Quotes & Sayings About Superficiality

Honesty has a beautiful and refreshing simplicity about it. No ulterior motives. No hidden meanings. An absence of hypocrisy, duplicity, political games, and verbal superficiality. As honesty and real integrity characterize our lives, there will be no need to manipulate others. — Charles R. Swindoll

What was it about us, as humans, that drove us to make apologies for beautiful things? — Nenia Campbell

It's plain that quite a high degree of thought and analysis is going into that. People know a tremendous amount. They know all sorts of complicated details, and enter into far-reaching discussion about whether the coach made the right decision yesterday, and so on. These are ordinary people, not professionals, who are applying their intelligence and analytic skills in these areas, and accumulating quite a lot of knowledge and, for all I know, understanding. On the other hand, when I hear people talk about, say, international affairs or domestic problems, it's at a level of superficiality which is beyond belief. — Noam Chomsky

The aim of education. - Education: to discover but not merely to imitate. Learning techniques without inward experiencing can only lead to superficiality. — Bruce Lee

Once upon a time there were mass media, and they were wicked, of course, and there was a guilty party. Then there were the virtuous voices that accused the criminals. And Art (ah, what luck!) offered alternatives, for those who were not prisoners to the mass media.
Well, it's all over. We have to start again from the beginning, asking one another what's going on. — Umberto Eco

Now, 75 years [after To Kill a Mockingbird], in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.
[Open Letter, O Magazine, July 2006] — Harper Lee

The so called beautiful people, especially the ones who are obsessed with their looks, bore me. They just have this superficiality in all things that they do or want to accomplice in life. It is like they want to look 'beautiful' all the time but not 'be beautiful' from within. I like depth. People who go deep into the way of things and the meaning of life. People who may not look beautiful but are truly beautiful! — Avijeet Das

This is a world in which each of us, knowing his limitations, knowing the evils of superficiality and the terrors of fatigue, will have to cling to what is close to him, to what he knows, to what he can do ... — J. Robert Oppenheimer

For where books, for instance, always offer a thousand times more than they are, television offers exactly what it is, its essential immediacy, its ever-evolving, always-in-progress superficiality. — Jean-Philippe Toussaint

You must renounce all superficiality, all convention, all vanity and delusion. — Gustav Mahler

Superficiality," said Richard Foster, "is the curse of our age." The desperate need of the soul is not for intelligence, nor talent, nor yet excitement; just depth. — John Ortberg

Actors," he says, "should only be superficial on the surface. — Johnny Rich

The 'Gossip Girl' idea and ideologies, like, they sort of encourage this certain kind of, like, materialism and superficiality that isn't, I would say, the best thing in the world. — Penn Badgley

Vanity and superficiality, placed deliberately on display, can be a burden; take this nonsense overboard. — Kristian Goldmund Aumann

Inner beauty lasts longer than the more obvious seductions, so throw away the miniskirt and thigh-length boots. — Ulysses Brave

But it wasn't the right season to lift off. Not yet. I sat in my apartment and looked out over the city, and I just didn't feel any passion to write about the place. I didn't give a damn about local politics; I wasn't moved by the issues. I missed home. And I was frustrated by people who actually thought the world was a centre and that centre was here. 'The world's a sphere, everyone,' I wanted to say. 'The centre of a sphere doesn't lie on its surface. Look up the word 'superficial', when you have a chance. — Mohsin Hamid

Refurbished that image of herself in other minds which was her only notion of self-seeing — Edith Wharton

Please, not again what you studied, how long you spent at it, how many books you wrote, what people thought of you - but: what did you learn? — Idries Shah

Anyone can see that an ass laden with books remains a donkey. A human being laden with the undigested results of a tussle with thoughts and books, however, still passes for wise. — Idries Shah

Men who think deeply appear to be comedians in their dealings with others because they always have to feign superficiality in order to be understood. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The superficiality of many is a result of deep fears. It takes spare time to think things out; it takes free time to mature. People in a hurry may not think well or mature well. The next best is a state of perpetual puerility. — Eric Hoffer

Elizabeth scowled, feeling like a nobody, a nothing. She felt like her entire self had been made worthless. She could change her interests, but she couldn't change her looks. She'd never be six feet tall. She'd never look like a supermodel. — Francine Pascal

I am afraid that old women are more skeptical in their most secret heart of hearts than any man: they believe in the superficiality of existence as in its essence, and all virtue and profundity is to them merely a veil over this "truth," a most welcome veil over a pudendum
and so a matter of decency and modesty, and nothing else. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I sometimes turn on the radio and I find very often that what I'm listening to is a discussion of sports. These are telephone conversations. People call in and have long and intricate discussions, and it's plain that quite a high degree of thought and analysis is going into that. People know a tremendous amount. They know all sorts of complicated details and enter into far-reaching discussion about whether the coach made the right decision yesterday and so on. These are ordinary people, not professionals, who are applying their intelligence and analytic skills in these areas and accumulating quite a lot of knowledge and, for all I know, understanding. On the other hand, when I hear people talk about, say, international affairs or domestic problems, it's at a level of superficiality that's beyond belief. — Noam Chomsky

I don't have answers for anybody else. What I know is that internal complexity makes for superficiality. There's never essentially a pure story unless there's a pure product line that has its own shining clarity. — Barry Diller

Anyone who has looked deeply into the world may guess how much wisdom lies in the superficiality of men. The instinct that preserves them teaches them to be flighty light, and false. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I just can't wait to get out of Sweet Valley,' Jessica explained. 'I feel like I've been dancing with the same ten cute guys my whole life. — Francine Pascal

Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. — Richard J. Foster

If I must choose, I'd rather be tuned in than 'turnt up'. — T.F. Hodge

And, when i peel away, I find my superficial layers run deep, and the deep layers are just superficial layers in disguise. And, when i seek depth, all I can find is a gaping hole, a certain hollowness, cleverly painted by my superficial selves to appear important. And, my ego sneers at this feeble attempt at self honesty. — Srividya Srinivasan

Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

For Freud, the semiotic trajectory of the dreamwork determines a phantom architectonics: a cartography of nowhere, an architecture of nothing (or the unconscious), and an archaeology of imaginary depth that always takes place on the surface. As a practice and sensibility, psychoanalysis remains attuned to superficiality; it constitutes a search for depth on the surface of things. — Akira Mizuta Lippit

The only unique contribution you can offer the world is to be who you actually are and no one else. — Ashly Lorenzana

There is a great superficiality in today's evangelical world. Many Bible-believing Christians share the contemporary case for self-gratification, emotionalism, and anti-intellectualism. Many people who believe in the Bible have never read it. — Gene Edward Veith Jr.

Choose a leader who will invest in building bridges, not walls. Books, not weapons. Morality, not corruption. Intellectualism and wisdom, not ignorance. Stability, not fear and terror. Peace, not chaos. Love, not hate. Convergence, not segregation. Tolerance, not discrimination. Fairness, not hypocrisy. Substance, not superficiality. Character, not immaturity. Transparency, not secrecy. Justice, not lawlessness. Environmental improvement and preservation, not destruction. Truth, not lies. — Suzy Kassem

Seriousness is no more a guarantee of truth, insight, authenticity or probity, than humour is a guarantee of superficiality and stupidity. — Stephen Fry

Their constant outward-looking, their mania for radios, cars, and a thousand other trinkets made them dream and fix their eyes upon the trash of life, made it impossible for them to learn a language which could have taught them to speak of what was in their or others' hearts. The words of their souls were the syllables of popular songs. — Richard Wright

I used to live in Los Angeles, but I didn't want my kids to grow up in the thick of the obsession with movie-making. There's a lot of sensationalism and superficiality. I wanted to take my kids out of that and raise 'em up elsewhere, and I wanted to stop being preoccupied with whether my star is on the rise or the descent. I can't imagine having a much greater life, and I don't want to be preoccupied with things that don't matter. But of course, ironically, my two oldest daughters have decided that they're going to be actresses. — Woody Harrelson

The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holders lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately. — Bertrand Russell

The strange thing about loneliness is that we feel it most intently when we are with people. Loneliness is the knowing in our heart that we were created to really, truly know each other in the deepest sense but we feel stuck with superficiality. — Dannah Gresh

We never actually have serious conversations about anything for more than 20 seconds. So there's a beautiful superficiality to our relationship which sometimes gets covered up by all the genuine affection flowing back and forth. — Kamila Shamsie

That's a very important thing in life, to be really looked upon for the qualities which you hold in yourself and not all of superficiality. — William Moseley

Kitsch is deep in its superficiality. Art is superficially deep. — Odd Nerdrum

Our lives are mere flashes of light in an infinitely empty universe. In 12 years of education the most important lesson I have learned is that what we see as "normal" living is truly a travesty of our potential. In a society so governed by superficiality, appearances, and petty economics, dreams are more real than anything anything in the "real world". Refuse normalcy. Beauty is everywhere, love is endless, and joy bleeds from our everyday existence. Embrace it. I love all of you, all my friends, family, and community. I am ceaselessly grateful from the bottom of my heart for everyone. The only thing I can ask of you is to stay free of materialism. Remember that every day contains a universe of potential; exhaust it. Live and love so immensely that when death comes there is nothing left for him to take. Wealth is love, music, sports, learning, family and freedom. Above all, stay gold. — Dominic Owen Mallary

