Impressions Quotes

“We judge others instantly by their clothes, their cars, their appearance, their race, their education, their social status. The list is endless. What gets me is that most people decide who another person is before they have even spoken to them. What's even worse is that these same people decide who someone else is, and don't even know who they are themselves.”
― Ashly Lorenzana

“You actually cannot sell the idea of freedom, democracy, diversity, as if it were a brand attribute and not reality -- not at the same time as you're bombing people, you can't.”
― Naomi Klein

“Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you're making.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

“To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“A person who doesn’t understand both sides of an issue can’t relate to the side he is trying to sway, so his words will bounce off of them without leaving any impression.”
― Daniel Willey

“We are sometimes dragged into a pit of unhappiness by someone else’s opinion that we do not look happy.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“What you do teaches faster, and has a lasting impression, far beyond what you say.”
― T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence

“Some people will insult your intelligence by suddenly being nice or nicer to you once you make it … or they think you have.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“People change, though, especially after they are dead.”
― Margaret Atwood, Bluebeard's Egg

“I make my own judgements of people, mate. I don't need to borrow yours.”
― Jesse Hajicek, The Forge of Dawn

“A bee is never as busy as it seems; it's just that it can't buzz any slower.”
― Kin Hubbard

“We’ve all encountered those people who out of the corner of our eye, from across the street, at magic hour appear astoundingly attractive, even god or goddess like: the way they move, the way the light hits them, invokes reverence and all, the impression. And then we got a closer look. Damn it. Let down. Good from afar, but far from good. Some people will never be more attractive than in that first impression, from a distance, in that light, at that time, in that way we saw them, when our hopes became highest and our wish fulfillment was fully let it. They will never look better than in that initial fuzzy edge clingups, impressions. The white shot. Some relationships are better in a white shot. More impressive in the impressions. Like in-laws, best to only see an hour a day, like neighbors, its while we have walls and fences, like that long distance romance that fell apart when you moved in together, like that summer fling that only lasted through August, that friend that became a lover that you now miss as a friend, like ourselves when we are a fraud. They are better from a distance, with less frequency, with less intimacy. Sometimes we need more space, it’s romance, it’s imagination. Distance is the flirt in a wing, it is frivolous, its mysterious, a fantasy, a constant honeymoon because we can’t quite see it, we aren’t quite sure about it, we don’t quite know it. It’s a fuck, it’s detachment, it’s separate, it’s public, it’s carefree, it’s painless, it’s for rent. And we like it that way, because sometimes it is better with the lights dimmed.”
― Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights

“There was a sergeant at a desk. I knew he was a sergeant because I recognized the marks on his uniform, and I knew it was a desk because it's always a desk. There's always someone at a desk, except when it's a table that functions as a desk. You sit behind a desk, and everyone knows you're supposed to be there, and that you're doing something that involves your brain. It's an odd, special kind of importance. I think everyone should get a desk; you can sit behind it when you feel like you don't matter.”
― Steven Brust, Iorich

“We had been assured by our elders that intelligence was a family trait. All my kin and forebears were people of substantial or remarkable intellect, thought somehow none of them had prospered in the world. Too bookish, my grandmother said with tart pride, and Lucille and I read constantly to forestall criticism, anticipating failure. If my family were not as intelligent as we were pleased to pretend, this was an innocent deception, for it was a matter of indifference to everybody whether we were intelligent or not. People always interpreted our slightly formal manner and our quiet tastes as a sign that we wished to stay a little apart. This was a matter of indifference, also, and we had our wish.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

“The very same person can, at the very same time, seem at peace to some people, and depressed or even suicidal to some.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“We’ve all encountered those people who when we look them in the eye, when they’re right in front of us, in broad daylight, appear astoundingly attractive, even god or goddess like: the way they move, the way the light hits them, invokes reverence and awe, the definition. And then the closer we look. Waw. We take flight. Good from close, better close up. Some people get more attractive, have a greater impression on us the more we see them. The closer we look in that light at that time in the way we see them. When our hopes are highest and our wish fulfillment is fully let in. They will always look better the more clearly we see them. The definition, the close-up. Some relationships are better in a close up. More impressive with more definition. Like the woman whose photograph doesn’t turn you on but in real life she does. Like our children. Like our spouse. Like our best friend. Like God. Like ourselves when we’re authentic and true. They’re better up close with more frequency, with more intimacy. Sometimes we need to be near. It’s love. It’s literal. Closeness is the quiet moments together. The pain shared. The beauty seen. The honesty. It’s authentic. It’s reality. The constant relationship because we can see it. We’re sure about it. We know it. It’s making love. It’s attachment. It’s togetherness. It’s private. It cost us. It hurts. We own it. And we like it that way. Because sometimes it’s better with the lights on.”
― Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights

“It may not be fair that people make judgments so quickly, usually within a few seconds of observation, but it's unrealistic to expect that they won't. So, if you want to be judged in a certain manner, be sure that your look and demeanor give that impression.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

“If your hands were not clean, your good actions had grimmer and more relentless consequences than your sins.”
― Nick Joaquín, The Woman Who Had Two Navels

“Human beings are, necessarily, actors who cannot become something before they have first pretended to be it; and they can be divided, not into the hypocritical and the sincere, but into the sane who know they are acting and the mad who do not.”
― W.H Auden

“But I had their instant, magnetic liking for my enemy and before I knew where, or even who I was, I had become prisoner of the effect I had on them. [...] I was shackled not so much to my good looks, as to what people, after seeing me, first imagined and then through their imaginations compelled me to be.”
― Laurens van der Post, The Seed and The Sower

“I didn't leave a trace of myself with them, but they stained me.”
― Mark Lanegan, Devil in a Coma

“Architecture today need not be just that which you bump up against when you try to look at something else nor a monument culturally framed and rendered visible by its own importance. Architecture’s new confounds are not just making buildings visible but are encouraging them to find ways to make perception enter the realm of experience rather than vision, to make images that produce material impressions, to make experience that is vivid.”
― Sylvia Lavin, Kissing Architecture

“And these things were never so precious
Listen to the bird in its cage as it speaks
In a dying man's voice; when he is gone
The voice lives to greet and give empty
Assurances with random poignancy

I do not know if I could live with that
If I could armor myself as the unhuman beak
Opens to a dead man's reminder, head cocked
As if channeling the ghost of the one
Who imagines an absence of sense, a vacuum awaiting

The cage is barred and nightly falls the shroud
To silene the commentary of impossible apostles
Spirit godlings and spanning abyss, impenetrable cloud
Between the living and the dead, the here and the gone
Where no bridge can smooth the passage of pain

And these things were never so precious
Listening to the bird as it speaks and it speaks
And it speaks, the one who has faded away
The father departed knowing the unknown
And it speaks and it speaks and it speaks
In my father's voice

Caged Bird
Fisher kel Tath”
― Steven Erikson, Toll the Hounds

“There are people that you only get one chance to make an impression on…The current moments will paint a broad-brush stroke of who I am for the rest of their life. What kind of picture am I painting in their mind?”
― Eric Overby, Tired Wonder: Beginnings and Endings

“People tend to remember the last feeling you left them with, so you always want to end on a good note.”
― Camille Virginia, The Offline Dating Method: 3 Steps to Attract Your Perfect Partner in the Real World

“We had accomplished what we could on the small stage of the university; whatever marks we left behind were like "the corpses of angels" in Forché's poem, fleeting and ephemeral impressions on the snowy field of history. We thought we had made a difference, or could. We believed we knew where we were going. Some of us were even right.”
― Stephen King, Hearts in Suspension

“Whatever I post on Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook and Elon Musk's Twitter (now X), I see only one impression of myself and another from the Twitter team, and the rest remains restricted since I do not want to be a paid customer instead of a free user.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“Our behaviors create deep grooves in our personalities, like a heavy chair forming impressions in a shaggy rug, and it becomes harder and harder to escape them.”
― Michael Schur, How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question

“I always felt like I was about to be crushed under the weight of all my frustrations, all these feelings I couldn’t express to others or process internally. I was in agony. It’s hard to believe that someone could have seen me so differently. The only reason I was so well-behaved at family gatherings was simply to avoid drawing any attention to myself.
People’s impressions really aren’t very reliable, are they?”
― Satoshi Yagisawa, Days at the Morisaki Bookshop