"We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be."
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

WE WEAR THE MASK
By Paul Laurence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over–wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plECI8mov2E

"By the time most of us are adult, we've learned to mask our true feelings - at least as they show up in our face - because we have to get along at work, at home, and in social settings. So we pretend to be interested, we pretend to smile, we assume a bland expression when we're actually peeved, and so on.
Of course, we're not perfect at these polite deceptions. We don't always manage to stifle that yawn completely. But for the most part, the face we present to the world is a polite mask that hides our true feelings....
But the face does sometimes give away our strongest feelings."
- Nick Morgan, 7 Surprising Truths about Body Language
http://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorgan/2012/10/25/7-surprising-truths-about-body-language/