The externals are important but I'm not interested in superficiality. — Kyan Douglas

Christ delves far beyond the means of superficiality, not simply because of his immaculate love, but also because he considers the distinct cases of each individual rather than withholding a broadened perception by use of stereotypes. — Criss Jami

I know I'm mean to tell you these things, but he is much worse than I am. He has the worst kind of meanness, that of superficiality. — Elena Ferrante

Elegance is usually confused with superficiality, fashion, lack of depth. This is a serious mistake: human beings need to have elegance in their actions and in their posture because this word is synonymous with good taste, amiability, equilibrium and harmony. — Paulo Coelho

Is love so gross a thing that it must feed upon publication and public notice ? It would seem so. — Jack London

You must never partly love or stop half way - because then, you become superficial and cannot be deeply hurt or loved ... — John Geddes

The more I read, the less I admire modern theology. the more I study the productions of the new schools of theological teachers, the more I marvel that men and women can be satisfied with such writings. There is a vagueness, a mistiness, a shallowness, an indistinctness, a superficiality, an aimlessness, a hollowness about the literature of the 'broader and kinder systems', as they are called, which to my mind stamps their origin on their face. They are of the earth, earthy. — J.C. Ryle

Her mind was as destitute of beauty and mystery as the prairie school-house in which she had been educated; and her ideals seemed to Ralph as pathetic as the ornaments made of corks and cigar-bands with which her infant hands had been taught to adorn it. He was beginning to understand this, and learning to adapt himself to the narrow compass of her experience. — Edith Wharton

The [twentieth century] could well go down in history not so much as a century of progress but as the century of superficiality. — Billy Graham

PLAIN SUPERFICIALITY is the character of a speech, in which any two points being taken, the speaker is found to lie wholly with regard to those two points. — Lewis Carroll

I am totally superficial, I know. But I believe superficiality can be very serious, a defense against the gravity of things, a manner of discretion. — Jeanloup Sieff

Whoever has looked deeply into the world might well guess what wisdom lies in the superficiality of men. — Friedrich Nietzsche

The Islamists had control over territory that was about half the size of the Federal Republic of Germany. For years, we have been putting the lives of our troops on the line, we have taken huge losses and the Europeans cut the budget? If money is more important than the lives of our children, what else is this than the usual arrogance and superficiality? And where is all this terror coming from? It is a result of mistakes the West committed in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the 1980s, when they armed the Islamic rebels against the Soviet troops. — Yoweri Museveni

Beware of those who are too focused with polishing and beautifying their outer shells. They lack true substance to understand that genuine beauty is reflected from the heart that resides inside. — Suzy Kassem

Lacey shrugged bashfully. "Do you think I'm superficial?"
"Well, yeah." I thought of myself standing outside Becca's bedroom, hoping she'd take her shirt off. "But so am I," I added. "So is everyone. — John Green

Songs, to me, were more important than just light entertainment. They were my preceptor and guide into some altered consciousness of reality. Some different republic, some liberated republic ... whatever the case, it wasn't that I was anti-popular culture or anything and I had no ambition to stir things up. I just thought of mainstream culture as lame as hell and a big trick. It was like the unbroken sea of frost that lay outside the window and you had to have awkward footgear to walk with. — Bob Dylan

The shape of evil is much more superficiality and blindness than the usual list of hot sins. God hides, and is found, precisely in the depths of everything. — Richard Rohr

Truth recognizes truth, just as a man with real talent is the first to recognize another with real talent. Likewise, superficiality attracts others with an artificial surface. Only the superficial applaud the superficial. A man of true substance rejects the superficial because he seeks only truth and depth. Based on this reasoning, you can easily measure the weight of any man's character just by observing who he admires. — Suzy Kassem

The tattoo has a profound meaning: the superficiality of modern man's existence. — Anthony Daniels

The whole gestural system of work was also obscene, in sharp contrast to the miniaturized and abstract gestural system of control to which it has now been reduced. The world of the objects of old seems like a theatre of cruelty and instinctual drives in comparison with the formal neutrality and prophylactic 'whiteness' of our perfect functional objects. Thus the handle of the flatiron gradually diminishes as it undergoes 'contouring' - the term is typical in its superficiality and abstractness; increasingly it suggests the very absence of gesture, and carried to its logical extreme this handle will no longer be manual - merely manipulable. At that point, the perfecting of the form will have relegated man to a pure contemplation of his power. — Jean Baudrillard

