“Masks are arrested expressions and admirable echoes of feeling, at once faithful, discreet, and superlative. Living things in contact with the air must acquire a cuticle, and it is not urged against cuticles that they are not hearts; yet some philosophers seem to be angry with images for not being things, and with words for not being feelings. Words and images are like shells, no less integral parts of nature than are the substances they cover, but better addresses to the eye and more open to observation. I would not say that substance exists for the sake of appearance, or faces for the sake of masks, or the passions for the sake of poetry and virtue. Nothing arises in nature for the sake of anything else; all these phase and products are involved equally in the round of existence…”

George Santayana, Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (London: Constable, 1922).

This quotation kicks of Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1959).