Top 100 Not What They Seem Quotes
#1. There is only one plot - things are not what they seem.
Jim Thompson
#2. 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
#3. In short, not only are things not what they seem, they are not even what they are called!
Francisco De Quevedo
#6. Look! Don't be deceived by appearances - men and things are not what they seem. All who are not on the rock are in the sea!
William Booth
#7. They validate perceptions that need validating, especially in adolescence
ie, under the bland, forced optimism of American life terrible forces are at work, things are not what they seem, and if you feel lonely, persecuted, a misfit, and in terror, you aren't crazy. You're right.
Joanna Russ
#8. The only thing that has kept the race of men from the mad extremes of the convent and the pirate-galley, the night-club and the lethal chamber, has been mysticism - the belief that logic is misleading, and that things are not what they seem.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
#9. Tell me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou are, to dust thou returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#10. Also not being afraid to stand up for what you believe in while taking into account that you could very well be wrong, or maybe there's another way to look at it- that things are not what they seem to be, and that everything is subjective.
Surya Das
#11. If things are not what they seem - and we are forever reminded that this is the case - then it must also be observed that enough of us ignore this truth to keep the world from collapsing.
Thomas Ligotti
#12. 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
#13. I like these experts because they seem decent, and because I feel I know a true sentence when I hear one now. They do not know what my mother remembered.
I don't know what my mother remembered either.
Elizabeth Strout
#14. In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.
Hubert H. Humphrey
#15. Things do not pass for what they are, but for what they seem. Most things are judged by their jackets.
Baltasar Gracian
#16. I realized that this is what many people in our society seem to want most from children: not that they are caring or creative or curious, but simply that they are well behaved.
Alfie Kohn
#17. I talk to my friends and, you know, they all seem to get relationships that aren't right. You kind of want someone who is not at your beck and call but loves the idea of being in a relationship and what that entails.
Ray Liotta
#18. 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
#19. Humans are not defined by their limitations, but by the intentions that I have for them; not by what they seem to be, but by everything it means to be created in my image.
Wm. Paul Young
#20. Possessions and concessions are not often what they seem, they drag you down and load you down in disguise of security.
Neil Young
#21. People who personify the system are indeed well known for not being what they seem to be; they have achieved greatness by embracing a level of reality lower than that of the most insignificant individual life- and everyone knows it.
Guy Debord
#22. Young anglers love new rivers the way they love the rest of their lives. Time does not seem to be of the essence and somewhere in the system is what they are looking for.
Thomas McGuane
#23. I write books that seem more suitable for children, and that's OK with me. They are a better audience and tougher critics. Kids tell you what they think, not what they think they should think.
Maurice Sendak
#24. A seeming ignorance is very often a most necessary part of worldly knowledge. It is, for instance, commonly advisable to seem ignorant of what people offer to tell you; and, when they say, Have you not heard of such a thing? to answer, No, and to let them go on, though you know it already.
Lord Chesterfield
#25. Be careful ... not all are what they seem. Some people pretend to be the beach, but they're actually quicksand.
Steve Maraboli
#26. John Barleycorn makes his appeal to weakness and failure, to weariness and exhaustion. He is the easy way out. And he is lying all the time. He offers false strength to the body, false elevation to the spirit, making things seem what they are not and vastly fairer than what they are.
Jack London
#27. Men should be what they seem; Or those that be not, would they might seem none!.
William Shakespeare
#28. There are some lines you just can't let another person cross. They don't always make sense, they might not always seem like the most important things, but only you can know what they are, and when you butt up against one, you have to defend it.
Karen Marie Moning
#29. For every star that falls to earth a new one glows.
For every dream that fades away a new one grows.
When things are not what they would seem
you must keep following your dream.
Rod McKuen
#30. I covered two presidents, LBJ and Nixon, who could no longer convince, persuade, or govern, once people had decided they had no credibility, but we seem to be more tolerant now of what I think we should not tolerate.
Helen Thomas
#32. So it was perfectly possible that there were men who liked shopping, men who understood exactly what it was all about, but Mma Ramotwe had yet to meet such a man. Maybe they existed elsewhere - in France, perhaps - but they did not seem to be much in evidence in Botswana.
Alexander McCall Smith
#33. I don't know what sex appeal is. I don't think you can have sex appeal knowingly. The people who seduce me personally are the people who seem not to know they're seductive, and not to know they have sex appeal.
