Superficiality Quotes

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

I know I`m mean to tell you these things, but he is much worse than I am. He has the worst kind of meanness, that of superficiality. ~ Elena Ferrante

The trick of the internet, I had learned, was not being unapologetically yourself or completely unfiltered; it was mastering the trick of appearing that way. It was spiking your posts with just the right amount of real... which meant, of course, that you were never being real at all. ~ Jennifer Weiner

You must renounce all superficiality, all convention, all vanity and delusion. ~ Gustav Mahler

Happiness lacks depth. That is why happy people also lack depth, they have a superficiality about them. Suffering has great depth and it lends its depth to those who suffer.
There is a depth in the life of people who go through suffering, there is a depth in their eyes, in their look, in their whole demeanor. Suffering cleanses and chastens you, it gives you a sharpness. Suffering has great depth which is utterly lacking in happiness. ~ Osho

You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. You might as well have the "brain" of a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion empty of all perception, an astonishing farce of misperception. And yet what are we to do about this terribly significant business of "other people," which gets bled of the significance we think it has and takes on instead a significance that is ludicrous, so ill-equipped are we all to envision one another's interior workings and invisible aims? Is everyone to go off and lock the door and sit secluded like the lonely writers do, in a soundproof cell, summoning people out of words and then proposing that these word people are closer to the real thing than the real people that we mangle with our ignorance every day? The fact remains that getting people ~ Philip Roth

And the second [thing about the CBS EVENING NEWS that stands out in the mind of Michael J. Fox] was something Katie did later in the interview, as the drugs kicked in and the tremors segued into the jerkiness of dyskinesias. Somewhere in the contortions of making a point, my left arm detached the microphone clip from my jacket lapel. With no fuss and hardly a break in conversation or eye contact, she calmly leaned over and refastened it. Neither of us commented on it, but it was such an empathetic gesture, so far from anything patronizing or pitying, a simple kindness that allowed me the dignity to carry on making a point more important than the superficiality of my physical circumstance ...
... One thing was abundantly clear though, whether or not she was able to forget how much she liked me: with that single act of consideration, she made it abundantly clear how much she loved her father. ~ Michael J. Fox

Irony is only skin deep. ~ Marty Rubin

Inner beauty lasts longer than the more obvious seductions, so throw away the miniskirt and thigh-length boots. ~ Ulysses Brave

Is love so gross a thing that it must feed upon publication and public notice ? It would seem so. ~ Jack London

If you could see how I see by penetrating the superficial, you'd see the grand scheme of those co called "powerful" officials. It's disgust and deception at its deepest descent and yes, all those involved, it's hell where all reside. ~ Jose R. Coronado

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

It's easy to judge only on the superficial. It takes a lot more time and work to truly understand. ~ Mickey Zucker Reichert

The aim of education. - Education: to discover but not merely to imitate. Learning techniques without inward experiencing can only lead to superficiality. ~ Bruce Lee

Sahl was never a great comic. His nervous, jabbing, keep-them-off-balance delivery was the strategy of a man who was not comfortable in front of an audience. His creative method -- a rapid scanning of the day's output of newspapers, magazines, and radio broadcasts -- was a recipe for superficiality or, at best, the kind of quick, shallow laugh triggered by a topical allusion. Sahl was always devoid of the two basic ingredients of great humor: imagination and soul. He could make fun of the latest Hollywood movies. He could stab at the pieties of his own class. He could take an abrupt insight into politics or wold events and phrase it neatly into a gag. What he could never do was suggest a world of living, breathing people behaving in ridiculous yet recognizably human patterns. ~ Albert Goldman

First of all, it's friendship with God that makes possible friendship with one another in a manner that is not that we just like one another, but that were are joined by common judgments, by God, for the good of God's church. Such friendship occurs not by trying to be each other's friend, but by discovering you were engaged in common good work that is so determinative, you cannot live without one another. Now, if the church is that, it will talk about friendship in a way that avoids the superficiality of the language of relationship. Because relationships are meant to be spontaneous and short. Friendship, if it is the friendship of God, is to be characterized by fidelity in which you are even willing to tell the friend the truth. Which may mean you will risk the friendship. You need to be in that kind of community to survive the loneliness that threatens all of our souls. ~ Stanley Hauerwas

