Phony Quotes

“Some people think they can find satisfaction in good food, fine clothes, lively music, and sexual pleasure. However, when they have all these things, they are not satisfied. They realize happiness is not simply having their material needs met. Thus, society has set up a system of rewards that go beyond material goods. These include titles, social recognition, status, and political power, all wrapped up in a package called self-fulfillment. Attracted by these prizes and goaded on by social pressure, people spend their short lives tiring body and mind to chase after these goals. Perhaps this gives them the feeling that they have achieved something in their lives, but in reality they have sacrificed a lot in life. They can no longer see, hear, act, feel, or think from their hearts. Everything they do is dictated by whether it can get them social gains. In the end, they've spent their lives following other people's demands and never lived a life of their own. How different is this from the life of a slave or a prisoner?”
― Liezi, Lieh-tzu: A Taoist Guide to Practical Living

“Let them not cold-call our attention, besiege our feelings, and disturb our dreams, those dealers in phony compassion selling wishful thinking through merchandising sentimental poppycock. ("Like a frozen image")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“A company of wolves, is better than a company of wolves in sheep's clothing.”
― Anthony Liccione

“It's way too easy to see the real face of a person. They're amiable and full of pretense when they want something from you, but the minute you don't give in, back away or put yourself first (like they do) is the minute they show you who they really are.”
― Donna Lynn Hope

“One may be clogged with honey and unable to rise and fly.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South

“And yes, Holden would keep those kids from falling off the cliff, but WHO WOULDN'T? Does she think I would just fold my arms or give them a pat on the back before they sailed headfirst to the ground? We are all catchers, and it's sad that she doesn't see it. Instead she sees the PHONINESS, she deplores the world even after I point out that I am in it.”
― David Levithan, The Realm of Possibility

“Being with her was like being backstage during an amateurish, ridiculous play.”
― Nathanael West, The Day of the Locust

“The true definition of a phony is a high flyer with low mileage; a person who offers a worldview from the comforts of his/her living room.”
― Johnnie Dent Jr.

“A man can take only so much. Even a phony man like me.”
― Jeff Lindsay, Darkly Dreaming Dexter

“If you can't be real and firm with others about who you are, you will be doomed to a phony, plastic bullshit existence, where you only live for others.”
― Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life

“You ought to go to a boy's school sometime. Try it sometime," I said. "It's full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together in these dirty little goddam cliques.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“How empty are the insincere words of people who, so easily, speak forth "love," "family" and "friendship" without meaning what they say even if their intentions are good albeit mere flattery.”
― Donna Lynn Hope

“I'd rather be befriended as an aimless lost soul than be befriended for adornment, gain or goal.”
― Donna Lynn Hope

“Anyone can just speak words, but only one that is tried-and-true can mean them.”
― Terry a O'Neal

“Anyway. I think forcing yourself to keep up appearances and putting up this identity that isn't yours, a mask you don't wear when you're alone, is phony. If you have to do all that stuff to get someone to love you, then can you really say they love you and who you really are? Once you change yourself to win affection, to win love, I don't even know if you can still call you you. If you've built your relationship on pretense and lies, it'll probably fail in some way or another, and if you've fundamentally changed yourself, then it's not really you.”
― Wataru Watari, やはり俺の青春ラブコメはまちがっている。5

“What simple and
ordinary lives we live,
underneath the shadows
of projection screen
artists”
― Volatalistic Phil, White Wedding Lies, and Discontent: An American Love Story

“When you're way too real, fake people be like: "You're a trip. I want somebody with real game (lies).”
― T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence

“In fact the "mask" theme has come up several times in my background reading. Richard Sennett, for example, in "The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism", and Robert Jackall, in "Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate managers", refer repeatedly to the "masks" that corporate functionaries are required to wear, like actors in an ancient Greek drama. According to Jackall, corporate managers stress the need to exercise iron self-control and to mask all emotion and intention behind bland, smiling, and agreeable public faces.
Kimberly seems to have perfected the requisite phoniness and even as I dislike her, my whole aim is to be welcomed into the same corporate culture that she seems to have mastered, meaning that I need to "get in the face" of my revulsion and overcome it. But until I reach that transcendent point, I seem to be stuck in an emotional space left over from my midteen years: I hate you; please love me.”
― Barbara Ehrenreich, Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream

“Religious faith is by nature the most fundamental set of beliefs that one can have. It is how a believer views the world, and is how the believer judges himself as well as the other people, things, and events in that world. It colors everything about them. It is for this reason that people who adopt a faith out of convenience appear so phony, and why it is simply not possible for an individual to have a "religion d'jour.”
― Mike Klepper

“He knew he was sounding a little Holden Caulfield-esque calling everyone a phony, but he really did think everyone was a phony.”
― Sarah Mlynowski, Don't Even Think About It

“And how they take one in, with their manners and their mock wistfulness and gentleness.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover

“Those who claim to be intelligent and you as fool, forget the basic anatomy, a fool does not figure out the result, whereas the so called intellect wrestles himself to get the result, now tell me who is at peace?”
― Ramana Pemmaraju

“Becoming one with the wave is about as authentic and personally harmonizing an experience as you can get in these phony days of Auto-Tune.”
― Sol Luckman, Musings from a Small Island: Everything under the Sun

“We gonna sing some more for you in a minute-tuh, but we want to share with you that our ministry is an expensive one, and a difficult one, and-duh, we need ever one of you out there to make sacrifices to help this ministry, and-duh, spread God's word-duh. It was all so phony.”
― Becky Crabtree

“If it weren't my life, I wouldn't have believed it. I hated everyone, for they were so phony. I don't give a damn about my bad reputation”
― Yuvika Mathur

“They’re just wearing costumes until they get the chance to be who they really are. Everyday is Halloween.”
― Douglas Vigliotti, Tom Collins: A 'Slightly Crooked' Novel