Year by year, the monkey's mask reveals the monkey

-Basho, Matsuo
c.1689  On Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho, no.3 (translated by Lucien Stryk).

   Les vices, les abus, voila'   ce qui ne change point, mais se de¤  guise en mille formes sous le masque des moeurs dominantes: leur arracher ce masque et les montrer a' de¤  couvert, telle est la noble ta"  che de l'homme qui se voue au the¤  a"  tre. Vices, indulgences, these are the things which never change but which disguise themselves in a thousand forms beneath the mask of prevailing morals: to lift off this mask and expose them, this is the noble taskof the person who devotes himself to the theatre.

-Beaumarchais, Pierre Augustin Caron de
  Le Mariage de Figaro, pre¤  face.

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion.To attack the first isnottoassail the last.To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.

-Bronte«  , Charlotte
  Jane Eyre (2nd edn), preface.

  No mask like open truth to cover lies, As to go naked is the best disguise.

-Congreve,William
  The Double Dealer, act 5, sc.6.

We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes.

-Dunbar, Paul Laurence
  'We Wear the Mask', stanza1.

Un mari porte un masque avec le monde, et une grimace avec sa femme. A husbandwears a mask intheworld and a smirk withhis wife.

-Marivaux, Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de
  Le jeu de l'amour et du hasard, act1, sc.2.

Theyare like a face full of character that intrigues and excites you, but that on closer acquaintance you discover is merely the mask of a vulgar soul. Such is Tourane.

-Maugham,W(illiam) Somerset
  Of  Tourane, now Da Nang, Vietnam. The Gentleman in the Parlour.

Alles, was tief ist, liebt die Maske. Everything profound loves the mask.

-Nietzsche, FriedrichWilhelm
  Jenseits von Gut und Bo«  se (Beyond Good and Evil), section 40 (translated by R  J Hollingdale).

And it is a good sign that this masquerading knight- errant, this pretended champion of the rights of every other nation except those of the Irish nation, should be obliged to throw off the mask today, and to stand revealed as the man who by his own utterances is prepared to carry fire and sword into your homesteads unless you humbly abase yourselves before him, and before the landlords of the country.

-Parnell, Charles Stewart
Speech successfully inciting Gladstone to arrest him, 9 Oct.

Everyone knowsthat thelabel Modern Art no longer has any relation to the words that compose it. To be Modern Art a work need not be either modern nor art; it need not even be a work. A three-thousand-year-old mask from the South Pacific qualifies as Modern and a piece of wood found on a beach becomes Art.

-Rosenberg, Harold
  'TheAmerican Action Painters', in Art News, no.51, Dec.

I met Murder on the wayö He had a mask like Castlereagh.

-Shelley, Percy Bysshe
  'The Mask of Anarchy', alluding to English foreign secretaryViscount Castlereagh, who was held responsible for the Peterloo Massacre in1819.

The loathsome mask has fallen, the man remains Sceptreless, free, uncircumscribed, but man Equal, unclassed, tribeless, and nationless, Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king Over himself; just, gentle, wise: but man Passionless?öno, yet free from guilt or pain, Which were, for his will made or suffered them, Nor yet exempt, though ruling them like slaves, From chance, and death, and mutability, The clogs of that which else might oversoar The loftiest star of unascended heaven, Pinnacled dim in the intense inane.

-Shelley, Percy Bysshe
  Prometheus Unbound, act 3, sc.4, l.193^204.