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!
I experienced an ecstasy of unity. I not only saw the connectedness, I felt it and experienced it sentiently. The restraints and boundaries of flesh and bone fell away.
We have associations to things. We have, you know, we have associations to tables and to - and to dogs and to cats and to Harvard professors, and that's the way the mind works. It's an association machine.
Whoever despises himself nonetheless respects himself as one who despises.
When you hear someone criticize a policy on the other side, that's fine. But when you start hearing motive-mongering and demonization, stand up to it just as you would if it were something that was racist or sexist. If we avoid the demonization, disagreements can be positive.
I am a Christian and a Democrat, that's all.
Science regards man as an aggregation of atoms temporarily united by a mysterious force called the life-principle. To the materialist, the only difference between a living and a dead body is that in the one case that force is active, in the other latent.
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