Pleasure is a false god. Research shows that people who focus their energy on superficial pleasures end up more anxious, more emotionally unstable, and more depressed. Pleasure is the most superficial form of life satisfaction and therefore the easiest to obtain and the easiest to lose. But pleasure, while necessary in life (in certain doses), isn't, by itself, sufficient. Pleasure is not the cause of happiness; rather, it is the effect. ~ Mark Manson

When one has come to explore the ' instant moment ' and one has chosen to savor the delights of life, which are hidden behind the curtain of haste and superficiality, then ' mental time ' is replacing ' sequential time '. So ' here ' and ' now ' are keeping hustle and impatience in check. (" Just for a moment ") ~ Erik Pevernagie

Knowledge is indispensable to Christian life and service. If we do not use the mind that God has given us, we condemn ourselves to spiritual superficiality and cut ourselves off from many of the riches of God's grace. ~ John Stott

I often sit over against myself, as before a stranger, and wonder how the unnameable active principle that calls itself to life has adapted itself even to this form. All other expressions lie in a winter sleep, life is simply one continual watch against the menace of death; - it has transformed us into unthinking animals in order to give us the weapon of instinct - it has reinforced us with dullness, so that we do not go to pieces before the horror, which would overwhelm us if we had clear, conscious thought - it has awakened in us the sense of comradeship, so that we escape the abyss of solitude - it has lent us the indifference of wild creatures, so that in spite of all, we perceive the positive in every moment, and store it up as a reserve against the onslaught of nothingness. Thus we live a closed, hard existence of the utmost superficiality, and rarely does an incident strike out a spark. But then unexpectedly a flame of grievous and terrible yearning flares up. Those ~ Erich Maria Remarque

What I'm sure of," he began, "is that you can't be happy without money. That's all. I don't like superficiality and I don't like romanticism. I like to be conscious. And what I've noticed is that there's a kind of spiritual snobbism in certain 'superior beings' who think that money isn't necessary for happiness. Which is stupid, which is false, and to a certain degree cowardly. You see, Mersault, for a man who is well born, being happy is never complicated. It's enough to take up the general fate, only not with the will for renunciation like so many fake great men, but with the will for happiness. Only it takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience. And in almost every case, we use up our lives making money, when we should be using our money to gain time. That's the only problem that's ever interested me. Very specific. Very clear."
(...)
"Oh, I know perfectly well that most rich men have no sense of happiness. But that's not the question. To have money is to have time. That's my main point. Time can be bought. Everything can be bought. To be or to become rich is to have time to be happy, if you deserve it. ~ Albert Camus

The politics that enter the university are those that come from history, a retro politics, emptied of substance and legalized in their superficial exercise. ~ Jean Baudrillard

I used to live in Los Angeles, but I didn't want my kids to grow up in the thick of the obsession with movie-making. There's a lot of sensationalism and superficiality. I wanted to take my kids out of that and raise 'em up elsewhere, and I wanted to stop being preoccupied with whether my star is on the rise or the descent. I can't imagine having a much greater life, and I don't want to be preoccupied with things that don't matter. But of course, ironically, my two oldest daughters have decided that they're going to be actresses. ~ Woody Harrelson

When the point of reading is, as it was for Peter of Ravenna, remembering, you approach a text very differently than most of us do today. Now we put a premium on reading quickly and widely, and that breeds a kind of superficiality in our reading, and in what we seek to get out of books. You can't read a page a minute, the rate at which you're probably reading this book, and expect to remember what you've read for any considerable length of time. If something is going to be made memorable, it has to be dwelled upon, repeated. ~ Joshua Foer

Modern man wants everything to fit within his own perspective and resents being awakened from his blissful stupor. This is why he mocks, slanders, distorts, attacks, rejects, and hates whatever lies beyond his own worldview. He does not want to think, because television has taught him to hate thinking. He does not want to ask himself questions, because it is too tiring to do so. He doesn't want to struggle to go beneath life's superficiality, because modern culture has made him comfortable as he lives the pampered life of a hungry consumer in a cage of materialism. In ~ Dionysios Farasiotis

PLAIN SUPERFICIALITY is the character of a speech, in which any two points being taken, the speaker is found to lie wholly with regard to those two points. ~ Lewis Carroll

The shape of evil is much more superficiality and blindness than the usual list of hot sins. God hides, and is found, precisely in the depths of everything. ~ Richard Rohr

There is superficiality to Hollywood, and yes, it is charming. Of course there is sunshine, but there is also a dark side. It's a difficult place if you don't know people, and if you can't drive, you will find it lonely. You have to create your own bubble. ~ Amanda Eliasch

