A mask is an object normally worn on the face, typically for protection, disguise, performance or entertainment. Masks have been used since antiquity for both ceremonial and practical purposes. Though usually worn on the face they may also be positioned for effect elsewhere on the wearer's body.
Quotes
- Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them — the one, in fact, which is not a mask.
- W. H. Auden, Forewords and Afterwords, "One of the Family", p. 369 (1973).
- One thinker no less brilliant than the heresiarch himself, but in the orthodox tradition, advanced a most daring hypothesis. This felicitous supposition declared that there is only one Individual, and that this indivisible Individual is every one of the separate beings in the universe, and that those beings are the instruments and masks of divinity itself.
- Jorge Luis Borges, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (1940), first translated into English by James E. Irby (1961).
- Variant translation: This happy conjecture affirmed that there is only one subject, that this indivisible subject is every being in the universe and that these beings are the organs and masks of the divinity.
- The polite Japanese person who must be out and about with a cold or flu is right to think a surgical mask might protect strangers from picking up a pathogen. After all, the masks were originally designed to protect patients from the coughs and sneezes of a surgeon.
But better yet, stay home from work or school, and avoid crowds, Sood says.- Susan Brink, "Will A Surgical Mask Keep You Safe In A Viral Outbreak?", Goats and Soda: Stories of Life in a Changing World, NPR, (June 22, 2015).
- Every one who, with intent to commit an indictable offence, has his face masked or coloured or is otherwise disguised is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years
- No one cared who I was 'til I put on the mask.
- Bane in Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan's, The Dark Knight Rises (2012).
- We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!- Paul Laurence Dunbar, We Wear The Mask, in the 1913 collection of his work, The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar.
- Fire is to represent truth because it destroys all sophistry and lies; and the mask is for lying and falsehood which conceal truth.
- Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci (1938), X Studies and Sketches for Pictures and Decorations, as translated by Edward MacCurdy.
- If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask?
- Graham Greene, The Comedians (1966).
- A few years ago, very few teenagers wore masks. But many wear them today and the numbers are increasingly very rapidly. The reason is that these teenagers are looking for something to hide behind. They are constantly having to communicate with friends via SMS and emails and this is making them so tired that it is a relief to wear a masks. It is a way to hide their feelings.
- Yohei Harada in "Medical masks become new trend for shy Japanese teenagers", by Danielle Demetriou, The Telegraph, 28 Jan 2011.
- It's a terrible thing to be alone — yes it is — it is — but don't lower your mask until you have another mask prepared beneath — as terrible as you like — but a mask.
- Katherine Mansfield, in a letter to her future husband, John Middleton Murry (July 1917), published in The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, Vol. I.
- 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.
- Herman Melville in Moby-Dick (1851).
- ...skull masks (or balaclavas, which is actually what Ghost is wearing) are incredibly common in armed forces across the world, especially the US. American soldiers have been wearing them, and have been having their pictures taken in them, for years. This isn't one guy acting alone, it's an established "fashion" amongst soldiers worldwide.
Which leads us to perhaps the more important point: the mask was not invented by Call of Duty, or its developers Infinity Ward. Indeed, its presence in the game was inspired by the mask's use by soldiers in real life, as it's been worn by US troops—who first took to it as a fashionable alternative from regular gear (it began life as a designer ski mask) at the beginning of the Iraq War—for almost a decade now, long before development ever began on the Modern Warfare series.- Luke Plunkett, "The Silly Outrage Over A Soldier Wearing A "Call Of Duty" Mask", Kotaku, (1/22/13); as quoted in "Why Soldiers Wear Call of Duty-style Masks" by Tina Amini, Kotaku, (5/01/13).
- I'm not questioning your powers of observation, I'm merely remarking upon the paradox of asking a masked man who he is.
- "V" in V for Vendetta (2006); based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore.
- Beneath this mask there is more than flesh... beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy... and ideas are bulletproof.
- "V" in V for Vendetta (2006); based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore.
- Though wearing a mask makes the villains scarier, it would also make them far less efficient killers — especially, if, like Jason Vorhees, your face and eyes are disfigured to begin with. It's amazing he can see at all, much less hurl hatchets through the air, striking his terrified prey in near-darkness with deadly accuracy. It should be easy for the scared teens in slasher films to stay alive, all they'd have to do is stay in the masked slasher's obstructed peripheral vision — that, and don't go in the dark room to see what that noise is!
Why are masks so menacing? It has to do with psychology and the fear of anonymous death. For many people, the idea of being murdered by an unidentifiable stranger for no reason is more terrifying than being killed by someone you do know, and for some good reason.- Benjamin Radford, “Why Hollywood Serial Slashers Wear Masks”, (February 13, 2009).
- You can't wear a mask Clark. When people see you and can see the things you can do, the power you have, they'll be terrified. They need to be able to look into your eyes, see your face, so that they can see the decency and kindness that's always there and know they have nothing to be afraid of.
- Martha Kent in Mark Waid, Superman: Birthright, DC Comics, (September 2003 – September 2004).
- Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
- Conor aka Santa Claus in Oscar Wilde's, The Critic as Artist (1891).
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