Masked man

“ But no one with a practised eye can fail to see that in this case the mask—for mask it is—covers an earnest and a suffering countenance. The mask is that of a hermit; pluck it off, and there still remains a man of a solitary nature! The mask is grandiose melancholy ”

“ He was an idle young man, after a fashion; that was because he had not been waked up. But under his jest and under his laughter she was sure that there was courage and purpose and high emprise. Take care! she thought. Take care! Might not this little dream carry her too far out to sea?... To have met a man like this one in time! How gracefully, how boyishly, he had kissed her hand! More than this, there had been an artless admiration in his upturned eyes, an expression which a gentleman of the Old World would have lacked. Why had she sent him that mask? ”

“ As he spoke, Christian, relying upon the dim light which he had provided, lifted his black silk mask, and, as it were precipitately, and with a kind of desperate effort, suffered the major-domo to behold, for a moment, a second mask of waxed cloth, so skilfully made that it bore every resemblance to an actual human face; without close examination by a strong light, no one would have suspected the cheat. ”

“ Any quality that makes itself seen from behind this mask which popular opinion has created out of a man's public character is voted as inconsistent, or, it may be, insincere; and the richer the nature the less it is understood. So it is with us all in our degree:—a thought which might lead us to gentler judgments on each other than it is the fashion to cultivate, knowing as we do that we each wear a mask which hides our real self from the world; and that if this real self is less beautiful than our admirers say, it is infinitely less hideous than our enemies would make it to appear. ”

“ But I can't believe it was all a malicious prank. I just can't reconcile what I saw with any such convenient, easy-to-accept explanation. You've convinced yourself that the figure in the hall was wearing a mask. It was the first thing I thought of, but I couldn't go on believing it."
"Why not? It makes sense."
"Not to me. That creature was real, David. Real and alive and a monster. Not a man disguised by a mask. Its face had a fleshly look."
"But you said yourself that its face was masklike. And modern mechanical masks can be almost unbelievably lifelike. Mask-making has become a fine art. ”

“ The incomparable resignation and friendly grief in the expression of the mask, the sanctity under the long eyelashes, the half extinguished smile playing around the mouth of sorrow, the element of ghostliness, a being far removed from death and equally far removed from life—all this caused his feeling to swell into [42] one of credulous devotion. His entire future seemed to depend upon coming into possession of the mask. Without a moment’s hesitation or consideration he rushed into the shop. ”

“ A mask always frightens me.”
“But you have never even seen Christian’s mask.”
“Oh, that only makes it the more alarming,” she answered, laughing. “We are only really afraid of what we have never seen. ”

“ A young man's voice. Shall I not escape?
A thousand perfect men and women appear.
Around each gathers a cluster of friends, and gay
children and youths, with offerings.
A mask—a perpetual natural disguiser of herself,
Concealing her face, concealing her form,
Changes and transformations every hour, every moment.
Falling upon her even when she sleeps. ”

“ Blessed be the mask—and yet I hate it, will ever hate it, wearing it only because I wish to live, remembering it was not worn in the time that some have named the Golden Age.
If I am a monster—who seem to myself a young man not incapable of the earthly virtues, who love the sun and rain as well as any man and would never willingly do a dishonest thing or hurt anyone, who need and rejoice like any man in all the harmless glory of the senses—then who made me a monster? ”

“ To know that you are not the man men take you for; that dear souls that cling to you would shudder at your touch if the scales could fall from their eyes, or if for an instant—as by a flash of lightning—the mask fell from your face! ”

“ A mask may hide your features, not your soul. There’s an air about you like the air that folds a star. A blind man knows the night, and feels the constellations. No coarse sense of eye or ear had made you plain to me. ”

“ The world is a carnival-ball; and you must wear a mask thereat,—and never, never doff it;—except to the woman or the man you must love always. Learn to wear your mask with grace—only keep your heart fresh in spite of all bitter knowledge.' Wouldn't this be the best advice? ”

“ Its men and women hide behind a million masks; no man looks beneath the mask his neighbour wears, for he is interested only in that which he sees with the least possible effort: the surface. He sees his neighbour but he knows him not. He keeps his own mask in place and wanders among the millions, secure in the thought that all other men are as casual as he,—and as charitable.
From time to time the newspapers come forward with stories that amaze and interest those of us who remain, and always will remain, romantic and impressionable. ”

“ All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. ”

“ They are intended to deceive spirits as to the identity of the wearer, and may thus protect him against attack; or the mask may represent a spirit which is personified by the wearer, who in this way frightens away supernatural enemies. ”

“ For ourselves, we hold the belief that the Man in the Iron Mask stood on the steps of the throne. Although the mystery cannot be said to be definitely cleared up, one thing stands out firmly established among the mass of conjecture we have collected together, and that is, that wherever the prisoner appeared he was ordered to wear a mask on pain of death. ”

“ Masks.—There are women who, wherever one examines them, have no inside, but are mere masks. A man is to be pitied who has connection with such almost spectre-like and necessarily unsatisfactory creatures, but it is precisely such women who know how to excite a man's desire most strongly; he seeks for their soul, and seeks evermore. ”

“ This discourse is very important. In “Beyond Good and Evil” we hear often enough that the select and superior man must wear a mask, and here we find this injunction explained. “And he who would not languish amongst men, must learn to drink out of all glasses: and he who would keep clean amongst men, must know how to wash himself even with dirty water.” ”