We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it. We have had enough of immorality and the mockery of ethics, goodness, faith and honesty. It is time to acknowledge that light-hearted superficiality has done us no good. When the foundations of social life are corroded, what ensues are battles over conflicting interests, new forms of violence and brutality, and obstacles to the growth of a genuine culture of care for the environment. ~ Pope Francis

Her mind was as destitute of beauty and mystery as the prairie school-house in which she had been educated; and her ideals seemed to Ralph as pathetic as the ornaments made of corks and cigar-bands with which her infant hands had been taught to adorn it. He was beginning to understand this, and learning to adapt himself to the narrow compass of her experience. ~ Edith Wharton

There are so many priests who enter triumphantly and walk up toward the altar, greeting people left and right, so as to appear sympathetic. Just look at the sad spectacle of some Eucharistic celebrations. ... Why so much frivolousness and worldliness at the moment of the Holy Sacrifice? Why so much profanation and superficiality, given the extraordinary priestly grace that renders us able to make the Body and Blood of Christ substantially present by the invocation of the Spirit? Why do some think that they are obliged to improvise or invent Eucharistic Prayers that conceal the sacred prayers in a wash of petty, human fervor? Are Christ's words insufficient, making it necessary to multiply merely human words? In such a unique and essential sacrifice, is there any need for such a display of imagination and subjective creativity? "In praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words", Jesus warns us (Mt 6:7). ~ Robert Sarah

You must never partly love or stop half way - because then, you become superficial and cannot be deeply hurt or loved ... ~ John Geddes

The canyons of our minds and hearts are so deep and so full of mystery that we try at all costs to avoid entering them deeply. We avoid journeying inward because we are too frightened: frightened because we must make that journey alone; frightened because we know it will involve solitude and perseverance; and frightened because we are entering the unknown. Aloneness, suffering, perseverance, the unknown: All these frighten us. Our own depths frighten us! And so we stall, distract ourselves, drug the pain, party and travel, stay busy, try this and that, cling to people and moments, junk up the surface of our lives, and find any and every excuse to avoid being alone and having to face ourselves. We are too frightened to travel inward. But we pay a price for that, a high one: superficiality and shallowness. So long as we avoid the painful journey inward, to the depth of our caverns, we live at the surface. ~ Ronald Rolheiser

You are too timid for me. You care too much about what other people think. But you know what? Because you are so desperate to win the approval of others, you'll never get rid of their criticisms, no matter how hard you try. You say you want to travel the path, but you don't want to sacrifice anything to that end. Money, fame, power, lavishness, or carnal pleasure - whatever it is that one holds most dear in life, one should dispose of that first. ~ Elif Shafak

Whoever has looked deeply into the world might well guess what wisdom lies in the superficiality of men. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

When it came time for me to go to bed, my mother beckoned me to her, and kissed me, and whispered, "I know I'll never have another anxious moment with my own dear laddie." I pondered these words before I went to sleep. How could I reconcile this motherliness with the screeching fury who had pursued me around the kitchen with a whip, flogging me until she was gorged with - what? Vengeance? What was it? Once, when I was in my thirties and reading Freud for the first time, I thought I knew. I am not so sure I know now. But what I knew then was that nobody - not even my mother - was to be trusted in a strange world that showed very little of itself on the surface. ~ Robertson Davies

The 'Gossip Girl' idea and ideologies, like, they sort of encourage this certain kind of, like, materialism and superficiality that isn't, I would say, the best thing in the world. ~ Penn Badgley

This, which men often call docility, goodness, or even superiority or knowledge of the world,is none other than the superficiality of those without reason in what they do, who merely find themselves doing it, not knowing why they wanted the things they wanted,having neither the potency of those things in themselves nor the sufficiency to withstand their loss. Instead they find themselves extracting their little lives from those things.Only fear for their own continuation makes them exchange those things now, in the same way that they grasped them before,when they obeyed that fear through insufficiency. ~ Carlo Michelstaedter

Anyone who has looked deeply into the world may guess how much wisdom lies in the superficiality of men. The instinct that preserves them teaches them to be flighty light, and false. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

If we do not know the character of being itself - I have never seen anyone suggest that we do know it - then there is an inevitable superficiality in any claim to an exhaustive description of anything that participates in being. And the assertion of the existence, or the nonexistence, of God is the ultimate exhaustive description. ~ Marilynne Robinson

