Home > Topic > deceptively
1 " People often ask me why my style is so simple. It is, in fact, deceptively simple, for no two sentences are alike. It is clarity that I am striving to attain, not simplicity.Of course, some people want literature to be difficult and there are writers who like to make their readers toil and sweat. They hope to be taken more seriously that way. I have always tried to achieve a prose that is easy and conversational. And those who think this is simple should try it for themselves. "
― Ruskin Bond , Best Of Ruskin Bond
2 " Wars make history seem deceptively simple. They provide clear turning points, easy distinctions.: before and after, winner and loser, right and wrong. True history, the past, is not like that. It isn't flat or linear. It has no outline. It is slippery, like liquid; infinite and unknowable, like space. And it is changeable: just when you think you see a pattern, perspective shifts, an alternate version is proffered, a long-forgotten memory resurfaces. "
― Kate Morton , The House at Riverton
3 " I wonder if anyone but me realizes what goes on in that head back of your deceptively sweet face. "
― Margaret Mitchell , Gone with the Wind
4 " I was always fishing for something on the radio. Just like trains and bells, it was part of the soundtrack of my life. I moved the dial up and down and Roy Orbison's voice came blasting out of the small speakers. His new song, " Running Scared," exploded into the room.Orbison, though, transcended all the genres - folk, country, rock and roll or just about anything. His stuff mixed all the styles and some that hadn't even been invented yet. He could sound mean and nasty on one line and then sing in a falsetto voice like Frankie Valli in the next. With Roy, you didn't know if you were listening to mariachi or opera. He kept you on your toes. With him, it was all about fat and blood. He sounded like he was singing from an Olympian mountaintop and he meant business. One of his previous songs, " Ooby Dooby" was deceptively simple, but Roy had progressed. He was now singing his compositions in three or four octaves that made you want to drive your car over a cliff. He sang like a professional criminal. Typically, he'd start out in some low, barely audible range, stay there a while and then astonishingly slip into histrionics. His voice could jar a corpse, always leave you muttring to yourself something like, " Man, I don't believe it." His songs had songs within songs. They shifted from major to minor key without any logic. Orbison was deadly serious - no pollywog and no fledgling juvenile. There wasn't anything else on the radio like him. "
5 " Some curses fade and leave nothing but the faintest mark, a tea stain on watered silk. There are those that are so malevolent that, upon defeat, explode in a fiery burst of sulfurous flames, burning everything they touch as they die. Others dissolve like morning mist in the brightness of the midday sun. Some cannot be defeated at all, but feed upon the energy spent trying to vanquish it, growing more and more potent with each failed attempt. And then there are those ancient curses with deceptively simple antidotes that shatter like jagged shards of a vast mirror. These curses may be broken, but never completely destroyed, sharp slivers of light distorted. "
― Ava Zavora , Belle Noir: Tales of Love and Magic
6 " His cell-phone rang. Dominic fumbled for it on the nightstand next to the couch, the dim lights not helping his endeavour. He had piercing, generic, banal fluorescent lights on his face all the time at work and at University, it was so bad it made him loathe even natural sunlight. Lucky this apartment’s living room light had a dimmer. He flipped open his phone and said hello. ‘Hey Dom, how you doin’?’ a voice boomed. It was Ben. They proceeded to talk about the upcoming exams, which were deceptively close as it was week 10 at the moment. Yes, they would be alright. Yes, they would meet up afterwards. No, he hadn’t studied more than Ben had. As he clapped the phone closed after the genial conversation reached its natural nadir, he had forgotten most of what had been said "
― T.P. Grish , Maldives Malady: A Tropical Adventure
7 " The very few among us who have earned the title psychopath, are the ones who deny or destroy their inner voice, their conscience: so that they are free to prey upon whom they wish with exuberance and abandon, do harm to others for their own pleasure. The sociopaths and psychopaths of the world who can put on a great show of caring but never be true to the character they deceptively portray to the world: Sick and Sadistic, Vulgar and Pathetic, the pedophiles and incestuous minded men and women who create brokenness and damage. Some are turned on by the taboos that are universally avoided because it is so obviously wrong, they love the feeling of power as they rape the sensitivity of the moral majority. "
― Sara Niles , The Journey
8 " ...it's been amazing- not perfect, but amazing. I'm actually glad of the nonperfection because that has made our relationship feel more grounded, solid, and real than what I had (...), which just cruised blithely along, deceptively perfect, until it crashed and burned in a fiery wreck. "