“ If for self-sport the soul itself unmasks,
Knows it the last mask off and the face plain?
The true mask feels no inside to the mask
But looks out of the mask by co-masked eyes.
Whatever consciousness begins the task
The task's accepted use to sleepness ties.
Like a child frighted by its mirrored faces,
Our souls, that children are, being thought-losing,
Foist otherness upon their seen grimaces
And get a whole world on their forgot causing;
⁠And, when a thought would unmask our soul's masking,
⁠Itself goes not unmasked to the unmasking.
IX.
Oh to be idle loving idleness! ”

“ The Map of the Mask From the map it is evident that masks have been worn in every part of the world. They are older than the idols which primitive man made for himself. Why he invented masks we do not exactly know. They may have originated when man first attempted to impersonate the gods as he sought to control nature. ”

“ The mask or "make up," of personality, by which men may read each other's character, is evolved and developed from the instinctive physical expression accompanying thought, feeling and emotion. Just as the frown accompanying the feeling of annoyance or anger will, if repeated sufficiently [Pg 40] often, become fixed upon the countenance of the man, so will all of his general thoughts, feelings and emotions register themselves in his manner, gait, tone of voice, carriage and facial expression. ”

“ We cannot always wear a mask. An ignorant, ill-bred man may go to a tailor's and dress himself out in fashionable clothes, but the first word he speaks, and the first movement he makes will betray his want of education. ”

“ In one form or another, we are always returning to it. The physiognomy and phrenology of to-day are rash and mechanical systems enough, but they rest on everlasting foundations. We are sure that the sacred form of man is not seen [98] in these whimsical, pitiful, and sinister masks (masks which we wear and which we meet) , these bloated and shrivelled bodies, bald heads, bead eyes, short winds, puny and precarious healths, and early deaths. We live ruins amidst ruins. ”

“ The real meaning of persona is a mask, such as actors were accustomed to wear on the ancient stage; and it is quite true that no one shows himself as he is, but wears his mask and plays his part. Indeed, the whole of our social arrangements may be likened to a perpetual comedy; and this is why a man who is worth anything finds society so insipid, while a blockhead is quite at home in it. ”

“ Whatever else you may expect from me you may count on my absolute respect for your privacy. But I suppose with a mask such as you can make for yourself you really don't care. The Man of Fate, I noticed, is not nearly as good at it as you are. ”

“ And let me tell you this: our higher senses are so blunted, we are so drenched with materialism, that we should probably fail to recognize real wickedness if we encountered it.'
'But shouldn't we experience a certain horror—a terror such as you hinted we would experience if a rose tree sang—in the mere presence of an evil man?'
'We should if we were natural: children and women feel this horror you speak of, even animals experience it. ”

“ "To do such a thing would be to transcend magic. And I beheld, unclouded by doubt, a magnificent vision of all that invisibility might mean to a man,—the mystery, the power, the freedom. Drawbacks I saw none. You have only to think! And I, a shabby, poverty-struck, hemmed-in demonstrator, teaching fools in a provincial college, might suddenly become—this. ”

“ "Should we distrust the man because his manners are not our manners, and that his skin is dark?" ”

“ From nearly every walk in life they came to this common, converging point, and sat them down with their equals, for the moment laying aside the mask to take up a long-discarded and perhaps despised reality. They became lords and ladies all over again, and not for a single instant was there the slightest deviation from dignity or form. ”

“ It was a tremendously virile and yet sinister face which was turned towards us. With the brow of a philosopher above and the jaw of a sensualist below, the man must have started with great capacities for good or for evil. But one could not look upon his cruel blue eyes, with their drooping, cynical lids, or upon the fierce, aggressive nose and the threatening, deep-lined brow, without reading Nature’s plainest danger-signals. ”

“ Man is made of dirt—I saw him made. I am not made of dirt. Man is a museum of diseases, a home of impurities; he comes to-day and is gone to-morrow; he begins as dirt and departs as stench; I am of the aristocracy of the Imperishables. And man has the Moral Sense. You understand? He has the moral Sense. That would seem to be difference enough between us, all by itself.” ”

“ At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door, and say,— `Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act. ”

“ Any sort of mask can be put on any sort of face. Anybody can learn certain phrases or state verbally that he holds certain views. I can go out into the street and state that I am a Wesleyan Methodist or a Sandemanian, though I fear in no very convincing accent. But we are talking about an artist; and for the enjoyment of the artist the mask must be to some extent moulded on the face. What he makes outside him must correspond to something inside him; he can only make his effects out of some of the materials of his soul. ”

“ Such a hidden nature, which instinctively employs speech for silence and concealment, and is inexhaustible in evasion of communication, DESIRES and insists that a mask of himself shall occupy his place in the hearts and heads of his friends; and supposing he does not desire it, his eyes will some day be opened to the fact that there is nevertheless a mask of him there—and that it is well to be so. Every profound spirit needs a mask ”

“ No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true. ”

“ You must bear to be surrounded with masks, instead of the human face divine; and instead of fellow-creatures, you must content yourself with puppets. You will have the amusement of pulling the wires: but remember that you must wear a mask perpetually as well as others, and never attempt to speak, and never expect to hear the language of truth or of the heart. ”

“ A mask tells us more than a face. ”

“ Moreover, probably owing to excessive self-consciousness, perhaps as the result of the generally unfortunate cast of my personality, there existed between my thoughts and feelings, and the expression of those feelings and thoughts, a sort of inexplicable, irrational, and utterly insuperable barrier; and whenever I made up my mind to overcome this obstacle by force, to break down this barrier, my gestures, the expression of my face, my whole being, took on an appearance of painful constraint. I not only seemed, I positively became unnatural and affected. ”