He studied the woman before him, not as lovely as she once was, ordinary in appearance, scarred by living, abandoned by many, breathtakingly to be near and altogether unforgettable. "I have no friends," she spoke forth hauntingly. "I am alone." He couldn't believe it. But then he could for the rare creature near enough to touch was out of their league. She wasn't envied for the shallowness of appearance or the superficiality of status or possessions; she was envied for being uncommon and for possessing indomitable strength, something only a lifetime of suffering could shape. ~ Donna Lynn Hope

Also discovered my inward happiness and my defensive armor of superficiality and gaiety. ~ Francine Prose

Here, reader, thou must pardon us if we stop a while to lament the capriciousness of Nature in forming this charming part of the creation designed to complete the happiness of man; with their soft innocence to allay his ferocity, with their sprightliness to soothe his cares, and with their constant friendship to relieve all the troubles and disappointments which can happen to him. Seeing then that these are the blessings chiefly sought after and generally found in every wife, how must we lament that disposition in these lovely creatures which leads them to prefer in their favour those individuals of the other sex who do not seem intended by nature as so great a masterpiece! For surely, however useful they may be in the creation, as we are taught that nothing, not even a louse, is made in vain, yet these beaus, even that most splendid and honoured part which in this our island nature loves to distinguish in red, are not, as some think, the noblest work of the Creator. For my own part, let any man chuse to himself two beaus, let them be captains or colonels, as well-dressed men as ever lived, I would venture to oppose a single Sir Isaac Newton, a Shakespear, a Milton, or perhaps some few others, to both these beaus; nay, and I very much doubt whether it had not been better for the world in general that neither of these beaus had ever been born than that it should have wanted the benefit arising to it from the labour of any one of those persons.

If this be true, how m ~ Henry Fielding

To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

It must be hard when you are a beautiful woman and no one will look at your soul ... ~ John Geddes

When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories. ~ Freeman Dyson

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.

The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. ~ Richard J. Foster

With the spread of conformity and image-driven superficiality, the allure of an individuated woman in full possession of herself and her powers will prove irresistible. We were born for plenitude and inner fulfillment. ~ Elizabeth Prioleau

What must it be like for a woman to live with power over men rivaled only by God for the first third of her life, build her identity over her looks, only to feel it slip away as time tumbles by? Feel the shift in how people treat her, as though getting old is a contagious affliction? ~ Tyler Knight

Seriousness is no more a guarantee of truth, insight, authenticity or probity, than humour is a guarantee of superficiality and stupidity. ~ Stephen Fry

Many people measure their self-worth based on how much money they make... once one is able to provide for basic physical needs (food shelter, and so on), the correlation between happiness and worldly success quickly approaches zero. ~ Mark Manson

We all want to spend eternity with God. We just don't want to spend time with Him. We stand and stare from a distance, satisfied with superficiality. We Facebook more than we seek His face. We text more than we study The Text. And our eyes aren't fixed on Jesus. They're fixed on our iPhones and iPads - emphasis on "i." Then we wonder why God feels so distant. It's because we're hugging the rim. We wonder why we're bored with our faith. It's because we're holding out.

We want joy without sacrifice.

We want character without suffering.

We want success without failure.

We want gain without pain.

We want a testimony without the test.

We want it all without going all out for it. ~ Mark Batterson

Postmodernity is said to be a culture of fragmentary sensations, eclectic nostalgia, disposable simulacra, and promiscuous superficiality, in which the traditionally valued qualities of depth, coherence, meaning, originality, and authenticity are evacuated or dissolved amid the random swirl of empty signals. ~ Jean Baudrillard

For this beauty,
beauty without strength,
chokes out life. ~ Hilda Doolittle

The externals are important but I'm not interested in superficiality. ~ Kyan Douglas

Working on the final formulation of technological patents was a veritable blessing for me. It enforced many-sided thinking and also provided important stimuli to physical thought. [Academia] places a young person under a kind of compulsion to produce impressive quantities of scientific publications; a temptation to superficiality. ~ Albert Einstein

Live in your roots, not in your branches. ~ Nancy Willard

There are two ways of confronting the country's problems.One is through a management style based on adventurism, instability, play-acting, exaggerations, wrongdoing, being secretive, self-importance, superficiality and ignoring the law. The second way is based on realism, respect, openness, collective wisdom and avoiding extremism. ~ Mir-Hossein Mousavi

The world will benefit significantly from talents such as empathy, emotional intensity, certitude, sensitivity, ability to detect details, depth of thought, will to embrace, and many other things that we need in a time where alienation, coldness, superficiality, and emotional hardness are predominating. ~ Jenara Nerenberg

