Being Shallow Quotes & Sayings

Is 'fat' really the worst thing a human being can be? Is 'fat' worse than 'vindictive', 'jealous', 'shallow', 'vain', 'boring' or 'cruel'? Not to me. — J.K. Rowling

The man is a humbug - a vulgar, shallow, self-satisfied mind, absolutely inaccessible to the complexities and delicacies of the real world. He has the journalist's air of being a specialist in everything, of taking in all points of view and being always on the side of the angels: Walter Helwich merely annoys a reader who has the least experience of knowing things, of what knowing is like. There is not two pence worth of real thought or real nobility in him. But he isn't dull ... — C.S. Lewis

Either the human being must suffer and struggle as the price of a more searching vision, or his gaze must be shallow and without intellectual revelation. — Thomas De Quincey

Classical theology defines sin as 'rebellion against God.' The answer is not incorrect as much as it is shallow and insulting to the human being. Every person deserves to be treated with dignity even if he or she is a 'rebellious sinner'. — Robert H. Schuller

We've got so much in this life that all we know how to do is want more. So we concentrate on the wrong things
things we can see
as being the measure of a person. We think if we win something big or buy something snazzy it'll make us more than we are. Our hearts know that's not true, but the eyes are powerful. It's easier to fix on what we can see than listen to the still, small voice of a whispering heart. — Joan Bauer

If this was a movie, we would've sat down at the table with the guys and they would have learned some kind of valuable lesson, like not to judge people by how they look, or that being different is okay. And Lena would've learned that all jocks weren't stupid and shallow. It always seemed to work in movies, but this wasn't a movie. This was Gatlin, which severely limited what could happen. — Kami Garcia

The phenomena of the year take place every day in a pond on a small scale. Every morning, generally speaking, the shallow water isbeing warmed more rapidly than the deep, though it may not be made so warm after all, and every evening it is being cooled more rapidly until the morning. The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer. The cracking and booming of the ice indicate a change of temperature. — Henry David Thoreau

I need to ask you a question, and you have to give me a straight answer."
He breathes in shallow pants, his pupils huge. "I know what you're going to ask, and yes, I do have a condom. Also, I'd be more than happy to risk being arrested so I can fuck you against this wall."
"That's not it."
"You sure? That's the vibe I was getting. — Leisa Rayven

How shallow is the stage on which this vast drama of human hates and joys and friendships is played! Whence do men draw this passion for eternity, flung by chance as they are upon a scarcely cooled bed of lava, threatened by the beginning by the deserts that are to be, under the constant menace of the snows? Their civilizations are but fragile gildings: a volcano can blot them out, a new sea, a sand-storm. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter? — Ralph Waldo Emerson

You are feeling sad? Befriend it. Have compassion for it. Sadness also has a being. Allow it, embrace it, sit with it, hold hands with it. Be friendly. Be in love with it. Sadness is beautiful! Nothing is wrong with it. Who told you that something is wrong in being sad? In fact, only sadness gives you depth. Laughter is shallow; happiness is skin-deep. Sadness goes to the very bones, to the marrow. Nothing goes as deep as sadness. — Osho

It is interesting that we call something good a "dream," but being called a "dreamer" is somewhat of a putdown.
Without dreamers, no dream would ever be given reality, and we would live in a very small and shallow world.
If you are a secret dreamer, it's your time to announce yourself. — Vera Nazarian

Now that part of his head which nature designed for the reservoir of drink being very shallow, a small quantity of liquor overflowed it and opened the sluices of his heart, so that all the secrets there deposited run out. — Henry Fielding

I'd never seen him bare-chested. For the first time, he seemed vulnerable to me. His smooth, tight skin wrapped around the long muscles he'd developed over a lifetime of hard work.
He found a shallow spot and sat, settling me onto his lap, holding my back to his chest. I couldn't stop shaking and it had nothing to do with the water or with being half dressed in a cave with a boy.
"Nothing else matters," Henry said in my ear. "I'm here. Start at the beginning. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Her breathing was shallow, a seashore slowly being covered with water. — David Levithan

Scientists blame the audience for being too stupid, shallow, or lazy to understand. There has been a fascinating debate in the blogosphere lately about communicating science to the public, and it's clear that most scientists just don't get it. They can't be bothered to talk to real people. Nobody will care about your issues if the price they have to pay is listening to a long lecture from Morton the science bug. — Mark Powell

She is nine, beloved, as open-faced as the sky and as self-contained. I have watched her grow. As recently as three or four years ago, she had a young child's perfectly shallow receptiveness; she fitted into the world of time, it fitted into her, as thoughtlessly as sky fits its edges, or a river its banks. But as she has grown, her smile has widened with a touch of fear and her glance has taken on depth. Now she is aware of some of the losses you incur by being here
the extortionary rent you have to pay as long as you stay. — Annie Dillard

