Non Appearance Quotes

Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Beauty is not the purpose of creation, it is its reward. Its appearance, often late in the day, is no more than an indication that the disrupted equilibrium between man and nature has once again been restored by art. Submitted to this test, what remains of contemporary works of art? ~ Brassai

Upon the time of death, when you leave your body and look back at your memories, it might come as a big surprise to you to see that you have spent an entire lifetime behaving according to what others expected from you, that is, doing what they expected you to do according to your exterior appearance to them, and based on which they formed their entire conclusions regarding who you are. When that moment comes, you will regret wasting an entire lifetime living in total darkness about your true self. That is when you will wish to be reborn again. And then you will forget your regrets and repeat your previous steps. And you will reborn again, and again, and again, until the world you live in, is uplifted enough to help you go through life in a good way. Ironically, that cannot be achieved until the world becomes what you wish it to be, until others are better than you. And so, it is paradoxically comic to realize that you will never become better than those that surround you, and it is up to you to help them help you. ~ Robin Sacredfire

To be alive means to live in a world that proceeded one's own arrival and will survive one's own departure. On this level of sheer being alive, appearance and disappearance, as they follow upon each other, are the primordial events, which as such mark out time, the time span between birth and death. ~ Hannah

You can wear your hair long or wear a beard because you want to show that you are interested in thought, in psychological endeavors rather than appearance. ~ Emilio Pucci

The beauty myth posited to women a false choice: Which will I be, sexual or serious? We must reject that false and forced dilemma. Men's sexuality is taken to be enhanced by their seriousness; to be at the same time a serious person and a sexual being is to be fully human. Let's turn on those who offer this devil's bargain and refuse to believe that in choosing one aspect of the self we must thereby forfeit the other. In a world in which women have real choices, the choices we make about our appearance will be taken at last for what they really are: no big deal. ~ Naomi Wolf

Feathers, and a shield and a lance and a sword. His armor and his weapons were all, I am almost sure, of quite different periods. The shield was thirteenth century, while the sword was of the pattern used in the Peninsular War. The cuirass was of the time of Charles I., and the helmet dated from the Second Crusade. The arms on the shield were very grand - three red running lions on a blue ground. The tents were of the latest brand approved of by our modern War Office, and the whole appearance of camp, army, and leader might have been a shock to some. But Robert was dumb with admiration, and it all seemed to him perfectly correct, because he knew no more of heraldry or archaeology than the gifted artists who usually drew the pictures for the historical romances. The scene was indeed "exactly like a picture." He admired ~ E. Nesbit

We try to create this interesting appearance to make ourselves feel better about ourselves. ~ Sarah McLachlan

In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female ... In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness ~ Laura Mulvey

This time once again it has been my chief aim to make no sacrifice to an appearance of being simple, complete or rounded off, not to disguise problems and not to deny the existence of gaps and uncertainties. In no other scientific field would it be necessary to boast of such modest intentions. They are universally regarded as self-evident; the public expects nothing else. No reader of an account of astronomy will feel disappointed and contemptuous of the science if he is shown the frontiers at which our knowledge of the universe melts into haziness. Only in psychology is it otherwise. There mankind's constitutional unfitness for scientific research comes fully into the open. What people seem to demand of psychology is not progress in knowledge, but satisfactions of some other sort; every unsolved problem, every admitted uncertainty is made into a reproach against it.
Whoever cares for the science of mental life must accept these injustices along with it. ~ Sigmund Freud

Our life's a moment and less than a moment, but even this mite nature has mockingly humored with some appearance of a longer span. ~ Seneca The Younger

I'm in favour of hipster androgyny: Any trend that permits men to rebel against strict gender rules of appearance is going to make the world a more expressive and sensitive place for all of us. ~ Russell Smith

Ah, my dear friend Hassim, seems our paths cross once again, how fortunate for this humble Sheik." As Abdullah spoke in his usual self deprecating manner I realized that a favor was on the tip of his tongue and that I was about to be offered a quid-pro-quo.

We were sitting crossed legged on large fat pillows with gold fringe. The tent was large with partitions dividing living, sleeping and cooking space. It was made from heavy cotton canvas erected on thick poles in the center giving the structure a peaked circus tent appearance. The women serving us were young, wearing harem pants low on their hips with cropped gauze tops made from sheer silk. Their exposed midriffs were flat and toned, their belly buttons were decorated in precious stones that glittered in the torch light as they moved. They were bare footed with stacks of gold ankle bracelets making the only sound we heard as they kept our glasses filled with fresh sweet tea and our communal serving trays piled high with dates and sugar incrusted sweets of undetermined origin.

Abdullah took no notice of these women, his nonchalance intrigued me as I was obviously having trouble keeping my mind focused on the discussion at hand, this was all part of the Arab way, when it came to negotiation they had no peers.

"So my dear friend, tell me, the region is on fire is there a solution?"

I spoke in a deliberate and flat tone, little emotion just concern, one friend to another.

