Superficiality Quotes

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

“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

“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

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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“The midwest is full of these types of people. The nice enoughs but with a soul made of plastic. Easy to mold, easy to wipe down. The woman's entire music collection is formed from Pottery Barn compilations. Her books shelves are stocked with coffee table crap The Irish in America, Mizzou Football - A History in Pictures, We Remember 911, something dumb with kittens. I knew I needed a pliant friend for my plan, someone I could load up with awful stories about Nick. Someone who would become overly attached to me. Someone who would be easy to manipulate. Who wouldn't think to hard about anything I said because she felt privileged to hear it.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“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

“It was as though Cutflower was so glad to be alive that he never lived. Every moment was vivid, a coloured thing, a trill or a crackle of words in the air. Who could imagine, while Cutflower was around, that there were such vulgar monsters as death, birth, love, art and pain around the corner? It was too embarrassing to contemplate. If Cutflower knew of them he kept it secret. Over their gaping and sepulchral deeps he skimmed now here, now there, in his private canoe, changing his course with a flick of his paddle when death's black whale, or the red squid of passion, lifted for a moment its body from the brine.”
― Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast

“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

“I wish to forget, a considerable part of every day, all mean, narrow, trivial men (and this requires usually to forego and forget all personal relations so long), and therefore I come out to these solitudes, where the problem of existence is simplified. I enter some glade in the woods, perchance, where a few weeds and dry leaves alone lift themselves above the surface of the snow, and it is as if I had come to an open window. I see out and around myself.”
― Henry David Thoreau, The Journal, 1837-1861

“Love is the basis of all growth, all change, all healing, and all success. Everything else is the attempt to quell that thirst, with all the superficial desires that are mistaken for love.
— Drue”
― Drue Grit

“I'm used to being stared at, but this is different. He's not really looking at my face. It's like he's watching the air around me, the breath filling my lungs, and possibly even the thoughts swirling in my head. Like he sees me, really sees me, and maybe he sees through me a bit, too.”
― Josephine Angelini, Scions

“oh yes, cheers! he's looking good on the outside-
take an x-ray girl, you'll see you've been taken for a ride”
― Casey Renee Kiser, Escape from Narc Island

“Superficial" is a pejorative term mystifiers use for anyone who has a realistic view of life.”
― Marty Rubin

“What did Kiyoaki mean by his question? If one were forced to hazard a guess, it would be that he was trying to say that he had no interest in anything at all. He thought of himself as a thorn, a small, poisonous thorn jabbed into the workmanlike hand of his family. And this was his fate simply because he had acquired little elegance. A mere fifty years before, the Matsugaes had been a sturdy, upright samurai family, no more, eking out a frugal existence in the provinces. But in a brief span of time, their fortunes had soared. By Kiyoake’s time, the first traces of refinement were threatening to take hold on a family that, unlike the court of nobility, had enjoyed centuries of immunity to the virus of elegance. And Kiyoake, like an ant that senses the approaching flood, was experiencing the first intimations of his family’s rapid collapse.

His elegance was the thorn. And he was well aware that his aversion to coarseness, his delight in refinement, were futile; he was a plant without roots. Without meaning to undermine his family, without wanting to violate its traditions, he was condemned to do so by his very nature. And this poison would stunt his own life as it destroyed his family. The handsome young man felt that this futility typified his existence.

(p13.)”
― Yukio Mishima, Spring Snow

“We elect to reflect, run off superficial, distract, ID that ... culture.”
― Brian Spellman, We have our difference in common 2.

“If one focuses too much on the superficial appearances of life and loses touch with the underlying principles and figures, life will increasingly be experienced as a meaningless chaos, just like Lorenz's waterwheel.”
― Mattias Desmet, The Psychology of Totalitarianism