These flattering mirrors reflect imperfectly what is within; the countenance is often a gay deceiver. What defects of mind lie hidden under its beauty! What fair exteriors conceal base souls! — Pierre Corneille
Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit, and lost without deserving. — William Shakespeare
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right. — Thomas Paine
Flattery is like a painted armor; only for show. — Socrates
A false path must be tensely and angrily defended by those it has deceived. — Vernon Howard
Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast. — Jane Austen
The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum. — Charles Caleb Colton
The difference between false memories and true ones is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant. — Salvador Dali
Common Enemy Quotes
A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. — Samuel Adams
The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy. — Sam Levenson
I will give you my definition of a nation, and you can add the adjective 'Jewish.' A Nation is, in my mind, an historical group of men of a recognizable cohesion held together by a common enemy. Then, if you add to that the word 'Jewish' you have what I understand to be the Jewish nation. — Theodor Herzl
A common danger unites even the bitterest enemies. — Aristotle
The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. ...The real enemy then is humanity itself. — Aurelio Peccei
What are you going to do to preserve a tradition that is the peculiar and unique culture that Judaism inculcates? The American Jewish community is not going to survive by lining up against its common enemy. — Arthur Hertzberg
The worst enemy of life, freedom and the common decencies is total anarchy; their second worst enemy is total efficiency. — Aldous Huxley
The state remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men. — H. L. Mencken
It is a common mistake to think of failure as the enemy of success. Failure is a teacher-a harsh one, but the best. Pull your failures to pieces looking for the reason. Put your failure to work for you. — Thomas J. Watson
To say that a man is your Friend means commonly no more than this, that he is not your enemy. — Henry David Thoreau
Ways To Describe Quotes
The best way to describe myself would be...unpredictable. — Kendrick Lamar
There is a word in South Africa - Ubuntu - that describes his greatest gift: his recognition that we are all bound together in ways that can be invisible to the eye; that there is a oneness to humanity; that we achieve ourselves by sharing ourselves with others, and caring for those around us. — Barack Obama
People cheat on each other in a hundred different ways: indifference, emotional neglect, contempt, lack of respect, years of refusal of intimacy. Cheating doesn't begin to describe the ways that people let each other down. — Esther Perel
Negotiation is often described as the art of letting the other side have your way. You have to give the other side a chance to put stuff on the table voluntarily. — Chris Voss
It is hard to describe how much you learn by actually doing — by carefully considering all factors, making a decision, and then taking responsibility for the outcome. Unlocks wisdom that cannot be arrived at any other way. — Greg Brockman
Describing Woodstock as the "big bang," I think that's a great way to describe it, because the important thing about it wasn't how many people were there or that it was a lot of truly wonderful music that got played. — David Crosby
I am the model middle child. I am patient and I like to take care of everyone. Being called nice is a compliment. It's not a boring way to describe me. — Jennifer Garner
The process of open adoption is not discussed in the way it should be. Everyone I know who has adopted domestically has at least one tragic story. It was important to me to be able to describe those situations. — Jennifer Gilmore
You know, I'm the tough guy with taste, good friends, you know, describe me that I'm the tough guy, period, the way others do. But, you know, I'll tell you, I'm a complete wuss when it comes to my own kids. — Harvey Weinstein
The best way to describe our live show is that it's like hanging out with your best friends from TV for a night. — James Murray
Ways Of Seeing Quotes
The mirror is a worthless invention. The only way to truly see yourself is in the reflection of someone else's eyes. — Voltaire
The surest way to determine whether one possesses the love of God is to see whether he or she loves his or her neighbor. These two loves are never separated. Rest assured, the more you progress in love of neighbor the more your love of God will increase. — Teresa of Avila
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity... and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself. — William Blake
Desire to see God, be fearful of losing Him, and find joy in everything that can lead to Him. If you act in this way, you will always live in great peace. — Teresa of Avila
One of the most common ways to overcome resistance to change is to educate people about it beforehand. Communication of ideas helps people see the need for and the logic of a change. The education process can involve one-on-one discussions, presentations to groups, or memos and reports. — John P. Kotter
My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing. — Marcel Proust
Don't tell me you're not beautiful. You're the kind of beautiful the blind would see if we could figure out some way to give them three seconds of sight. — Shane Koyczan
One must speak for a struggle for a new culture, that is, for a new moral life that cannot but be intimately connected to a new intuition of life, until it becomes a new way of feeling and seeing reality — Antonio Gramsci
Respect is not fear and awe; it...[is]the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his unique individuality. Respect, thus, implies the absence of exploitation. I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me. — Erich Fromm
