We are generally treated based on how much or little we have, earn, or know—or seem to have, earn, or know.

— Mokokoma Mokhonoana

We are sometimes depressed by our failure to convince people who strongly believe that we are that we are definitely not depressed.

— Mokokoma Mokhonoana

We are sometimes dragged into a pit of unhappiness by someone else’s opinion that we do not look happy.

— Mokokoma Mokhonoana

We had been assured by our elders that intelligence was a family trait. All my kin and forebears were people of substantial or remarkable intellect, thought somehow none of them had prospered in the world. Too bookish, my grandmother said with tart pride, and Lucille and I read constantly to forestall criticism, anticipating failure. If my family were not as intelligent as we were pleased to pretend, this was an innocent deception, for it was a matter of indifference to everybody whether we were intelligent or not. People always interpreted our slightly formal manner and our quiet tastes as a sign that we wished to stay a little apart. This was a matter of indifference, also, and we had our wish.

— Marilynne Robinson

We judge others instantly by their clothes, their cars, their appearance, their race, their education, their social status. The list is endless. What gets me is that most people decide who another person is before they have even spoken to them. What's even worse is that these same people decide who someone else is, and don't even know who they are themselves.

— Ashly Lorenzana

We persist and linger longer than we think, leaving traces of ourselves wherever we go. If you take that away, then we all simply vanish.

— Dinaw Mengestu

We're Christians. We have to care what people think. The appearance of wrongdoing, remember? I'm not going to move in with you had had people think we're living in sin. What sort of witness would that be?

— Francine Rivers

We sometimes try to impress people we just met by not trying to impress them.

— Mokokoma Mokhonoana

What stays with you longest and deepest? Of curious panics, of hard-fought engagements or sieges tremendous what deepest remains?

— Walt Whitman

What you do teaches faster, and has a lasting impression, far beyond what you say.

— T.F. Hodge