Omar Sharif
#34. The studios don't seem to foster good writing. They're not so interested in that, but they're more interested in what worked most recently. They're definitely very serious about making money, and that's not a wrong thing, but you don't have to make money the same way all the time.
Bill Murray
#35. They could not seem to grasp that what mattered was what you did. Not what you said or thought about.
Philipp Meyer
#36. 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
#37. My mom says Ingrid's name and I start to hum, not the melody to a song, just one drawn-out note. I know it makes me seem crazy, I know it won't make anything change, but it's better than crying, it's better than screaming, it's better than listening to what they're telling me.
Nina LaCour
#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 do not know what the Democratic Party spent, in toto, on the 2004 election, but what they seem to have gotten for it is Barack Obama. Let us savor.
Peggy Noonan
#40. Things are not at all what they seem to be: oh no, not at all.
Kate DiCamillo
#41. 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
#42. They said, "You know, this issue doesn't seem to resignate with the people." And I said, you know something? Whether it resignates or not doesn't matter to me, because I stand for doing what's the right thing, and what the right thing is hearing the voices of people who work.
George W. Bush
#43. 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
#44. And these little things may not seem like much but after a while they take you off on a direction where you may be a long way off from what other people have been thinking about.
Roger Penrose
#45. 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
#46. We often hear what seem to be great ideas capable of transforming the world. But they are mere words devoid of emotion, empty of Love, which is why they do not touch us, however logical and intelligent they may seem.
Paulo Coelho
#47. Just like Jacob, Larkin made me realize that no matter how much you think you know a person-no matter how pretty they are, how together they act, or how popular they seem, you can never know what their lives are really like.
Not until you ask them.
And not unless you're listening.
Jess Rothenberg
#48. Not all accidents are what they seem. Victims do no even know why they have been chosen.
Brian Herbert
#50. It did not seem odd to Max that what he had imagined about Stumps was really true, because this was exactly how games you made up worked. Of course they were true. In your mind.
Pauline Clarke
#51. I wonder if this is what other people seem to have that I do not - this courage to fall because they have the memory of standing. Then
Kerry Kletter
#52. ...I see now that what I have done, and not done, with regard to you, bears all the hallmarks of the failing of age. Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young... and I seem to have forgoten, lately...
J.K. Rowling
#53. If they [the dead] should speak, it would be found that in matters of opinion no departed person was exactly what he had passed for in life. They would realise, deep down, that they, and whole nations along with them, are not really what they seem to be-and never can be.
Mark Twain
#54. 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
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. But one needs to bear in mind that things are not always what they seem and, contrary to the dead stillness of a photograph, reality is in a state of perpetual flux.
Audur Ava Olafsdottir
#58. It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem.
Douglas Adams
#59. 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
#60. Animals are ever so psychic. There are some people who just can't come in here. The cats particularly seem to know. You can fool everybody, but landy M deary-me, you can't fool a cat. They seem to know who's not right, if you know what I mean.
Dewitt Bodeen
#61. An explanation of an old man's mistakes. For I see now that what I have done, and not done, with regard to you, bears all hallmarks of the failings of age. Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they what it was to be young ... and I seem to have forgotten lately ...
J.K. Rowling
#62. Masks are what they seem to be; not so the faces beneath them.
Mason Cooley
#63. We all make assumptions
every day. Some more important than others. Some more damaging
than others. And things, very often, are not at all what they seem.
B.B. Shepherd
#65. What is there," Owain wondered aloud, to the sky above him and the soil below, "persuades this man still that my words do not mean what they seem to mean in sane men's ears?
Edith Pargeter
#66. 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
#67. Things are not always what they seem; the first appearance deceives many; the intelligence of a few perceives what has been carefully hidden.
Phaedrus
#68. I know they're not actually talking but the books on my desk seem to whisper "Drop what you're doing! Set aside your poetry! Open us, read us! Read slowly while you're at it. Always read us - every day - before you play.
Ed Sanders
#69. The stories are not autobiographical, but they're personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I've learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.
Alice Munro
#70. Rebellion can seem pointless to those whom have never had to fight for what they need, or would like. Privilege is not always kindly given.
Cheri Bauer
#71. 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
#72. 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
#73. If you don't recount your family history, it will be lost. Honor your own stories and tell them too. The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are.
