Quotes & Sayings About Style And Substance

I think that genre distinctions basically boil down to marketing categories, which are outdated. Any time people have an argument about them, they're arguing about something that doesn't exist in any meaningful way that has to do with style or substance or actual content of books. — Emily Gould

The Tao of Jen was very much the Tao of hiding everything that didn't look good. The Tao of Jen is wearing a cocktail dress with underwear with holes in it. The Tao of Jen is all style and no substance. — Jen Lancaster

A good stunt has to have both style and substance. It's a combination of impact and notoriety, the element of danger, technical execution, and the skill of the stunt performer. — Steve Truglia

Whatever else the election of Barack Obama represented - some have called it redemption, others have called it the triumph of style over substance - it was the ultimate victory for people who believe that black political gains are of utmost importance to black progress in America. — Jason L. Riley

I realized that every sermon I preached should be designed not to 'teach' or 'convert' people, but rather to encourage them, to give them a lift. I decided to adopt the spirit, style, strategy and substance of a 'therapist' in the pulpit. — Robert H. Schuller

Jess is not only a successful actress but also has a line of eco-friendly products called Honest that's become a million-dollar business. Jessica Alba an undercover businesswoman? That's my favorite kind of style - the kind with substance. — Derek Blasberg

Don't settle for style. Succeed in substance. — Wynton Marsalis

In a culture that elevates beauty and style, the Christian community is at genuine risk fordistraction, even deception. What do we truly admire in our leaders? Are we nodifferent from secular population, drawn tocharisma and style above substance and i tegrity?
I hope not. — Jen Hatmaker

Yes, you need substance in politics - but I think your style also says something about how you arrive at some of your conclusions. — Charles Kennedy

You can't have style if you don't have substance. — Ozwald Boateng

Good clothes, when put to the test, survive a change in fortune, as a Roman arch survives the luxury of departed empire. — Arnold Bennett

Resist the temptation to try to use dazzling style to conceal weakness of substance. — Stanley Schmidt

And how rare is it to find someone who shares your tastes? The one real fight they'd ever had was over David Foster Wallace. It was around the time of Wallace's suicide. A.J. had found the reverent tone of the eulogies to be insufferable. The man had written a decent (if indulgent and overlong) novel, a few modestly insightful essays, and not much else. "Infinite Jest is a masterpiece," Harvey had said. "Infinite Jest is an endurance contest. You manage to get through it and you have no choice but to say you like it. Otherwise, you have to deal with the fact that you just wasted weeks of your life," A.J. had countered. "Style, no substance, my friend." Harvey's face had reddened as he leaned over the desk. "You say that about any writer who was born in the same decade as you! — Gabrielle Zevin

Playing quarterback ... it's no joke ... The difference here with Johnny Manziel, there's a lot of style and very little substance. — Boomer Esiason

Style is the substance of the subject called unceasingly to the surface. — Victor Hugo

Jim Rohn is the master motivator - he has style, substance, charisma, relevance, charm, and what he says makes a difference and it sticks. I consider Jim the 'Chairman of Speakers.' The world would be a better place if everyone heard my friend, Jim Rohn. — Mark Victor Hansen

I've always been infuriated by Bertie, I have to say. I never appreciated his style of politics. I thought it was very superficial, running around the country opening crisp packets, as they say, never really engaging with the substance of what was being debated and it clearly had a hugely negative impact on this country. — Lucinda Creighton

What millennials really want from the church is not a change in style but a change in substance. — Rachel Held Evans

Style. People talk about it being stylish and beautiful, that's at the service of the story. Style for me means nothing without substance and there are moments and things about the film that are stylish but hopefully at the service of the story. — Tom Ford

I just remember that everything looked the same-all style and no substance — Paula Scher

Ability is of no value without discipline. Winning has no style or substance without humility. — Andrew Critchley

When I looked up 'rococo' in the dictionary a while back it was defined as 'an ornamental style emphasizing the florid and the gorgeous, but lacking substance', and I couldn't help but laugh. It was so perfect. How could anything beautiful have 'substance' anyway? Pure beauty is always without meaning or morality. — Osamu Dazai

Yet Aristotle's excellence of substance, so far from being associated with the grand style, is associated with something that at times comes perilously near jargon. — Irving Babbitt

Some writers are the kind of solo violinists who need complete silence to tune their instruments. Others want to hear every member of the orchestra - they'll take a cue from a clarinet, from an oboe, even. I am one of those. My writing desk is covered in open novels. I read lines to swim in a certain sensibility, to strike a particular note, to encourage rigour when I'm too sentimental, to bring verbal ease when I'm syntactically uptight. I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka, as roughage. If your aesthetic has become so refined it is stopping you from placing a single black mark on white paper, stop worrying so much about what Nabokov would say; pick up Dostoyevsky, patron saint of substance over style. — Zadie Smith

I think maybe they come out into the grounds in nightwear. But no, in typical anorexic stype they have read the fashion magazines literally. This is their version of thin girls in strappy clothes.
The girl in the petticoat talks to me, as Emma has done on occsasion, in a rather grand style, as if she is a 'lady' of some substance and I a visiting guest.
Do they chat much about clothes? I ask Emma in the car.
She shakes her head.
So, does she, Emma, see the difference between underwear or nightwear and 'going out' clothes?
'Yes,' she says, her voices strained again. 'But it's one of the things you don't know properly when you're ill and confused. You see these pictures and the people in the magazines are real for you. — Carol Lee