It's never enough to just tell people about some new insight. Rather, you have to get them to experience it a way that evokes its power and possibility. Instead of pouring knowledge into people's heads, you need to help them grind anew set of eyeglasses so they can see the world in a new way. — John Seely Brown
Food Mottos Quotes
Everything in moderation, including moderation. — Oscar Wilde
Motto of the U.S. airline industry - "We're Hoping to Have a Motto Announcement in About an Hour." — Dave Barry
The motto of West African cooking is that if the food doesn't set fire to the tablecloth the cook is being stingy with the pepper. — Ben Aaronovitch
Why? is the boy's motto, why does, why is, why not? Food, weather, time, fires, sea and season, clothes and cars and people; it's all grist to the mill of why. — Keri Hulme
The supreme mystery of despotism, its prop and stay, is to keep men in a state of deception, and with the specious title of religion to cloak the fear by which they must be held in check, so that they will fight for their servitude as if for salvation. — Baruch Spinoza
I like peasants-they are not sophisticated enough to reason speciously. — Baron de Montesquieu
The ruin of the human heart is self-interest, which the American merchant calls self-service. We have become a self-service populace, and all our specious comforts --the automatic elevator, the escalator, the cafeteria --are depriving us of volition and moral and physical energy. — Edward Dahlberg
We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. — Richard Buckminster Fuller
When Eve upon the first of Men The apple press'd with specious cant, Oh! what a thousand pities then That Adam was not Adamant! — Thomas Hood
Conscience, as a mentor, the guide and compass of every act, leads ever to happiness. When the individual can stay alone with his or her conscience and get its approval, without knowing force or specious knowledge, then he or she begins to know what real happiness is. — William George Jordan
The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love. — Don Barthelme
The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love. — Niccolo Machiavelli
It's difficult for most people to imagine the creative process in tennis. Seemingly it's just an athletic matter of hitting the ball consistently well within the boundaries of the court. That analysis is just as specious as thinking that the difficulty in portraying King Lear on stage is learning all the lines. — Virginia Wade
Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral: a thing as simple and specious as a statue to the first glance, and yet on examination, as lively and interesting as a forest in detail. — Robert Louis Stevenson
Jargon is the verbal sleight of hand that makes the old hat seem newly fashionable; it gives an air of novelty and specious profundity to ideas that, if stated directly, would seem superficial, stale, frivolous, or false. The line between serious and spurious scholarship is an easy one to blur, with jargon on your side. — David Lehman
One to destroy, is murder by the law; and gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe; to murder thousands, takes a specious name, 'War's glorious art', and gives immortal fame. — Edward Young
There is a constant rush to judgment in Foucault. He is filled with specious generalizations, false categories, distortions, fudging, pretenses to knowledge in areas where he was ignorant. He had no ability whatsoever to distinguish among historical sources, where he makes terrible blunders. — Camille Paglia
The vigour of government is essential to the security of liberty. . . . a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people, than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. — Alexander Hamilton
Like one of those fake-smart, middlebrow TV shows, the speciousness of The Social Network is disguised by topicality. It's really a movie excusing Hollywood ruthlessness. — Armond White
Ashamed of the many frailties they feel within, all men endeavor to hide themselves, their ugly nakedness, from each other, and wrapping up the true motives of their hearts in the specious cloak of sociableness, and their concern for the public good, they are in hopes of concealing their filthy appetites and the deformity of their desires. — Bernard Mandeville
The maxim of Cleobulus, "Mediocrity is best," has been long considered a universal principle, extending through the whole compass of life and nature. The experience of every age seems to have given it new confirmation, and to show that nothing, however specious or alluring, is pursued with propriety or enjoyed with safety beyond certain limits. — Samuel Johnson
Ashamed of the many frailties they feel within, all men endeavor to hide themselves, their ugly nakedness, from each other, and wrapping up the true motives of their hearts in the specious cloak of sociableness, and their concern for the public good, they are in hopes of concealing their filthy appetites and the deformity of their desires. — Bernard de Mandeville
English, as a subject, never really got over its upstart nature. It tries to bulk itself up with hopeless jargon and specious complexity, tries to imitate subjects it can never be. — Zadie Smith
America overflows with specious "victims" demanding redress for spurious grievances. However, one genuinely oppressed minority is getting overdue relief. Beginning with spring training in Arizona and Florida, Major League Baseball, taking pity on traumatized pitchers, is directing umpires to enforce the strike zone. — George Will
The Northern onslaught upon slavery was no more than a piece of specious humbug designed to conceal its desire for economic control of the Southern states. — Charles Dickens
In the practice of art... it is necessary to keep a watchful and jealous eye over ourselves; idleness, assuming the specious disguise of industry... may be employed to evade and shuffle off real labor - the real labor of thinking. — Joshua Reynolds
