Superficial Quotes - Page 17

• Insofar as one can talk of a Vionnet school, it comes mostly from my having been an enemy of fashion. There is something superficial and volatile about the seasonal and elusive whims of fashion which offends my sense of beauty.

  Madeleine Vionnet

  Fashion, School, Enemy

  30 Copy quote

• I guess the reasons against having more children always seem uninspiring and superficial. What exactly am I missing out on? Money? A few more hours of sleep? A more peaceful meal? More hair? These are nothing compared to what I get from these five monsters who rule my life.

  Jim Gaffigan

  Children, Sleep, Hair

  Jim Gaffigan (2013). “Dad Is Fat”, p.240, Crown Archetype

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and theistic religion, but superficial concord and deep conflict between science and naturalism

  Alvin Plantinga

  Philosophy, Science, Agreement

  69 Copy quote

• Physical elegance comes from the body. This is no superficial matter but rather the way that man found to honour the way he places his two feet on the ground.

  Paulo Coelho

  Men, Two, Feet

  7 Copy quote

• The study of Freemasonry is the study of man as a candidate for a blessed eternity. It furnishes examples of holy living, and displays the conduct which is pleasing and acceptable to God. The doctrines and examples which distinguish the Order are obvious, and suited to every capacity. It is impossible for the most fastidious Mason to misunderstand, however he might slight or neglect them. It is impossible for the most superficial brother to say that he is unable to comprehend the plain precepts and the unanswerable arguments which are furnished by Freemasonry.

  William Howard Taft

  Brother, Blessed, Men

  25 Copy quote

• People are much more important than superficial environments.

  John Caudwell

  People, Important, Environment

  4 Copy quote

• If somebody dies and you just go get more popcorn, it’s a superficial experience isn’t it?

  George R. R. Martin

  Popcorn, Dies, Ifs

  "'Game of Thrones' author George R.R. Martin: Why he wrote The Red Wedding". Interview with James Hibberd, ew.com. June 2, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Teach people to let go of their superficial mental chatter and obsessions. Teach people to pay attention to the whole body's reaction to a situation.

  John Heider

  Letting Go, People, Attention

  John HEider (2015). “The Tao of Leadership: Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching Adapted for a New Age”, p.12, Green Dragon Books

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• But Shakespeare knows what the sphinx thinks, if anybody does. His genius is penetrative as cold midwinter entering every room, and making warmth shiver in ague fits. I think Shakespeare never errs in his logical sequence in character. He surprises us, seems unnatural to us, but because we have been superficial observers; while genius will disclose those truths to which we are blind.

  William Alfred Quayle

  Character, Thinking, Entering

  William Alfred Quayle (1900). “A Hero and Some Other Folks”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Image is powerful. But image is also superficial.

  Cameron Russell

  Powerful

  6 Copy quote

• The greatest danger in any argument is that real issues often clouded by superficial ones, that momentary passions may obscure permanent realities.

  Mary Ellen Chase

  Real, Passion, Issues

  6 Copy quote

• ...What is at stake is civilization and humanity, nothing less. The idea that everything is permitted, as Nietzsche put it, rests on the premise of nihilism and has nihilistic implications. I will not pretend that the case against nihilism and for civilization is an easy one to make. We are here confronting the most fundamental of philosophical questions, on the deepest levels. In short, the matter of pornography and obscenity is not a trivial one, and only superficial minds can take a bland and untroubled view of it.

  Irving Kristol

  Philosophical, Views, Civilization

  17 Copy quote

• [W]hat suffers in the atmosphere of immediacy is analysis. What suffers in this search for speed is depth. The media in the wealthy world are becoming increasingly simplistic, superficial, and celebrity-focused.

  Laurie Garrett

  Media, Atmosphere, Suffering

  52 Copy quote

• The judge is forced for the most part to reach his audience through the medium of the press whose reporting of judicial decisions is all too often inaccurate and superficial.

  Irving Kaufman

  Stars, Judging, Decision

  8 Copy quote

• Persecution in intellectual countries produces a superficial conformity, but also underneath an intense, incessant, implacable doubt.

  Walter Bagehot

  Country, Intellectual, Doubt

  Walter Bagehot (1879). “Literary Studies: Edward Gibbon (1856) Bishop Butler (1854) Sterne and Thackeray (1864) The Waverley novels (1858) Charles Dickens (1858) Thomas Babbington Macaulay (1856) Béranger (1857) Mr. Clough's poems (1862) Henry Crabb Robinson (1869) Wordsworth, T”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Only superficial minds approach an idea with delicacy.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Ideas, Mind, Delicacy

  Emile M. Cioran (1999). “All Gall is Divided: Gnomes and Apothegms”, p.6, Arcade Publishing

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Jargon is the verbal sleight of hand that makes the old hat seem newly fashionable; it gives an air of novelty and specious profundity to ideas that, if stated directly, would seem superficial, stale, frivolous, or false. The line between serious and spurious scholarship is an easy one to blur, with jargon on your side.

  David Lehman

  Hands, Your Side, Ideas

  David Lehman (1992). “Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man”, Poseidon Pr

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• writing is the profound pleasure and being read the superficial.

  Virginia Woolf

  Writing, Profound, Pleasure

  Virginia Woolf (2003). “A Writer's Diary”, p.87, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Architecture is about aging well, about precision and authenticity. There is much more to the success of a building than what you can see. Im not suggesting that gestural architecture is always superficial, but solid reasoning has its place.

  Annabelle Selldorf

  Architecture, Aging, Authenticity

  4 Copy quote

• In any case, once you're dealing on a nonverbal level, ambiguity is unavoidable. But it's the ambiguity of all art, of a fine piece of music or a painting - you don't need written instructions by the composer or painter accompanying such works to 'explain' them. “Explaining” them contributes nothing but a superficial 'cultural' value which has no value except for critics and teachers who have to earn a living.

  Stanley Kubrick

  Teacher, Art, Needs

  18 Copy quote

• To be interested solely in technique would be a very superficial thing to me. If I have an emotion, before I die, that's deeper than any emotion that I've ever had, then I will paint a more powerful picture that will have nothing to do with just technique, but will go beyond it.

  Andrew Wyeth

  Powerful, Superficial Things, Technique

  25 Copy quote

• That excitement about Kossuth, consider how characteristic, but superficial, it was!--only another kind of politics or dancing. Men were making speeches to him all over the country, but each expressed only the thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. No man stood on truth. They were merely banded together, as usual one leaning on another, and all together on nothing.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Education, Country, Truth

  Henry David Thoreau (2007). “My Thoughts Are Murder to the State: Thoreau's Essays on Political Philosophy”, p.177, David M Gross

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The universe is the externisation of the soul. Wherever the life is, that bursts into appearance around it. Our science is sensual, and therefore superficial. The earth, and the heavenly bodies, physics, and chemistry, we sensually treat, as if they were self-existent; but these are the retinue of that Being we have.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Science, Self, Soul

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.453, Library of America

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Grief, Men, Joy

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.121, Simon and Schuster

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• Among the innumerable mortifications which waylay human arrogance on every side may well be reckoned our ignorance of the most common objects and effects, a defect of which we become more sensible by every attempt to supply it. Vulgar and inactive minds confound familiarity with knowledge and conceive themselves informed of the whole nature of things when they are shown their form or told their use; but the speculatist, who is not content with superficial views, harasses himself with fruitless curiosity, and still, as he inquires more, perceives only that he knows less.

  Samuel Johnson

  Education, Peace, Truth

  4 Copy quote