Not As They Seem Quotes

#1. Love to his soul gave eyes; he knew things are not as they seem. The dream is his real life; the world around him is the dream.

Michel De Montaigne

#2. Things are not as they seem. They are what they are.

Terry Pratchett

#3. Relax, Stranger. Things are not as they seem.

Robert Lynn Asprin

#4. Many things are not as they seem: The worst things in life never are.

Jim Butcher

#5. The outer world in all its variety and our inner world of thoughts and emotions are not as they seem. All phenomena appear to exist objectively, but their true mode of existence is like a dream: apparent yet insubstantial.

Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

#6. There are things in Russia which are not as they seem.

Georgy Zhukov

#7. The wave is born, and all it sees are other waves and feels these other waves are separate. But things are not as they seem. The wave is simply the ocean in specific expression. Once the life of the wave is over, it goes back to being the ocean. It was always the ocean.

Jeff Krasno

#8. Things are not as they seem. You do not understand. There is no escape. This is all there is. I had never seen eyes filled with so much sadness.

A.B. Shepherd

#9. Things are not always as they seemed, Much that may seem evil can be good.

George R R Martin

#10. Now, what tends to happen is that the stories get hyped. And the medicines are not quite as revolutionary and as dramatic as they seem to be. But, certainly, various phases of this problem are being attacked by the pharmaceutical companies.

Mort Kondracke

#11. As the First World War made painfully clear, when politicians and generals lead nations into war, they almost invariably assume swift victory, and have a remarkably enduring tendency not to foresee problems that, in hindsight, seem obvious.

Adam Hochschild

#12. Only her eyes seem to move. It's like they touch us, not with sight or sense, but like the stream from a hose touches you, the stream at the instant of impact as dissociated from the nozzle as though it had never been there.

William Faulkner

#13. Wonder is the sense, which comes in a flash but won't go away, that things are not as straightforward as they seem, that the ordinary way, or explanation and argument leaves you with unbearable contradictions and impossibilities.

Eva Brann

#14. What is especially disturbing about the political left is that they seem to have no sense of the tragedy of the human condition. Instead, they tend to see the problems of the world as due to other people not being as wise or as noble as themselves.

Thomas Sowell

#15. The bounds of human possibility are not as confining as we think they are; they are made to seem to be tight by our weaknesses, our vices, our prejudices that confine them.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#16. On the other side, is a substantial, more materialism, everything is real long to the extent we can see or measure it, and things are as real as I think they. That's way too materialistic or substantialist, because things are not really what they seem to be.

Surya Das

#17. But what if things aren't what they seem? As you said, there is no truth in the Digital Sea." "Eventually we must cling to some reality," Mekena said. "Even if we are not sure it is the most real. One can wait for a whole lifetime for the reality we want and miss the one we have in our hands.

Thomas K. Carpenter

#18. The works of Mozart may be easy to read, but they are very difficult to interpret. The least speck of dust spoils them. They are clear, transparent, and joyful as a spring, and not only those muddy pools which seem deep only because the bottom cannot be seen.

Wanda Landowska

#19. Things are not always as they seem; the first appearance deceives many.

Phaedrus

#20. When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Cambrian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled.

Charles Darwin

#21. Things are not as bad as they seem. They are worse.

Bill Press

#22. Things are not always as bad as they seem. Sometimes, the darkness only makes it easier to see the light.

Jim Butcher

#23. Americans should be ashamed of how aflutter they get about Downton Abbey - it's unpatriotic. I seem to remember we fought a revolution so as not to put up with this nonsense, where notions of station are so unforgiving that upper and lower echelons are practically different species.

Steve Erickson

#24. Presidents seem to fall into two positive categories: they're one of us, or they're heroes. Both McCain and Obama probably see themselves as potential heroes - presidents who will be looked up to, not presidents everyday people will remark are 'just like me.'

Chuck Todd

#25. The people we see do not seem to be as happy as we are. They look like they are sad, and in a hurry. They all look down at their phones and do not talk to each other.