A positive mind is like a powerful stream of water that is gathering volume and force from hundreds of tributaries all along its course. The further on it goes the greater its power, until when it reaches its goal, that power is simply immense. A negative mind, however, would be something like a stream, that the further it flows the more divisions it makes, until, when it reaches its goal, instead of being one powerful stream, it has become a hundred, small, weak, shallow streams. — Christian D. Larson

You think I'm shallow?" Millie patted his arm again. "You're a gentleman of society, Everett. You're bound to be a little . . . Well, I wouldn't say you're shallow, not exactly, but you are a bit of a snob, something I do think I've pointed out before. Having said that, Lucetta and I both know you're not used to being seen in public with ladies like . . . us." Tightening his grip on their arms, Everett prodded them forward. "There's nothing wrong with either one of you, and just so you know . . . I've recently come to the conclusion that I might very well be a snob, but I'm trying to work on that." Not giving the ladies an opportunity to balk, Everett increased his pace, practically dragging them beside him as he moved through the door and into the entranceway. — Jen Turano

It occurs to me that John McCain is as intellectually shallow as our current President ... Bush goes bumbling along, grinning and spewing moronic one-liners, as though nobody understands what a colossal failure he has been ... I fear to the depth of my being that John McCain is just like him. — Jack Cafferty

When the people of God abandoned the covenant of love and fidelity, drawn as we are by the appeal of shallow, empty pleasures, God removed every possible obstruction to the covenant by being faithful for us, by becoming like us and subjecting Himself to the very worst within us, loving us all the way to the cross and all the way out of the grave. — Rachel Held Evans

I think of that lost world, the way we lived before these new networking technologies, as having two poles: solitude and communion. The new chatter puts us somewhere in between, assuaging fears of being alone without risking real connection. It is a shallow between two deeper zones, a safe spot between the dangers of contact with ourselves, with others. — Rebecca Solnit

Ah, well, being conflicted means you can live a shallow life without copping to be a shallow person. — Gillian Flynn

We typically misunderstand what's wrong about consumerism. It's not that it makes us love material things too much. To be a good consumer, you have to desire to get lots of things, but you must not love any of them too much once you have them. Consumerism needs children who do not stay attached to their toys for very long and learn to expect the next round of presents as soon as possible. When consumerism succeeds, our attachments are shallow, easily broken, so we can move on to the next thing we're supposed to get. Being a good consumer means desiring new things, not cherishing old ones. And the new things you're supposed to desire are not always material things. Spirituality is now a consumerist enterprise, too. — Phillip Cary

There just isn't enough cock in this world to be caught suckin' and be called anything but a slut for life. The cynic in me would call it a bad habit, but that'd make me a whore in denial and if there's one thing I am, it's an honest bitch. Then again, you don't get famous for being daddy's little angel, but you can easily fall into the Infamy Bracket by preaching a made-up Bible quote now and again. They say I'm shallow, but I've made a living out off diving off the deep end. — Dave Matthes

Every comedian is furious. Age makes me angry. I'm unhappy at not being able to open packages anymore. I'm angry that libraries have gone. I hate children on planes. I'm very shallow, so they tend to be little things. To be honest, I think I was probably angry the day I was born, you know, about diapers or something. — Joan Rivers

And so taking the long way home through the market I slow my pace down. It doesn't come naturally. My legs are programmed to trot briskly and my arms to pump up and down like pistons, but I force myself to stroll past the stalls and pavement cafes. To enjoy just being somewhere, rather than rushing from somewhere, to somewhere. Inhaling deep lungfuls of air, instead of my usual shallow breaths. I take a moment to just stop and look around me. And smile to myself.
For the first time in a long time, I can, quite literally, smell the coffee. — Alexandra Potter

Everyone seems to know more than I do, and being on the shallow end of the information pool is starting to piss me off. — Kendare Blake

The strange thing - and this is one of the advantages of being incredibly shallow and superficial - is that wherever I am, that's sort of home. — Hugh Laurie

Being conflicted means you can live a shallow life without copping to being a shallow person. — Gillian Flynn

For a long time, I was almost ashamed of being an actress. I felt like it was a shallow occupation. People would be watching my every move. — Winona Ryder

On Intelligence:
Intelligence will not make you rich unless your intelligence is about getting rich.
Corollary: Intelligence will lead one to to appreciate things that cost money over things that make money.
Corollary: Being a genius is antithetical to being successful unless you're a genius at being successful.
Corollary: Being intelligent does not make you rich but it can keep you from being poor.
Corollary: Intelligence leads to interests, mostly not gainful.
Corollary: Intelligence is like molasses, with effort, it goes where you put it.
Rubbers are best for those who refuse to use them.
Corollary: Intelligence adds but stupidity multiplies.
Corollary: Reverse evolution is the new norm.
Only luck can save one from one's own stupidity.
Only idiots regard a second chance the same as the first.
The higher the IQ, the greater the chance of self-deception.
Still waters are often shallow puddles. — Kalifer Deil

Everyone was a rose but even more complex than a mere flower. Everyone was made up of infinitely layered petals. And everyone had something indescribably precious at the heart of their being.
No one was shallow. Not really. — Mary Balogh

Being connected in a shallow way to the entire world can prevent us from being deeply connected to those closest to us - including ourselves. — Arianna Huffington

I heard a song that nailed it: "And if the day came when I felt a natural emotion / I'd get such a shock I'd probably lie / in the middle of the street and die." When were these so-called natural emotions and why were they worth more than the others? Hadn't I already begun to suspect that with feelings, as with revolutions, the more spontaneous-seeming were actually the outcome of long and involved tactical maneuvers? And if, unfortunately, you had to make do without being 'natural', wasn't it better to act as consciously, as deliberately, and therefore as forcefully as possible? Just because a feeling had been painstakingly pieced together didn't mean it was worthless, nor was it necessarily shallow ... — Jean-Christophe Valtat

There isn't going to be any turning point ... There isn't going to be any next-month-it'll-be-better, next fucking year, next fucking life. You don't have any time to wait for. You just got to look around you and say, "So this is it. This is really all there is to it. This little thing." Everybody needing such little things and they can't get them. Everybody needing just a little ... confidence from somebody else and they can't get it. Everybody, everybody fighting to protect their little feelings. Everybody, you know, like reaching out tentatively but drawing back. It's so shallow and seems so ... fucking ... it seems like such a shame. It's so close to being like really right and good and open and amorphous and giving and everything. But it's not. And it ain't gonna be.
September 1969
quoted in "The New Yorker" 9 August 1999 — Janis Joplin

These are big trade-offs for a simple piece of cake - add five hundred calories, subtract well-being, allure, and self-esteem - and the feelings behind them are anything but vain or shallow. — Caroline Knapp

You'll be going back to Tokyo before much longer," Midorikawa quietly stated. "And you'll return to real life. You need to live life to the fullest. No matter how shallow and dull things might get, this life is worth living. I guarantee it. And I'm not being either ironic or paradoxical. It's just that, for me, what's worthwhile in life has become a burden, something I can't shoulder anymore. Maybe I'm just not cut out for it. So, like a dying cat, I've crawled into a quiet, dark place, silently waiting for my time to come. It's not so bad. But you're different. You should be able to handle what life sends your way. You need to use the thread of logic, as best as you can, to skillfully sew onto yourself everything that's worth living for. — Haruki Murakami

The Buddha also counseled the monks and nuns to avoid wasting any precious time by engaging in idle conversation, oversleeping, pursuing fame and recognition, chasing after desires, spending time with people of poor character, and being satisfied with only a shallow understanding of the teaching. — Nhat Hanh

Of all the things I want for them, connection to this place and a sense of knowing how they fit into this world usurps all others. I want this for them more than happiness, because I think mere happiness is a shallow elucidation of the human experience, and by itself is not a particularly sturdy emotional foundation upon which to build a fulfilling life. I want this for them more than success, at least insofar as our culture has come to define success as being a product of money and power and recognition. I want this for them more than physical vitality, because I believe that good health--and not just health of body, but also of emotion and spirit--is only possibly when one feels connected to and secure in their place. — Ben Hewitt

I have a shallow understanding of what it means to be alive, and I know certain things about parenting and being a wife and doing the school run. I know little bits, but I'm really a paddler on a beach. — Tamsin Greig

I can't imagine being sixty years of age and playing music I wrote when I was in my twenties. I would rather sail the sea of consequence to new lands. Laps around the shallow end of the pool, not for me. — Henry Rollins

Boys often have permission to become men without the forfeiture of their desirability. And so these men write stories that grasp at girls who are ghosts twice over: first by being dead and second by being shallow shadows of actual girls, the assorted fragments of men's aging imaginations rather than the deep and dimensioned creatures that real girls are. — Alana Massey

He whose life is one even and smooth path, will see but little of the glory of the Lord, for he has few occasions of self-emptying, and hence, but little fitness for being filled with the revelation of God. They who navigate little streams and shallow creeks, know but little of the God of tempests; but they who "do business in great waters," these see his "wonders in the deep. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Who are you, really? The question penetrated, echoed, demanded an answer. It nipped at me in ways I wasn't prepared for, pinched in places I didn't like. Was I really so entrenched in the world I'd been raised in, so set in my ways that I couldn't look beyond the surface of another person and see a human being? Was I that shallow? — Lisa Wingate

Early Summer, loveliest season,
The world is being colored in.
While daylight lasts on the horizon,
Sudden, throaty blackbirds sing.

The dusty-colored cuckoo cuckoos.
"Welcome, summer" is what he says.
Winter's unimaginable.
The wood's a wickerwork of boughs.

Summer means the river's shallow,
Thirsty horses nose the pools.
Long heather spreads out on bog pillows.
White bog cotton droops in bloom.

Swallows swerve and flicker up.
Music starts behind the mountain.
There's moss and a lush growth underfoot.
Spongy marshland glugs and stutters.

Bog banks shine like ravens' wings.
The cuckoo keeps on calling welcome.
The speckled fish jumps; and the strong
Swift warrior is up and running.

A little, jumpy, chirpy fellow
Hits the highest note there is;
The lark sings out his clear tidings.
Summer, shimmer, perfect days. — Marie Heaney

I would say my being disheartened has more to do with American culture than anything else. We are becoming a very shallow culture. My goodness, the celebrity ethos has taken over completely. Turn on the television and you see that over and over. There's very little substance. And so, everything gets shorter. Everything is entertainment oriented. Our churches reflect that. A thirty-five minute sermon without a Power Point or video clips is rare these days. That's not true in other countries so much. — Philip Yancey

One of the hardest lessons I have to learn is how not to be judgmental about people who are judgmental. When I see how wrong somebody is - how shallow it is to look at the Resurrection as a mere, explainable fact - when I see only the mistakenness of others, then I am blinded to their being children of God, who are just as valued and treasured as are those who more nearly agree with me. — Madeleine L'Engle

Our first youth is of no value; for we are never conscious of it, until after it is gone. But sometimes
always, I suspect, unless one is exceedingly unfortunate
there comes a sense of second youth, gushing out of the heart's joy at being in love; or possibly, it may come to crown some other grand festival in life, if any other such there be. This bemoaning of one's self ... over the first, careless, shallow gayety of youth departed, and this profound happiness at youth regained,
so much deeper and richer than that we lost,
are essential to the soul's development. In some cases, the two states come almost simultaneously, and mingle the sadness and the rapture in one mysterious emotion. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

To be shallow is not a sign of being wicked, nor is shallowness a sign that there are no deeps; the ocean has a shore. — Oswald Chambers

The academic mind reflects infinity, and is full of light by the simple process of being shallow and standing still. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

To feel safe is to stop living in my head and sink down into my heart and feel liked and accepted ... not having to hide anymore and distract myself with books, television, movies, ice cream, shallow conversation ... staying in the present moment and not escaping into the past or projecting into the future, alert and attentive to the now ... feeling relaxed and not nervous or jittery ... no need to impress or dazzle others or draw attention to myself. ... Unself-conscious, a new way of being with myself, a new way of being in the world ... calm, unafraid, no anxiety about what's going to happen next ... loved and valued ... just being together as an end in itself. — Brennan Manning

Ivanov's fear was of a literary nature. That is, it was the fear that afflicts most citizens who, one fine (or dark) day, choose to make the practice of writing, and especially the practice of fiction writing, an integral part of their lives. Fear of being no good. Also fear of being overlooked. But above all, fear of being no good. Fear that one's efforts and striving will come to nothing. Fear of the step that leaves no trace. Fear of the forces of chance and nature that wipe away shallow prints. Fear of dining alone and unnoticed. Fear of going unrecognized. Fear of failure and making a spectacle of oneself. But above all, fear of being no good. Fear of forever dwelling in the hell of bad writers. — Roberto Bolano

We imagine that if we had time we would quiet our more shallow selves and listen to a deeper flow of inspiration. Again, this is a myth that lets us off the hook - if I wait for enough time to listen, I don't have to listen now, I don't have to take responsibility for being available to what is trying to bubble up today. — Julia Cameron

As children get older, this incidental outdoor activity
say, while waiting to be called to eat
becomes less bumptious, physically and entails more loitering with others, sizing people up, flirting, talking, pushing, shoving and horseplay. Adolescents are always being criticized for this kind of loitering, but they can hardly grow up without it. The trouble comes when it is done not within society, but as a form of outlaw life.
The requisite for any of these varieties of incidental play is not pretentious equipment of any sort, but rather space at an immediately convenient and interesting place. The play gets crowded out if sidewalks are too narrow relative to the total demands put on them. It is especially crowded out if the sidewalks also lack minor irregularities in building line. An immense amount of both loitering and play goes on in shallow sidewalk niches out of the line of moving pedestrian feet. — Jane Jacobs