My best experience as a writer was working with Michael Ondaatje. He let me dismantle his novel, reimagine it, and still had dinner with me and gave me good notes. But the best thing about writing has been the writer's life, the sense of being expressed, the ownership of the day, the entirely specious sense of freedom we have, however slave we are to some boss or other. I wouldn't trade it for any other life. — Anthony
For what end shall we be connected with men, of whom this is the character and conduct? Is it, that we may see our wives and daughters the victims of legal prostitution; soberly dishonoured; speciously polluted; the outcasts of delicacy and virtue, and the lothing of God and man? — Timothy Dwight
Identity is a bag and a gag. Yet it exists for me with all the force of a fatal disease. Obviously I am here, a mind and a body. To say there's no proof my body exists would be arty and specious and if my mind is more ephemeral, less provable, the solution of being a writer with solid (touchable, tearable, burnable) books is as close as anyone has come to a perfect answer. — Judith Rossner
Our specious present as such is very short. We do, however, experience passing events; part of the process of the passage of events is directly there in our experience, including some of the past and some of the future. — George Herbert Mead
When for so long you can't get a job for reasons that seem specious, you you finally do have it, you are constantly afraid of losing it. — Jessica Savitch
Once you arrive at an interpretation which you are comfortable in giving, no matter how specious it might be, and you are comfortable doing it, you stay there, you just stay there, and the facts are not going to change you. — Jay Rockefeller
Film has become such a central part of our culture now that I think sometimes too great a weight is placed upon it in terms of scrutiny and analysis. There's a lot of rather specious professorial stuff that swirls around films. — Daniel Day-Lewis
Under the specious pretext of effecting 'the happiness of the whole community,' nearly all the wrongs and intrusions of government has been carried through. — Walt Whitman
Being a Georgia author is a rather specious dignity, on the same order as, for the pig, being a Talmadge ham. — Flannery O'Connor
The love of truth, virtue, and the happiness of mankind are specious pretexts, but not the inward principles that set divines at work; else why should they affect to abuse human reason, to disparage natural religion, to traduce the philosophers as they universally do? — George Berkeley
If I am not mistaken, psychology, psychiatry and some branches of sociology, not to speak about the so-called philosophy of history, are even more affected by what I have called the scientistic prejudice, and by specious claims of what science can achieve. — Friedrich August von Hayek
Whatever study tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us better men and citizens is at best but a specious and ingenious sort of idleness; and the knowledge we acquire by it only a creditable kind of ignorance, nothing more. — Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
Against specious appearances we must set clear convictions, bright and ready for use. When death appears as an evil, we ought immediately to remember that evils are things to be avoided, but death is inevitable. — Epictetus
There are three friendships which are advantageous, and three which are injurious. Friendship with the upright; friendship with the sincere; and friendship with the man of much observation: these are advantageous. Friendship with the man of specious airs; friendship with the insinuatingly soft; and friendship with the glib-tongued: these are injurious. — Confucius
The inner defenses are unconscious. They consist of a kind of magic aura which the mind builds around cherished belief. Arguments which penetrate into the magic aura are not dealt with rationally but by a specific type of pseudo-reasoning. Absurdities and contradictions are made acceptable by specious rationalizations. — Arthur Koestler
Like the ostrich, head under wingWhen the roaring storm breaks,So many people take refugeUnder the soft pillowOf specious arguments. — Georges Rouault
A thing may look specious in theory, and yet be ruinous in practice; a thing may look evil in theory, and yet be in practice excellent. — Edmund Burke
Identity is a bag and a gag. Yet it exists for me with all the force of a fatal disease. Obviously I am here, a mind and a body. To say there's no proof my body exists would be arty and specious and if my mind is more ephemeral, less provable, the solution of being a writer with solid (touchable, tearable, burnable) books is as close as anyone has come to a perfect answer. — Judith Perelman Rossner
Since inequalities of privilege are greater than could possibly be defended rationally, the intelligence of privileged groups is usually applied to the task of inventing specious proofs for the theory that universal values spring from, and that general interests are served by, the special privileges which they hold. — Reinhold Niebuhr
We may conclude, therefore, that, in order to establish laws for the regulation of property, we must be acquainted with the nature and situation of man; must reject appearances, which may be false, though specious; and must search for those rules, which are, on the whole, most useful and beneficial. — David Hume
The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the originally false conception come true. The specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning. — Robert K. Merton
The best thing about writing has been the writer's life, the sense of being expressed, the ownership of the day, the entirely specious sense of freedom we have, however slave we are to some boss or other. I wouldn't trade it for any other life. — Anthony Minghella
Our specious present as such is very short. We do, however, experience passing events; part of the process of the passage of events is directly there in our experience, including some of the past and some of the future. — George H. Mead
In Conclusion
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