― Sherri Rifkin , Lovehampton
9 " THE ORGANIC FOODS MYTHA few decades ago, a woman tried to sue a butter company that had printed the word 'LITE' on its product's packaging. She claimed to have gained so much weight from eating the butter, even though it was labeled as being 'LITE'. In court, the lawyer representing the butter company simply held up the container of butter and said to the judge, " My client did not lie. The container is indeed 'light in weight'. The woman lost the case.In a marketing class in college, we were assigned this case study to show us that 'puffery' is legal. This means that you can deceptively use words with double meanings to sell a product, even though they could mislead customers into thinking your words mean something different. I am using this example to touch upon the myth of organic foods. If I was a lawyer representing a company that had labeled its oranges as being organic, and a man was suing my client because he found out that the oranges were being sprayed with toxins, my defense opening statement would be very simple: " If it's not plastic or metallic, it's organic." Most products labeled as being organic are not really organic. This is the truth. You pay premium prices for products you think are grown without chemicals, but most products are. If an apple is labeled as being organic, it could mean two things. Either the apple tree itself is free from chemicals, or just the soil. One or the other, but rarely both. The truth is, the word 'organic' can mean many things, and taking a farmer to court would be difficult if you found out his fruits were indeed sprayed with pesticides. After all, all organisms on earth are scientifically labeled as being organic, unless they are made of plastic or metal. The word 'organic' comes from the word 'organism', meaning something that is, or once was, living and breathing air, water and sunlight.So, the next time you stroll through your local supermarket and see brown pears that are labeled as being organic, know that they could have been third-rate fare sourced from the last day of a weekend market, and have been re-labeled to be sold to a gullible crowd for a premium price. I have a friend who thinks that organic foods have to look beat up and deformed because the use of chemicals is what makes them look perfect and flawless. This is not true. Chemical-free foods can look perfect if grown in your backyard. If you go to jungles or forests untouched by man, you will see fruit and vegetables that look like they sprouted from trees from Heaven. So be cautious the next time you buy anything labeled as 'organic'. Unless you personally know the farmer or the company selling the products, don't trust what you read. You, me, and everything on land and sea are organic.Suzy Kassem,Truth Is Crying "
10 " Imagine, if you will:A bright yellow star lit the darkness somewhere in deep space, accompanied by its rather dysfunctional family of nine deceptively ordinary-looking planets. During its enormously long lifetime many beings had named it from the far ends of distant telescopes, including it into numerous star clusters and constellations as they were perceived from their vantage points. Once, or maybe twice, creatures simply looked up into their own skies to name it from their own now long dead and deserted worlds. In more recent times, beings from a world that orbited a different sun far away gave it a name too – creatures that called themselves Human, who travelled here and settled on one of its inner planets. The planet they chose to make a new home on? They called that Deanna. They called the star Ramalama. "
― Christina Engela , Dead Man's Hammer
11 " [T]his readiness to assume the guilt for the threats to our environment is deceptively reassuring: We like to be guilty since, if we are guilty, it all depends on us. We pull the strings of the catastrophe, so we can also save ourselves simply by changing our lives. What is really hard for us (at least in the West) to accept is that we are reduced to the role of a passive observer who sits and watches what our fate will be. To avoid this impotence, we engage in frantic, obsessive activities. We recycle old paper, we buy organic food, we install long-lasting light bulbs—whatever—just so we can be sure that we are doing something. We make our individual contribution like the soccer fan who supports his team in front of a TV screen at home, shouting and jumping from his seat, in the belief that this will somehow influence the game's outcome. "
― Slavoj Žižek
12 " Hey, any idea why Australians speak something that sounds deceptively like English but isn’t? I mean, I’m trying to figure out why I can’t seem to converse with another human being who speaks the same language as I do. "
― Elle Lothlorien , Alice in Wonderland
13 " The rising strong reckoning has two deceptively simple parts: (1) engaging with our feelings, and (2) getting curious about the story behind the feelings--what emotions we're experiencing and how they are connected to our thoughts and behaviors. "
― Brené Brown , Rising Strong: The Reckoning. The Rumble. The Revolution.
