Quotes About Superficiality

If we have had the seven-years' itch, we have not seen the seventeen-year locust yet in Concord. We are acquainted with a mere pellicle of the globe on which we live. Most have not delved six feet beneath the surface, nor leaped as many above it. We know not where we are. Beside, we are sound asleep nearly half our time. Yet we esteem ourselves wise, and have an established order on the surface. Truly, we are deep thinkers, we are ambitious spirits.

In our daily intercourse with men, our nobler faculties are dormant and suffered to rust. None will pay us the compliment to expect nobleness from us. Though we have gold to give, they demand only copper.

but doth not the person who expends vast sums in the furniture of his house or the ornaments of his person, who consumes much time and employs great pains in dressing himself, or who thinks himself paid for self-denial, labour, or even villany, by a title or a ribbon, sacrifice as much to vanity as the poor wit who is desirous to read you his poem or his play?

He was a dim secondary social success -- and all with people who had truly not an idea of him. It was all mere surface sound, this murmur of their welcome, this popping of their corks -- just as his gestures of response were the extravagant shadows, emphatic in proportion as they meant little, of some game of 'ombres chinoises' [French: shadow play].

He had none of that wish to appear deep which is at the bottom of most forms of fatuity; he was perfectly willing to pass for decently superficial; he only aspired to be continuous. When you were not suitably shallow this presented difficulties; but he would have assented to the proposition that you must be as suitable as you can and that a high use of subtlety is in consuming the smoke of your inner fire. THE FIRE WAS THE GREAT THING, NOT THE CHIMNEY.

In niets onderscheidden ze zich van de heikneuters waar ze later hun voeten op zouden vegen. Het waren nullen in elke betekenis van het woord, nullen die de kern vormen van een fatsoenlijk en jammerlijk burgerdom. Ze sliepen best en klaagde nooit; ze waren niet vrolijk en niet ongelukkig. De onverschilligen die Dante naar het voorportaal van de Hel heeft verwezen. De lui van de bovenlaag.

You're telling me Beyonce is a revolutionary? Thirty years ago, you had those guys who raised their fists at the Olympic games, and they paid 30 years of their lives because of that gesture. And you're telling me a superstar who put one fist in the air is a revolutionary? But that's the superficiality of this time.

Yes, Justin Bieber is a contrivance. Yes, Justin Bieber's lyrics are insipid - worse still, disingenuous. Yes, his tattoos stink. Yes, he's lousy at skateboarding. But what does any of this actually matter? In case you missed it, Bieber won.

The pretty girls get all the good stuff. Oh, God. So not true. I unlearned this after years of coaching beautiful clients. Yes, these lovelies get preferential treatment in most life scenarios, but there's a catch: While everyone's looking at them, virtually no one sees them.

Identifying someone by his, or her, outward appearance is often the first and most common error in the world

We take it for granted we know the whole story - We judge a book by its cover and read what we want between selected lines.

I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They're beautiful. Everybody's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.

The absence of love leaves a devastating void. When it is not present, your spirituality becomes superficial, your benevolent deeds self-centered, and your sacrifices insincere. In any relationship where love is not your motivation, you can expect it to feel bland and unfulfilling—if not meaningless.

I hate small talk! I can't do it.

Most beautiful dumb girls think they are smart and get away with it, because other people, on the whole, aren't much smarter.

There is less plastic in Tupperware factory than our film industry. People with plastic smile and plastic heart.

There is a level of snobbery and fickleness in L.A.

There are so many people who just want a flashy object in front of their eyes and don't want to think at all; I find that disturbing.

Why do people respect the package rather than the man?

ISSERLEY ALWAYS DROVE straight past a hitch-hiker when she first saw him, to give herself time to size him up. She was looking for big muscles: a hunk on legs. Puny, scrawny specimens were no use to her.

Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul. -Marilyn Monroe, 1958

Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul. -Marilyn Monroe, 1958

It follows, then, that the aesthetic ideal of the categorical agreement with being is a world in which shit is denied and everyone acts as though it did not exist. This aesthetic ideal is called kitsch.

She knew only too well that the song was a beautiful lie. As soon as kitsch is recognized for the lie it is, it moves into the context of non-kitsch, thus losing its authoritarian power and becoming as touching as any other human weakness. For none among us is superman enough to escape kitsch completely. No matter how we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition.