Appearance versus Reality
idea · 2 works · 2 mentions · 4 anchored passages
appearance and reality · mask · seeming and being · the mime of human life
in the texts
Parmenides
The distinction between how the masses of others appear (as one, as like, as equal, as bounded) when viewed loosely or from a distance, and what close examination shows them really to be, once the one does not exist to secure genuine unity.
That is perfectly conclusive.
And will they not also appear to be like and unlike?
And so the groups of the other things must appear to be like and unlike themselves and each other.
Letters to Lucilius
The idea that social rank, wealth, and status are theatrical masks concealing a person's true, often lowly, condition.
the happiness of all of them is a stage-mask.
If you wish to weigh yourself, set aside your money, your house, your rank, and look within at yourself.
Slave-dealers hide whatever it is that might give offence under some embellishment, and so the very ornaments are suspect to those who buy.