14 " - 'I've never had a thing for homicidal charmers before.'- 'But now you do?'- 'Apparently.' -I muttered, knowing he could feel my raicing heartbeat under his chest.- 'Well, if it helps, I've never had a thing for beautiful, deceptively brave, innocent charmers before.'- 'And now you do?'His grin widened, taking on a wolfish look.- 'Definitely "
― Emma Winters , Equal Parts
15 " But my favorite remained the basic roast chicken. What a deceptively simple dish. I had come to believe that one can judge the quality of a cook by his or her roast chicken. Above all, it should taste like chicken: it should be so good that even a perfectly simple, buttery roast should be a delight. "
― Julia Child , My Life in France
16 " If your church is not going to support the committed same-sex relationships of LGBT congregants, be honest about that. Bait-and-switch is deceptively un-Christ-like and serves to push gay and transgender believers farther away each time the deception happens. "
― Kathy Baldock , Walking the Bridgeless Canyon: Repairing the Breach Between the Church and the LGBT Community
17 " There was a dark aura about him, a hint of caged power in that deceptively casual, sprawled poise. Danger personified.If this had been a film she would have expected to hear the warning wail of an electric guitar creep over the soft background bustle of the city. "
― Heather R. Blair , Blood in Fire (Celtic Elementals #2)
18 " One entered the world, Denis pursued, having ready-made ideas about everything. One had a philosophy and tried to make life fit into it. One should have lived first and then made one's philosophy to fit life...Life, facts, things were horribly complicated; ideas, even the most difficult of them, deceptively simple. In the world of ideas, everything was clear; in life all was obscure, embroiled. Was it surprising that one was miserable, horribly unhappy? "
― Aldous Huxley , Crome Yellow
19 " The bistro was his secret weapon in tracking down murderers. Not just in Three Pines, but in every town and village in Quebec. First he found a comfortable café or brasserie, or bistro, then he found the murderer. Because Armand Gamache knew something many of his colleagues never figured out. Murder was deeply human, the murdered and the murderer. To describe the murderer as a monstrosity, a grotesque, was to give him an unfair advantage. No. Murderers were human, and at the root of each murder was an emotion. Warped, no doubt. Twisted and ugly. But an emotion. And one so powerful it had driven a man to make a ghost.Gamache's job was to collect the evidence, but also to collect the emotions. And the only way he knew to do that was do get to know the people. To watch and listen. To pay attention, and the best way to do that was in a deceptively casual way in a deceptively casual setting.Like the bistro. "
― Louise Penny , A Fatal Grace (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #2)
20 " How about this?” she retorted, her voice deceptively flirtatious, and in that small, stolen moment in his mind, he quickly spun and grasped her by the small of her back, pulled her close into to him, and made her his. And maybe she resisted at first before giving in, or maybe she didn’t—maybe she’d wanted this just as long as he had. But none of that would matter, because they would finally be together, starting at that moment and for the rest of their lives. And they would love each other and raise children and make music, and life would suddenly be worth living, and Christ, how could anyone ever throw something like that away? "
― J. Tonzelli , The End of Summer: Thirteen Tales of Halloween