Paul Nelson

#26. Things," Aunt Zelda reminded everyone on the bridge, "are not always as they seem. Remember, the moon always shows the truth How we see it, is up to us to us, not the moon

Angie Sage

#27. Don't engage with people who are bullying. And as difficult as it might seem, it's not personal, it has to do more with them. But it's something THEY have to work on.

Lexi Ainsworth

#28. All humanity inspires me. Every passer-by is my unconscious sitter; and as strange as it may seem, I really draw folk as I see them. Surely it is not my fault that they fall into certain lines and angles.

Aubrey Beardsley

#29. Do what you love and try not to look at what other people occupy themselves with. Most people seem restless and bounce around too much to focus or even pay attention enough to themselves to figure out exactly what they really do love, as opposed to what the people that surround them are doing.

Rodney Mullen

#30. You go along your whole life and they seem as though they mean something and they always end up not meaning anything.

Ernest Hemingway,

#31. People seem to think that they can't come up with ideas, and they're wrong. They can and they do, but they just think of it as daydreaming, or wasting time. Kids get told not to make things up, and in my case, nobody told me long enough, or it just didn't stick.

Neil Gaiman

#32. Do not envy those who seem to be naturally gifted; it is often a curse, as such types rarely learn the value of diligence and focus, and they pay for this later in life.

Robert Greene

#33. We are the people birthed from this land. For the first time I can seem something I've not fully understood before, not until now as these pale creatures from somewhere far away stare down at us in wonder, trying to makes sense of what they see. We are this place. This place is us.

Joseph Boyden

#34. I encourage the translators of my books to take as much license as they feel that they need. This is not quite the heroic gesture it might seem, because I've learned, from working with translators over the years, that the original novel is, in a way, a translation itself.

Michael Cunningham

#35. Too many in your state [Pennsylvania], as in this [New York], love pure democracy dearly. They seem not to consider that pure democracy, like pure rum, easily produces intoxication, and with it a thousand mad pranks and fooleries.

John Jay

#36. Finally, this is better, that one do His own task as he may, even though he fail, Than take tasks not his own, though they seem good. To die performing duty is no ill; But who seeks other roads shall wander still.

Mahatma Gandhi

#37. The words of language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The physical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images.

Albert Einstein

#38. Everybody can use more love. Do not take offense if people are rude or unkind or seem like they are trying to hurt your feelings. You cannot know what is happening with them. Send them love no matter how they act. It will come back to you many times over as increased love in your life.

Orin

#39. I think people seem to want to read pieces that are shorter but not as short as the pieces they can read in small bites on the Internet. It may be that the sort of long essays are hitting a sweet spot between the tiny morsels online and the full-length book.

Meghan Daum

#40. There seem to be a lot of gay people there ... Oh please, as if that's what I meant by that. Trust me, none of them would ever want to fuck you anyway. They're gay, not blind.

Justin Halpern

#41. The great and important duty which is incumbent on Christians, is to guard against all appearance of evil; to watch against the first risings in the heart to evil; and to have a guard upon our actions, that they may not be sinful, or so much as seem to be so.

George Whitefield

#42. I hope we're all kind of influencing each other now to keep the quality up on those things. They seem to be getting better and better and better as there's not only sort of a film geek audience, there's also a general interest in the overall film consuming population.

Jay Roach

#43. Present injustices exist not so much because simple individuals are acting in bad faith or lacking in charity, but because huge, impersonal systems (that seem beyond the control of the individuals acting within them) disprivilege some even as they unduly privilege others.

Ronald Rolheiser

#44. Certain unique books seem to be without forerunners or successors as far as their authors are concerned. Even though they may profoundly influence the work of other writers, for their creator they're complete, not leading anywhere.

