Superficiality Quotes

“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

“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

“I often stood in front of the mirror alone, wondering how ugly a person could get.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“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, Sceptical Essays

“Constantly exposing yourself to popular culture and the mass media will ultimately shape your reality tunnel in ways that are not necessarily conducive to achieving your Soul Purpose and Life Calling. Modern society has generally ‘lost the plot’. Slavishly following its false gods and idols makes no sense in a spiritually aware life.”
― Anthon St. Maarten

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

“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, Chronicles: Volume One

“Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

“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, The End of the Affair

“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

“Let us drop our 'tin ear' and listen to the sounds of the 'real' world veiled beyond our inattention, and overwhelmed by the smoke and mirrors of superficiality. ("Like a frozen image")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Anya looked upon Nin admirably. Having him as a partner-in-crime—if only on this one occasion, which she hoped would only be the start of something more—was more revitalizing than the cheap thrills of a cookie-cutter shallow, superficial romance, where the top priority was how beautiful a person was on the outside.”
― Jess C Scott, The Other Side of Life

“A woman who holds her head up too high, is trying to breathe from her own pollution.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of 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, Paper Towns

“True beauty is measured by the number of pearls within you, not those around your neck.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“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., Loving God with All Your Mind: Thinking as a Christian in a Postmodern World

“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, Black Boy

“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, Salomé: In Every Inch In Every Mile

“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, Travels in Hyperreality

“The trick of the internet, I had learned, was not being unapologetically yourself or completely unfiltered; it was mastering the trick of appearing that way. It was spiking your posts with just the right amount of real... which meant, of course, that you were never being real at all.”
― Jennifer Weiner, Big Summer

“Most people will never learn the lessons meant for them in this lifetime, nor become the person they were meant to be, simply because they are too busy being someone else, or someone they are not.”
― Suzy Kassem

“When it came time for me to go to bed, my mother beckoned me to her, and kissed me, and whispered, "I know I'll never have another anxious moment with my own dear laddie." I pondered these words before I went to sleep. How could I reconcile this motherliness with the screeching fury who had pursued me around the kitchen with a whip, flogging me until she was gorged with — what? Vengeance? What was it? Once, when I was in my thirties and reading Freud for the first time, I thought I knew. I am not so sure I know now. But what I knew then was that nobody— not even my mother— was to be trusted in a strange world that showed very little of itself on the surface.”
― Robertson Davies, Fifth Business

“the moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist, and becomes a dull or an amusing craftsman, an honest or a dishonest tradesman. He has no further claim to be considered as an artist.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism

“Superficiality breeds insecurity, simplicity breeds contentment.”
― Abhijit Naskar, When Call The People: My World My Responsibility

“The politics that enter the university are those that come from history, a retro politics, emptied of substance and legalized in their superficial exercise.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation

“He has made a show of being a devoted family man but his life has been carefully arranged so that he spends as little time with his family as possible.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, DIS MEM BER and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense

“What superficiality - and what stupidity - there is in trying to depict in a pretty manner things which one has thought pretty.”
― Osamu Dazai

“Everything in any way beautiful has its beauty of itself, inherent and self-sufficient: praise is no part of it.”
― Marcus Aurelius

“Deep sleep is when you are asleep but not dreaming. Paradoxical sleep is the sleep in which you dream. So, only paradoxical thought is the thought in which you think. Is there, by analogy, a paradoxical state of death - a deep death and a death with dreams?

It is evil that speaks evil: evil can ventriloquize.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories V: 2000 - 2004

“It is complicated,’ they say. I am so sick of this response. Many people use it repeatedly to escape depth and confronting reality. They use it to take solace in the fact that they don’t know (or don’t wish to know) the ugly truth of what is happening right in front of their eyes. They reduce crimes, injustice, war, pain, hunger, rape, and everything that must be unpacked, dissected, and confronted to this: ‘It is complicated.’ They say this about COVID-19, too. Oh, how I have grown to hate this response. Every time I hear this statement from someone, it sounds like ‘I am a loser’ to my ears. ‘It is complicated’ is the favorite response of lazy brains that refuse to think and do. Oh, my friends, I insist it is not complicated. If you really want to know, it is not so complicated. However, if you are really looking for reasons and excuses to justify your silence, complicity, and to protect your self-interest, then you are absolutely right – it is complicated!”
― Louis Yako