Nick Hahn

all of whom radiated level-headed competence, physical fitness and pride in appearance, and lived on a different planet from the one defined by general weak tittering, the oxygen levels of which I was more used to. ~ Simon Winder

She sighed. Loudly. "Physical appearance is not what is important."
Yeah right. Tell that to any girl who hasn't bothered to put on a presentable shirt or fix her hair because she's only running into the grocery store to get a quart of milk for her grandmother, and who does she see tending the 7-ITEMS-OR-LESS cash register but the guy of her dreams, except she can't even say hi - much less try to develop a meaningful relationship - since she looks like the poster child for the terminally geeky. ~ Vivian Vande Velde

You are pure awareness at center, human in appearance. ~ Robin Craig Clark

Stop judging yourself on the basis of your appearance or condition of present circumstances. You may have an old car, in debt, job stress, and a troubled relationship, but they are not a true reflection of you as long as you are working on the vision of what you will be years from now. ~ Archibald Marwizi

Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

What's underneath is everything. But that doesn't mean you can't enhance it. Beauty has its own kind of magic. And the appearance of something can have power too ~ Danielle Paige

The problem with social media is that it's great for your ego, but terrible for your sanity. ~ Andrena Sawyer

As a viewed myself in a fragment of looking-glass ... , I was so impressed with a sense of vague awe at my appearance ... that I was seized with a violent tremour. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

That everything in nature has "the appearance" of design is not exactly evidence against design. According to Dawkins, though, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is almost certainly something else. ~ Paul Greene

Fate, however, is to all appearance more unavoidable than unexpected. ~ Plutarch

He loved the extensive vaults where you could hear the night birds and the sea breeze; he loved the craggy ruins bound together by ivy, those dark halls, and any appearance of death and destruction. Having fallen so far from so high a position, he loved anything that had also fallen from a great height ~ Gustave Flaubert

The having originated a precaution which was already in course of execution, was a great relief to Miss Pross. The necessity of composing her appearance so that it should attract no special notice in the streets, was another relief. She looked at her watch, and it was twenty minutes past two. She had no time to lose, but must get ready at once. ~ Charles Dickens

To them the appearance of the Hell's Angels must have seemed like a wonderful publicity stunt. In a nation of frightened dullards there is a sorry shortage of outlaws, and those few who make the grade are always welcome: Frank Sinatra, Alexander King, Elizabeth Taylor, Raoul Duke ... they have that extra "something". ~ Hunter S. Thompson

By nature servile, people attempt at first glance to find signs of good breeding in the appearance of those who occupy more exalted stations. ~ Anton Chekhov

This larger goal wouldn't be the imitation of education in Universities today, glossed over and concealed by grades and degrees that give the appearance of something happening when, in fact, almost nothing is going on. It would be the real thing. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

Almost all modern governments are highly conscious of what journalism calls 'world opinion.' For sound reasons, mostly of an economic nature, they cannot afford to be condemned in the United Nations, they do not like to be visited by Human Rights Commissions or Freedom of the Press Committees; their need of foreign investment, foreign loans, foreign markets, satisfactory trade relationships, and so on, requires that they be members in more or less good standing of a larger community of interests. Often, too, they are members of military alliances. Consequently, they must maintain some appearance of stability, in order to assure the other members of the community or of the alliance that contracts will continue to be honored, that treaties will be upheld, that loans will be repaid with interest, that investments will continue to produce profits and be safe. "Protracted internal war threatens all of this ... no ally wishes to treat with a government that is on the point of eviction. ~ Sebastian Marshall

I'm pretty nifty at thinking on my feet, even when I'm actually sitting down with a renter in my embrace, but this fellow's sudden appearance had me more than a little stumped ~ Mark Gatiss

Beautiful people make even those of us who proudly consider ourselves unmoved by another's appearance dumb with admiration and fear and delight, and struck by the profound, enervating awareness of how inadequate we are, how nothing, not intelligence or education or money, can usurp or overpower or deny beauty. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

But
my dear, my heart is BROKEN! I have seen the perfect Peter Wimsey. Height, voice, charm, smile, manner, outline of features, everything
and he is
THE CHAPLAIN OF BALLIOL!! What is the use of anything? ...
I am absolutely shattered by this Balliol business. Such waste
why couldn't he have been an actor? ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

However muted its present appearance may be, sexual dominion obtains nevertheless as perhaps the most pervasive ideology of our culture and provides its most fundamental concept of power. ~ Kate Millett

Existentialism
"every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind," we have entered the familiar Wordsworthian Romantic territory in which nature is phenomena and spirit is noumena and the task of the human person is to draw his being from whatever inscrutable force produces, organizes, and infuses the phenomenal universe - an "ineffable essence which we call Spirit. Being as not being stable but forever in flux and transition. Even history, Which seems obviously about the past, has its true use as the servant of the present.' Emerson and Buddhism stand for spirituality purged of creed detritus.' the essence of Existentialism is that you find meaning in nature, wisdom, mind and body. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men who have died in battle are rarely good to look upon. No matter how splendid their appearance at the apex of heroism, when the soul has fled it takes all grace and beauty with it. Bowels empty, mouths gape, bellies swell, dead eyes gleam fish-belly white. Nothing visible remains of glory. In the tents of death all men belong to the same tribe. ~ Morgan Llywelyn