly you stop and you think to yourself, Maybe love really is real.

~ C. Joybell C.

C. Joybell C. Facades Fake Love Love Real Love Relationships Relationships Quotes True Love

Even if readers claim that they 'take it all with a grain of salt', they do not really. They yearn to believe, and they believe, because believing is easier than disbelieving, and because anything which is written down is likely to be 'true in a way'.

~ Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch Belief Facades Fiction Readers Reading Writing

Why did everyone like that story so much when it wasn't true? Why was everyone so eager to believe it? Was it because, in real life, ever after's generally stink?

~ Margaret Peterson Haddix

Margaret Peterson Haddix Belief Fairytale Fantasy Facades Happy Ever After Love Made Up Reality Romance Truth

But witchy magic doesn’t listen to please and pretty please, and anyway, I didn’t really care. I only pretended to care because not caring makes me a monster.

~ Franny Billingsley

Franny Billingsley Facades Magic Witches

All that day she felt as if she were acting in a theatre with better actors than herself, and that her bad performance was spoiling the whole affair.

~ Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy Facades Honesty Inferiority Out Of Place

In our more arrogant moments, the sin of pride—or superbia, in Augustine's Latin formulation—takes over our personalities and shuts us off from those around us. We become dull to others when all we seek to do is assert how well things are going for us, just as friendship has a chance to grow only when we fare to share what we are afraid of and regret. The rest is merely showmanship. The flaws whose exposure we so dread, the indiscretions we know we would be mocked for, the secrets that keep our conversations with our so-called friends superficial and inert—all of these emerge as simply part of the human condition.

~ Alain De Botton

Alain De Botton Facades Friendship Human Condition Masks Pride Vanity

Now I have very little respect for the electoral system in the United States. I could have respected it in the early days, when the country was small and we had small population. The system that we have in the United States was set up at a time when the total population was the population of Tennessee. We've stretched it to try to make it work for different kind of problems and in stretching and adapting it, we've lost its meaning. We still have the form but not the meaning. There's a lot of things that we have to look at critically that might have been useful at one time that are no longer useful I think there's some good in everything. There's some bad in everything. But there's so little good in some things that you know for practical purposes they're useless. They're beyond salvation. There's so much good in some things, even though there's bad, that we build on that.

~ Myles Horton

Myles Horton Democracy Electoral System Facades Politics Progress

I'm starting to understand that attempting to be perfect has been the goal of my life. Our lives. Attempting to be this fault-free, smiling person in this loving, happy family that fits so perfectly in this pretty, inoffensive little town. What was so bad about that goal after all? Only that I couldn't do it. That I let everybody down. I've been so down about it, so depressed thinking about all the balls I was trying to juggle that I've dropped, and now the cogs are turning toward total apathy toward it all, everything and all I can think about is that I am a shell of a human being. I'm a pushover. I'm to blame.

~ Abigail Tarttelin

Abigail Tarttelin Apathy Blame Emptiness Facades Guilt Perfection Is Unattainable Responsibility

I felt very happy. To think that I didn't have to torture myself sitting in a smoke-filled room with a painted party smile, watching my date get drunk

~ Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath Dating Facades Happiness Party

If you choose to keep your true face secret, then the people who know you by one mask, must never meet those who know you by another.

~ A.j. Darkholme

A.j. Darkholme Caution Company Consequences Control Deception Facades Mask Secret Truth