Quotes About Superficiality

America is a country that has been skating for ages on its unparalleled ability to look marvelous on the outside.

There was something facile and shallow about male beauty, she thought.

The New Deal, which gave unprecedented authority to intellectuals in government, was, in certain important respects, anti-intellectual. Without the activist faith, perhaps not nearly so much would have been achieved. [...] Yet the liberals, in their desire to free themselves from the tyranny of precedent and in their ardor for social achievement, sometimes walked the precipice of superficiality and philistinism.

Everything in Los Angeles is too large, too loud and usually banal in concept… The plastic asshole of the world.

She [Mrs. Hines] stood before the door as if she were barring them from the house--a dumpy, fat little woman with a round face like dirty and unovened dough, and a tight screw of scant hair.

Play not the peacock, looking everywhere about you to see if you be well decked, if your shoes fit well, if your stockings set neatly and clothes handsomely.

A fool judges people by the presents they give him.

With fame, you can't trust everybody. You can't depend on them being there for you as a person. They will only be there because of what you've got you as a person. They will only be there because of what you've got and what you can bring to their life. It's not a relationship-it's a leech.

Because you're not a handsome young man." "Well, neither is he!

Der reine Hohn. Niemand kümmert sich um sie. Die sich lange kennen, sind begierig, ihre immer gleichen Gespräche fortzuführen und interessieren sich nur oberflächlich für die Angelegenheiten eines Fremden.

Was there anything quite so under-rated in this shallow, plastic, global-corporate, tall-skinny-late, kiddy-meal-and-free-toy, united-colours-of-fuck-you-too world, than a good old-fashioned, no-frills, retail blow-job?

Yes, the Americans and the British were alike in some things. They were surface people, skimming over past history, picking out the interpretations that pleased them, never digging deep for the truths that could warn them. When they found something unpleasant, they would forget it within months. They even prided themselves on not remembering; forget and forgive were so much easier. They evaded serious ideas, unless they approved of them.

We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches.

They are the affectation of affectation.

[On America:] Of nothing are you allowed to get the real odor or the real savor. Everything is sterilized and wrapped in cellophane.

To succeed, managers have to become proficient at their superficiality.

In actuality, it was like the homes of all people who are not really rich but who want to look rich, and therefore end up looking like one another: it had damasks, ebony, plants, carpets, and bronzes, everything dark and gleaming—all the effects a certain class of people produce so as to look like people of a certain class. And his place looked so much like the others that it would never have been noticed, though it all seemed quite exceptional to him.

Between Countess Nordston and Levin there had been established those relations, not infrequent in society, in which two persons, while ostensibly remaining on friendly terms, are contemptuous of each other to such a degree that they cannot even treat each other seriously and cannot even insult each one another.

In reality it was just what is usually seen in the houses of people of moderate means who want to appear rich, and therefore succeed only in resembling others like themselves: there are damasks, dark wood, plants, rugs, and dull and polished bronzes -- all the things people of a certain class have in order to resemble other people of that class. His house was so like the others that it would never have been noticed, but to him it all seemed to be quite exceptional.

But these were essentially the accoutrements that appeal to all people who are not actually rich but who want to look rich, though all they manage to do is look like each other: damasks, ebony, plants, rugs and bronzes, anything dark and gleaming-everything that all people of a certain class affect so as to be like all other people of a certain class. And his arrangements looked so much like everyone else's that they were unremarkable, though he saw them as something truly distinctive.

En realidad era lo mismo que suele haber en todas las casas de personas que no son muy ricas, pero que quieren parecerse a los ricos, con lo cual sólo logran parecerse entre sí.

Cada día el mundo se vuelve más egoísta y feo. Hay odio entre las personas, entre las clases, entre los pueblos; porque todo el mundo está buscando encontrar bienes materiales, la posesión de la cual no es nada

We live in a vacuous world, yet we do so with a feeling of urgency.

Our society is used to judging content by its package and label.