There's a bizarre prejudice that exists in the New York publishing establishment that any work outside the tri-state area is being done by trained chimpanzees, that geography screens out sensibility. There's an idea that all Los Angeles writing is about the movie industry, that it's vulgar, shallow and banal. — Kate Braverman

Your house was not yours, but your late father's, and his pool
was almost as shallow as I was when I asked if you thought I looked good [...]
Your bedroom walls were covered in pictures, and your shag carpet
was almost as green as I was when I realized I wasn't the only one
being hurt. — Kris Kidd

...[T]here is no art in being intelligible if one renounces all thoroughness of insight; but also it produces a disgusting medley of compiled observations and half-reasoned principles. Shallow pates enjoy this because it can be used for everyday chat, but the sagacious find in it only confusion, and being unsatisfied and unable to help themselves, they turn away their eyes, while philosophers, who see quite well through this delusion, are little listened to when they call men off for a time from this pretended popularity in order that they might be rightfully popular after they have attained a definite insight. — Immanuel Kant

Meditation is the uncovering of this whole process of becoming and being - the negation of becoming in order to be. All this can be seen by a meditative mind at a glance, and this glance doesn't involve time at all. Seeing truth is not a matter of time; either you see or you don't see. The incapacity to see cannot become capable of seeing. So negation is the movement of meditation, and there is no way, no path, no system that can lead a chattering, shallow mind to the heights of bliss. The seeing of this instantly is the truth that frees the shallow mind from itself. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Happiness is not the shallow state of feeling pleased and chipper all the time. Happiness is the state of a human being that has achieved cross-level coherence within herself, and between herself and the people, challenges, and institutions around her. Happiness comes from between. — Jonathan Haidt

If you won 600 million dollars in the lottery, would you go out the next day and break into cars to steal the change from the cup holders? That's what sleeping around is like when you've already found a woman who will pledge her life and her entire being to you for the remainder of her existence.
You tell me that you are in an "open marriage." I will probably be lambasted for "judging" you for it, but, sorry Professor, an "open marriage" makes about as much sense as a plane without wings or a boat that doesn't float. Marriages, by definition, are supposed to be closed. Actually, I'm getting rather tired of people like you trying to hijack the institution, strip it of its beauty and purpose, and convert it into some shallow little thing that suits your vices. — Matt Walsh

Jai, she pleaded quietly, if you hadn't noticed, I'm a guts and glory kind of girl. I think I'd die trying to protect anyone I care about. It's just the way I'm wired, I guess. I would die trying to protect Charlie because I love him. He's my family, and I don't want to lose any more family." She took another step so her body pressed flushed to him, her fingers falling to his lips. The sound of his shallow breathing emboldened her. "But Jai ... I would die a hundred deaths to save you ... because the thought of being here without you now, the thought of losing you ... is unimaginable." Their eyes locked and heat bloomed in her cheeks as Jai pressed closer to her, his hand sliding across her lower back and gently guiding her even more tightly against him. "Jai, you have no idea how much I've fallen in love with you. I don't think a person could fall any harder. — Samantha Young

Living is like being chained at the bottom of a shallow pond with my eyes open and no air — Katie McGarry

A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading. — Leszek Kolakowski

The ways of Providence being inscrutable, and the justice of it not to be scanned by the shallow eye of humanity, nor to be counteracted by the utmost efforts of human power or wisdom, resignation, and as far as the strength of our reason and religion can carry us, a cheerful acquiescence to the Divine Will, is what we are to aim. — George Washington

But, you see, that's the luxury of being a lout - you get to be selective about when you care and when you don't. The rest of us get stuck when your care goes shallow. — Rachel Cohn

Being a reader has brought me much joy, laughter, and rich experience. But reading has also wounded me. The sacrament of reading has plowed me open and sown seeds of empathy that have taken root in deep soil. Over the years, reading has caused me to grow from a shallow, self-absorbed youth to one who seeks out the pain of the world. Reading has burdened me with the welfare of my fellow human, but sometimes the burden proves too heavy for my narrow shoulders. — Steve Kendall

There's nothing wrong with being shallow as long as you're insightful about it. — Dennis Miller

For all the self-improvement books I had read, I still wasn't above shallow validation-seeking. None of us were. That's why we were in the game. Sex wasn't about getting our rocks off; it was about being accepted. — Neil Strauss