Painted Veil

Famous quotes containing the words painted and/or veil:

    Let Sporus tremble—‘What? That thing of silk,
    Sporus, that mere white curd of ass’s milk?
    Satire or sense, alas, can Sporus feel,
    Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?’
    Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
    This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings;
    Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
    Yet wit ne’er tastes, and beauty ne’er enjoys:
    Alexander Pope (1688–1744)

    I am afraid that old women are more skeptical in their most secret heart of hearts than any man: they believe in the superficiality of existence as in its essence, and all virtue and profundity is to them merely a veil over this “truth,” a most welcome veil over a pudendum—and so a matter of decency and modesty, and nothing else.
    Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)