Madeleine L'Engle
#74. What is happening to the daughters of the yam? Seem like they just don't know how to draw up the powers from the deep like before. Not full sunned and sweet anymore.
Toni Cade Bambara
#75. 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
#76. Things are not quite what they seem always. Don't start me on class, otherwise you'll get a four-hour lecture.
Michael Caine
#77. From where you sit, it may seem that certain people should know better. People are who they are and do what they do whether or not you like it or agree with them. We each have different lessons to learn. We each take a different path to our lessons.
Iyanla Vanzant
#78. Things aren't always what they seem
You're only seeing part of me
There's more than you could ever know
Behind the scenes.
Francesca Battistelli
#79. I didn't care because what mattered is that Dante's voice felt real. And I felt real. Until Dante, being with other people was the hardest thing in the world for me. But Dante made talking and living and feeling seem like all those things were perfectly natural. Not in my world, they weren't.
Benjamin Alire Saenz
#80. There seem to be only two kinds of people: Those who think that metaphors are facts, and those who know that they are not facts. Those who know they are not facts are what we call "atheists," and those who think they are facts are "religious." Which group really gets the message?
Joseph Campbell
#81. When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses--not zebras.' In other words, most things are exactly what they seem, and the simplest answer is usually the right one.
Judy Melinek
#82. It would seem that not only is religion lacking in the schools - so is common sense. I wonder what a teacher is supposed to say if a kid asks about those four words on a dime - 'In God We Trust.' Or maybe that's why they aren't being taught how to read these days.
Ronald Reagan
#83. It is the folly of weak-minded people, to imagine they are what flattery or conceit represents them; and that it is useless for them to be what they are not, since they seem already to have acquired the reputation of it.
Norm MacDonald
#84. This may seem simple, but you need to give customers what they want, not what you think they want. And, if you do this, people will keep coming back.
John Ilhan
#85. Second letter from Mom:
So! What if you colored the world? This still does not seem a great thing. In fact it seems very natural that you eventually got to paint the entire world. Those colors of yours were always strange; they didn't go away since you were born.
Elena D. Calin
#86. Suddenly I don't even care that I fell, because of that brief moment when I stood, and I wonder if this is what other people seem to have that I do not--this courage to fall because they have memory of standing.
Kerry Kletter
#87. Be skilled at seeing people for what they are, not for what they seem.
Orson Scott Card
#88. Dreams and visions are not always what they seem to be," Kalidess said quietly.
Tyrean Martinson
#90. She's adorable ." "How would you know?" "I'm gay, not blind. Her hair's all poofy and she's got a great nose. I mean, a great nose. And, what? What do you people like? Boobs? She seems to have boobs. They seem to be of approximately normal boob size. What else do you want?
John Green
#91. There are certain comics that just seem like they have this perfect balance between dialogue and image that I can't not read. I'll want to save it for later, and the next thing I know, I'm reading it. That's what I'm kind of trying to do with my comics.
Daniel Clowes
#92. They seem not to listen to what I have to say, so I'm going to quit.
Richard Kerry
#93. DO NOT PUT ALL YOUR TRUST IN ROOT VEGETABLES. WHAT THINGS SEEM TO BE MAY NOT BE WHAT THEY ARE.
-Death
Terry Pratchett
#94. You have no assurance that they are doing wrong at all, for the motives of man's actions are not always what they seem. There is generally much to learn before any judgement can be pronounced with certainty on another's doings.
Marcus Aurelius
#95. A lot of mainstream photographers seem not to think about what they're doing or feel any responsibility toward anything. By the time they're done, the models don't have any trace of themselves left. This thing about looking young with no wrinkles or expression is all so boring, really.
Peter Lindbergh
#96. For I make others say what I cannot say so well, ... I do not count my borrowings, but, weight them ... They are all, or very nearly all, from such famous and ancient names that they seem to identify themselves enough without me.
Michel De Montaigne
#97. I have found that people who have a passion or a strong will for what they want to achieve, and who do not allow others to smear or sully their inner pictures of what they want to manifest, always seem to get what they desire in their lives.
Wayne Dyer
#98. I think I'm not always what I seem. Most people, when they get to know me, say, 'You know, when I first met you ... ' People initially think I'm a snob because I'm intensely private.
Evangeline Lilly
#99. Names are not always what they seem. The common Welsh name Bzjxxllwcp is pronounced Jackson.
Mark Twain
#100. Names are not always what they seem.
Mark Twain