She had liked him for himself, that was indisputable. And yet, much as she had liked him she had liked the bourgeois standard of valuation more. — Jack London

I am aware that I am less than some people prefer me to be, but most people are unaware that I am so much more than what they see. — Douglas Pagels

So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and chance conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk, and suddenly the words come as though from the air: the situations that seemed blocked in a hopeless impasse move forward: the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends. — Graham Greene

I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another. — Erich Maria Remarque

I write the shopping column. I think I've proven my superficiality. — Patricia Marx

When the superficial wearies me, it wearies me so much that I need an abyss in order to rest. — Antonio Porchia

There is a breeze blowing. I see it in the deep discontent that is being voiced with the threadbare state of the evangelical world, with its empty worship, its market-driven superficiality, and its trivial thought. It is a breeze blowing toward better, deeper, more honest things. I suspect that it is the Holy Spirit who is blowing, that this is his breeze, and that these leaves that are shaking are the signs of better things to come within an evangelical faith that is thus being reformed. Let us all pray that it is so! — David F. Wells

He studied the woman before him, not as lovely as she once was, ordinary in appearance, scarred by living, abandoned by many, breathtakingly to be near and altogether unforgettable. "I have no friends," she spoke forth hauntingly. "I am alone." He couldn't believe it. But then he could for the rare creature near enough to touch was out of their league. She wasn't envied for the shallowness of appearance or the superficiality of status or possessions; she was envied for being uncommon and for possessing indomitable strength, something only a lifetime of suffering could shape. — Donna Lynn Hope

Even in their reading, More charged, too many women were prone to superficiality. In search of a passing knowledge of books and authors, many read anthologies of excerpted works, that selected the brightest passages but left out deeper contexts - eighteenth-century Reader's Digest were quite popular. More cautioned against a habit she viewed as cultivating a taste only for "delicious morsels," one that spits out "every thing which is plain." Good books, in contrast, require good readers: "In all well-written books, there is much that is good which is not dazzling; and these shallow critics should be taught, that it is for the embellishment of the more tame and uninteresting parts of his work, that the judicious poet commonly reserves those flowers, whose beauty is defaced when they are plucked from the garland into which he had so skillfully woven them. — Karen Swallow Prior

It must be hard when you are a beautiful woman and no one will look at your soul ... — John Geddes

Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality. — Joyce Carol Oates

But progress in knowledge has made us aware of the superficiality of Plato's lumping of individuals and their original powers into a few sharply marked-off classes; it has taught us that original capacities are indefinitely numerous and variable. It is but the other side of this fact to say that in the degree in which society has become democratic, social organization means utilization of the specific and variable qualities of individuals, not stratification by classes. — John Dewey

Maybe superficial is exactly what I want right now. If you don't talk about anything that matters, no one can say anything that'll hurt you
and you don't have to talk about the things that are eating away at you from the inside. — Liz Kessler

Working on the final formulation of technological patents was a veritable blessing for me. It enforced many-sided thinking and also provided important stimuli to physical thought. [Academia] places a young person under a kind of compulsion to produce impressive quantities of scientific publications; a temptation to superficiality. — Albert Einstein

Compassion is a sign of superficiality: broken destinies and unrelenting misery either make you scream or turn you to stone. — Emil M. Cioran

When everyone is famous, no one will be famous. — Michael P. Naughton

Knowledge is indispensable to Christian life and service. If we do not use the mind that God has given us, we condemn ourselves to spiritual superficiality and cut ourselves off from many of the riches of God's grace. — John Stott

First of all, it's friendship with God that makes possible friendship with one another in a manner that is not that we just like one another, but that were are joined by common judgments, by God, for the good of God's church. Such friendship occurs not by trying to be each other's friend, but by discovering you were engaged in common good work that is so determinative, you cannot live without one another. Now, if the church is that, it will talk about friendship in a way that avoids the superficiality of the language of relationship. Because relationships are meant to be spontaneous and short. Friendship, if it is the friendship of God, is to be characterized by fidelity in which you are even willing to tell the friend the truth. Which may mean you will risk the friendship. You need to be in that kind of community to survive the loneliness that threatens all of our souls. — Stanley Hauerwas