Dodie Smith

#45. Some folks never try to grow beyond lives that have not realized that potential. And as long as they don't regret that, that's fine. Live and let live. But for those who regret never trying, it's a shame because the Web, as complex as it may seem, makes it all possible

Ken Evoy

#46. Now that they had a secure hiding place almost a home it did not even seem a hardship that they could only meet infrequently and for a couple of hours at a time. What mattered was that the room should exist. To know that it was there inviolate was almost the same as being in it.

George Orwell

#47. Often men's impulses to coerce and degrade women seem to express not a confident assumption of dominance but a desire to retaliate for feelings of rejection, humiliation, and impotence: as many men see it, they need women sexually more than women need them, an intolerable balance of power.

Ellen Willis

#48. I cannot agree with those who say that they have 'new truth' to teach. The two words seem to me to contradict each other; that
which is new is not true. It is the old that is true, for truth is as old as God himself.

Charles Spurgeon

#49. The seeming imperfections of Earth, the hazards and inequalities of life, the cruelty, harshness and apparent indifference to suffering and affliction are not what they seem; as it is Earth is perfect for its purpose. It is ignorance of that purpose which makes it appear imperfect.

Kolbrin BIble

#50. I'll say this, Arik: the old man's warning proved to be true - things are not always what they seem. She was no young lady -"
"If it's the demon you speak of," interjected Rith, as she stepped back into the ruin, Lyssa following after, "she was not even a toothless old hag.

Dennis L. McKiernan

#51. I realized that whilst crying over the loss, the living did not seem adequate because they were not my loved one. The room full of strangers hurt me profusely. Even as I saw thousands of young people; I felt incomplete and more saddened because the one I wanted to see was buried.

Phindiwe Nkosi

#52. I totally have this thing for Harry Styles from One Direction. But, like, I could totally date the rest of the band as one. I mean, if I could date all of them at one time, that'd be, like, ideal. They seem pretty close, but who knows? Maybe not that close.

Cassie Steele

#53. When I am not paying attention to my children, they appear to desperately need it. When I am giving them my full attention, they seem just as happy to play by themselves. It is as though they need to be certain of my attention in order to play their own games and ignore me.

Sarah Ruhl

#54. If you look at the movies that come out, most of them are bad, so it's not as if achieving some level of success means you get offered better roles, because frankly they don't seem to exist.

Jesse Eisenberg

#55. The rules may seem obvious but when you think about them they're not. For somebody who has my job they're not as obvious as one would think.

Neal Brennan

#56. When those closest to us respond to events differently than we do, when they seem to see the same scene as part of a different play, when they say things that we could not imagine saying in the same circumstances, the ground on which we stand seems to tremble and our footing is suddenly unsure.

Deborah Tannen

#57. I started out writing when I was young; stuff about exposing the truth about how people are not what they appear, about how they are much more dysfunctional than they seem. Pulling back the curtain - that felt smart. But as I got older, exposing how frail people can be seems less and less deep.

Mike White

#58. Make your plans as fantastic as you like, because 25 years from now they will seem mediocre. You will wonder why you did not make them 50 times as great

Henry Curtis

#59. Few words in any language carry such a load of meaning as 'honor.' It is an old word, unchanged even in its spelling from classical Latin to modern English. Spoken or written, it does not seem to require much explanation; most people think they know what it means.

Edmund Morgan

#60. Emotions are not bad, but they must be examined. Know yourself. Feelings always seem valid, but they can confuse. And they can, as you have seen, be used against you.

G. Norman Lippert

#61. The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought

Albert Einstein

#62. Who born so poor,
Of intellect so mean, as not to know
What seem'd the best; and knowing not to do?
As not to know what God and conscience bade,
And what they bade not able to obey?

Robert Pollok

#63. I do not question the power of our weapons and the efficiency of our logistics; I cannot say these things delight me as they seem to delight some of our officials, but they are certainly impressive.

J. William Fulbright

#64. Way I see it, maybe it's not so unfair, as unfinished. If you stopped in the middle of a lot of stories, they'd seem unfair. You're still in the middle of yours.

Mia Sheridan

#65. What I do is spend too much time thinking. Most of the time I just walk around annoyed. Would I describe myself as relatively happy, I suppose, but society gets to me. And the people that have mastered life seem to not care, and then they die, and then the grenade goes off.

Neill Blomkamp

#66. When two people have been married for years they seem to become unconscious of each other's bodily presence so that they move as if alone, speak aloud things which they do not expect to be answered, and in general seem to experience all the comfort of solitude without its loneliness.

Virginia Woolf

#67. Of Rhetoric various definitions have been given by different writers; who, however, seem not so much to have disagreed in their conceptions of the nature of the same thing, as to have had different things in view while they employed the same term.

Richard Whately

#68. In other news, a recent report suggests that things may not be as they seem.

Joseph Fink

#69. I'm interested in things which suggest the world rather than express the personality ... The most conventional thing, the most ordinary - it seems to me that those things can be dealt with without having to judge them; they seem to me to exist as clear facts, not involving aesthetic hierarchy.

Jasper Johns

#70. The majority of mankind would seem to be beguiled into error by pleasure, which, not being really a good, yet seems to be so. So that they indiscriminately choose as good whatsoever gives them pleasure, while they avoid all pain alike as evil.

Aristotle.

#71. It should also be remembered that the Ghost sees things differently from every other character in the play. He has the eyes of eternity. He sees things as they are and not merely as they seem from the perspective of those trapped in the tunneled vision of time.

William Shakespeare

#72. The snug log house looked just as it always had. It did not seem to know they were going away.

Laura Ingalls Wilder

#73. Good turns are pleasing only in so far as they seem repayable; much beyond that we repay with hatred, not gratitude.

Tacitus

#74. Clear writers, like fountains, do not seem so deep as they are; the turbid look the most profound.

Walter Savage Landor

#75. There are things that science as presently conceived does not help us to understand, and which we can see, from the internal features of physical science, that it is not going to explain. They seem to call for a more uncompromisingly mentalistic or even normative form of understanding.

Thomas Nagel

#76. Strange as it may seem - or perhaps it does not seem so strange - they all had the same thought: it was so much easier to kill humans on the battlefield than animals in cages, even if, on the battlefield, one might end up being killed oneself.

Haruki Murakami

#77. I am not an economist, but things are not as bad as they seem. I have a great deal of confidence in our future.

Walt Disney Company

#78. Jesus, not dogma, is the center of the Bible. Some seem to regard a condition of salvation as the center of Christianity! But conditions are significant only because they are responses to Jesus as "Lord and Christ." (Acts 2:36).

K.C. Moser

#79. Most things are not as risky as they seem.

Sam Altman

#80. I only hope that when I am free,
as they are free to go in quest,
of the knowledge beyond the bounds of life,
it may not seem better to me to rest.

Robert Frost

#81. People will take as much as you will give them, not because they are terrible humans, but because they only want this one slice of you. It doesn't seem like much to them.

Jen Hatmaker

#82. Paul says that our troubles are "light." Granted I may not see them as light in the midst of trauma, but looking back on them, they may seem light. He also says they are "momentary." They only last for a short time.

Lisa Bedrick

#83. I see myself wrapped in lies, which do not seem to penetrate my soul, as if they are not really a part of me. They are like costumes.

Anais Nin

#84. Conniving at your friends' vices, passing them over, being blind to them and deceived by them, even loving and admiring your friends' egregious faults as if they were virtues -- does not this seem pretty close to folly?

Erasmus

#85. Liberals are hopping mad because Rush Limbaugh referred to phony soldiers as "phony soldiers." They claim he was accusing all Democrats in the military of being "phony." True, all Democrats in the military are not phony soldiers, but all phony soldiers seem to be Democrats.

Ann Coulter

#86. Most humans, they seem to prattle on about this and that, not even really seeming to care about what they are saying so long as someone is listening.

Shanon Mayer