The only requirement of a symbol is that it have substance underneath: The first thing to do is to try to establish the substance. The style comes after the substance. Only then can the style help the substance, and vice versa. — Wally Olins

Substance and content over style and hype any day. — Derwin L. Gray

He sat in the living room in the dark, an expert at waiting, a nineteen-year veteran of it, waiting for people who failed to appear, missed court dates because they forgot or didn't care, and took off. Nineteen years of losers, repeat offenders in and out of the system. Another one, that's all Louis was, slipping back into the life. — Elmore Leonard

Maybe younger than the thirty he looked, still caught in style over substance. — Mary Hughes

My old man tells me every chance he gets I'm "style over substance" and that I've never done anything of value in my life. I'm fifteen. What does he expect? Being "cool as" is the only thing anyone cares about."
Burt, Book 1 "Making it — Jamie Scallion

If Elvis ..is the definition of rock, then rock is remembered as showbiz ... It becomes a solely performative art form, where the meaning of a song matters less than the person singing it. It becomes personality music ... if Dylan ... becomes the definition of rock, everything reverses. In this contingency, lyrical authenticity becomes everything: Rock is galvanized as an intellectual craft, interlocked with the folk tradition ... The fact that Dylan does not have a conventionally "good" singing voice becomes retrospective proof that rock audiences prioritized substance over style ... — Chuck Klosterman

In a culture where image is more important than information, style more important than substance it is not enough to possess the truth. [Christian] case makers must also master the media. — J. Warner Wallace

I don't need someone with a hot body. He can be fat or overweight and have a belly. It's very much about style and substance and humor, interest, curiosity and really being smart. — Kate Walsh

It is not clear who will bring to the Whitehouse those useful commodities of vivid language, a sense of history and most important - a sense of humour, but Johnson himself will provide many other attributes. He is effective precisely because he is so determined, industrious, personal and even humourless, particularly in dealing with Congress. ( ... ) Kennedy had a detached and even donnish willingness to grant a merit in the other fellow's argument. Johnson is not so inclined to retreat and grants nothing in an argument, not even equal time. Ask not what you have done for Lyndon Johnson, but what you have done for him lately. This may not be the most attractive quality of the new administration but it works. The lovers of style are not too happy with the new administration, but the lovers of substance are not complaining. — Robert A. Caro

I want to try not to repeat myself. But then I seem to do it continuously in my films. It's not something I make any effort to do. I just want to make films that are personal, but interesting to an audience. I feel I get criticized for style over substance, and for details that get in the way of the characters. But every decision I make is how to bring those characters forward. — Wes Anderson

I'd hate it to become style over substance, I'd hate people to start putting me in a magazine article about my style. I don't like dressing up in something I'm not necessarily comfortable in just to make it more of a show. I want the power to come from what I sing about and how I sing. — Ellie Goulding

So the film was a kind of lie, because by existing it said: 'Observe the lengths we'll go to for your security. We'll even make you a movie about it.' Style instead of substance, the image instead of the reality — Salman Rushdie

Leadership is not about personality, possessions, or charisma, but all about who you are as a person. I used to believe that leadership was about style but now I know that leadership is about substance, namely character. — James Hunter

When God measures a church, He begins with its depth not its breadth, with its substance not its style. — Steve Lawson

Jackie O was so capable in so many ways. Hillary tried to redefine the role when she got into public policy, and Michelle Obama is able to move smoothly between form and function, style and substance. — Bellamy Young

The acquisition of knowledge from books provides an experience different from the Internet. Reading is relatively time-consuming; to ease the process, style is important. Because it is not possible to read all books on a given subject, much less the totality of books, or to organize easily everything one has read, learning from books places a premium on conceptual thinking - the ability to recognize comparable data and events and project patterns into the future. And style propels the reader into a relationship with the author, or with the subject matter, by fusing substance and aesthetics. — Henry Kissinger

Women who focus on style over substance usually find themselves in a big fucking hole, with other men who want to fuck the hole. Oh so smooth, and none sophistacted. Because, you know, how sophisticated can hole-fucking really be — Emilie Autumn

There are so many things I'd like to change in the industry. Everything from the reliance of style over substance to their reluctance to hire me for big budget blockbusters, but the thing I would love most would be if they understood people don't have to be Hollywood beautiful to be sexy or interesting. — Colin Mochrie

I try to teach my students style, but always as a part of life, not as ornament. Style has to come out of communicating coherent thought, not in sticking little flowers on speeches. Style and substance and a sense of life are the things literature is composed of. One must use one's own personality in relationship to life and language, of course, and everyone has such a relationship. Some people find it, some don't find it, but it's there. — Marguerite Young

Obama is very much an establishment sort of guy. The whole image of him as a transcendent figure was based on style rather than substance. If you actually looked at what he said, not how he said it, he said very establishment things. He's a moderate, cautious, ameliorative guy. He tends to gravitate toward Beltway conventional wisdom. — Paul Krugman

Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance. — Sam Brown

If we don't understand bad writing, we can't understand good writing. Bad writing is characterized by obfuscation, showboating, narcissism, lack of a moral core, and style over substance. Good writing is exactly the opposite. Bad writing draws attention to the writer himself. — Anis Shivani