Whereas religious prayers sing of peace and harmony, religion has divided human beings through an atrocious history of enmity and bloodshed. Yet, behind the veil of superficiality and hypocrisy, I always believed in the inherent beauty of God that lies at the essence of all true spiritual paths. — Radhanath Swami

We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it. We have had enough of immorality and the mockery of ethics, goodness, faith and honesty. It is time to acknowledge that light-hearted superficiality has done us no good. When the foundations of social life are corroded, what ensues are battles over conflicting interests, new forms of violence and brutality, and obstacles to the growth of a genuine culture of care for the environment. — Pope Francis

Narcissism is very much a "disorder of superficiality." Given that the entire world is trending towards greater superficiality in all endeavors - work, school, parenting, and love - the narcissists' propensity toward superficiality no longer seems that unusual. — Ramani Durvasula

We are not 'censored' in the traditional way in the United States: writers are not beaten or killed because of their words, and no Ministry of Truth enforces an official version of what can be printed and thought. But in this culture of images, we are censoring ourselves. That may be more insidious and long-lasting. What I mean is that we disparage long-term complexity, and extol superficiality. We ignore reading, and lavish time on images. To read, in my mind, is to consider and to think. To see an image is to react. What happens when we start believing the world and what is important in it are only these reactions and prejudices? What have you become when the most expected of you is simply to press a 'Like' button? What kind of gulag is it when its inhabitants are too stupid to understand they are its prisoners? — Sergio Troncoso

A society where the simple many obey the few seers can live; a society where all were seers could live even more fully. But a society where the mass is still simple and the seers are no longer attended to can achieve only superficiality, baseness, ugliness, and in the end extinction. On or back we must go: to stay here is death. — C.S. Lewis

[A]ll the ... people who visited me out of a sense of duty, who were relentlessly sympathetic and secretly indifferent. — Robert Charles Wilson

I see people who talk about America, and then undermine it by not paying attention to its soul, to its poetry. I see polarization, reductionism and superficiality. — Azar Nafisi

At first, we should read with a blitheness practically bordering on superficiality; later on, with a conscientiousness close to distrust. — Kato Lomb

There is superficiality to Hollywood, and yes, it is charming. Of course there is sunshine, but there is also a dark side. It's a difficult place if you don't know people, and if you can't drive, you will find it lonely. You have to create your own bubble. — Amanda Eliasch

The prime occupational hazard of a manager is superficiality. — Henry Mintzberg

The everyday was king. And the courtiers were popularization, superficiality, doubt, cynicism. The century was exhausted. — Chaim Potok

Egotorial: An editorial in broadcasting or print media where the subject matter is secondary to the superficial, pretentious, antagonistic, or materialistic ego of the author. — Grant McLachlan

Now his imagination spun about the hand as about the edge of a vortex; but still he made no effort to draw nearer. He had known the love that is fed on caresses and feeds them; but this passion that was closer than his bones was not to be superficially satisfied. His one terror was to do anything which might efface the sound and impression of her words; his one thought, that he should never again feel quite alone. — Edith Wharton

You are too timid for me. You care too much about what other people think. But you know what? Because you are so desperate to win the approval of others, you'll never get rid of their criticisms, no matter how hard you try. You say you want to travel the path, but you don't want to sacrifice anything to that end. Money, fame, power, lavishness, or carnal pleasure - whatever it is that one holds most dear in life, one should dispose of that first. — Elif Shafak

When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories. — Freeman Dyson

So now you know my eyes are green - because of my shirt? You never looked into my soul to know how much in me is green ... — John Geddes

And the second [thing about the CBS EVENING NEWS that stands out in the mind of Michael J. Fox] was something Katie did later in the interview, as the drugs kicked in and the tremors segued into the jerkiness of dyskinesias. Somewhere in the contortions of making a point, my left arm detached the microphone clip from my jacket lapel. With no fuss and hardly a break in conversation or eye contact, she calmly leaned over and refastened it. Neither of us commented on it, but it was such an empathetic gesture, so far from anything patronizing or pitying, a simple kindness that allowed me the dignity to carry on making a point more important than the superficiality of my physical circumstance ...
... One thing was abundantly clear though, whether or not she was able to forget how much she liked me: with that single act of consideration, she made it abundantly clear how much she loved her father. — Michael J. Fox

Postmodernity is said to be a culture of fragmentary sensations, eclectic nostalgia, disposable simulacra, and promiscuous superficiality, in which the traditionally valued qualities of depth, coherence, meaning, originality, and authenticity are evacuated or dissolved amid the random swirl of empty signals. — Jean Baudrillard