The tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes never! You're asked an unexpected question, you don't even flinch, it takes just a second to get yourself under control, you know just what you have to say to hide the truth, and you speak very convincingly, and nothing in your face twitches to give you away. But the truth, alas, has been disturbed by the question, and it rises up from the depths of your soul to flicker in your eyes and all is lost.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that while one can verbally disguise the truth, true emotions and truths are often revealed through the eyes.
Mikhail Bulgakov highlights the inherent tension between spoken deception and the unspoken truth that can be seen in one's eyes. No matter how convincingly one can articulate a lie or conceal the truth through words, the eyes can betray a person's true feelings and intentions due to the deep emotional connection they hold. This quote illustrates the struggle between the desire to maintain a facade and the involuntary nature of genuine emotional expression.
In practice
During a public speaking event where the topic of honesty is being discussed.
But would you kindly ponder this question: What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. But shadows also come from trees and living beings. Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because of your fantasy of enjoying naked light? You're stupid.
just like a murderer jumps of nowhere in an ally, love jumped out in front of us and struck us both at once
Well, as everyone knows, once witchcraft gets started, there's no stopping it.
Remove the document—and you remove the man.
Literature has become my life.
The tongue may hide the truth but the eyes—never!
Life is filled with abstractions, and the only way to make heads or tails of it is going through intuition.
The Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.
I used to watch the world as if it was a performance and I would realize that certain things that people did moved me, and certain things didn't move me, and I tried to analyze, even at that age, six and seven and eight, why I was moved by certain things they did
You have to address anger, fear, and then to think about what the alternatives are: hope, faith, a certain kind of brotherly love. And then you have to set yourself to cultivate those.
The soul...is audible, not visible.
Come with me, ladies and gentlemen who are in any wise weary of London: come with me: and those that tire at all of the world we know: for we have new worlds here.
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