If I must choose, I'd rather be tuned in than 'turnt up'. ~ T.F. Hodge

[A]ll the ... people who visited me out of a sense of duty, who were relentlessly sympathetic and secretly indifferent. ~ Robert Charles Wilson

Vanity and superficiality, placed deliberately on display, can be a burden; take this nonsense overboard. ~ Kristian Goldmund Aumann

Guy suddenly wanted to scald his face, gain fifty pounds, shear his hair. He was sick of his beauty, his "eternal" beauty. People thought he was purer, more intelligent, kinder, nobler than he was because they ascribed all these virtues to him. What if he were stripped of his looks, if he stabbed the grotesque painting in the attic? If they saw him for what he really was – empty-headed, vicieux (how did you translate that? "Riddled with vices?"), narcisse? Used to being indulged and pursued, terrified he'd outlive his fatal appeal and yet longing to be free of it? ~ Edmund White

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

I am afraid that old women are more skeptical in their most secret heart of hearts than any man: they believe in the superficiality of existence as in its essence, and all virtue and profundity is to them merely a veil over this "truth," a most welcome veil over a pudendum
and so a matter of decency and modesty, and nothing else. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I write the shopping column. I think I've proven my superficiality. ~ Patricia Marx

Guys who always shined their shoes were usually self-involved asswipes who figure superficiality trumps substance. ~ Harlan Coben

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

Refurbished that image of herself in other minds which was her only notion of self-seeing ~ Edith Wharton

When everyone is famous, no one will be famous. ~ Michael P. Naughton

I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another. ~ Erich Maria Remarque

But progress in knowledge has made us aware of the superficiality of Plato's lumping of individuals and their original powers into a few sharply marked-off classes; it has taught us that original capacities are indefinitely numerous and variable. It is but the other side of this fact to say that in the degree in which society has become democratic, social organization means utilization of the specific and variable qualities of individuals, not stratification by classes. ~ John Dewey

We never actually have serious conversations about anything for more than 20 seconds. So there's a beautiful superficiality to our relationship which sometimes gets covered up by all the genuine affection flowing back and forth. ~ Kamila Shamsie

Kitsch is deep in its superficiality. Art is superficially deep. ~ Odd Nerdrum

I sometimes turn on the radio and I find very often that what I'm listening to is a discussion of sports. These are telephone conversations. People call in and have long and intricate discussions, and it's plain that quite a high degree of thought and analysis is going into that. People know a tremendous amount. They know all sorts of complicated details and enter into far-reaching discussion about whether the coach made the right decision yesterday and so on. These are ordinary people, not professionals, who are applying their intelligence and analytic skills in these areas and accumulating quite a lot of knowledge and, for all I know, understanding. On the other hand, when I hear people talk about, say, international affairs or domestic problems, it's at a level of superficiality that's beyond belief. ~ Noam Chomsky

A society where the simple many obey the few seers can live; a society where all were seers could live even more fully. But a society where the mass is still simple and the seers are no longer attended to can achieve only superficiality, baseness, ugliness, and in the end extinction. On or back we must go: to stay here is death. ~ C.S. Lewis

It takes strong, sound leadership, that correspondingly rare commodity, which is afflicted with neither an excess of pity nor callousness, to stand against the insipid tide of superficiality that is sweeping the world. ~ Tim Macartney-Snape

In these days people take up with each other and drop each other too easily. Pleasure is practiced like a sport, and the easy game of love leads to the dissolution of the feeling of love. ~ Jeanne Moreau

Anyone can see that an ass laden with books remains a donkey. A human being laden with the undigested results of a tussle with thoughts and books, however, still passes for wise. ~ Idries Shah

Superficiality is the curse of the modern world. ~ Matthew Kelly

The aloneness. The invisible walls. Always the outsider looking in. Different. Unusual. I despise their world and the superficiality of it all and yet still want to be a part of it. I wonder sometimes how much simpler a life of naïveté and unawareness would be. I have on occasion found people I could trust with who I really am, and when that happens, I walk away....

It's safer that way-- for them, for me. It's far easier to bear personal pain than the responsibility of someone else's. I feel safe around people as tough as I am, but they don't come along that often. ~ Taylor Stevens

To my own demise, I rarely ask why I'm hungry because I'm focusing all of my energies on getting fed. And if I persist in such a diminishing cycle, in all probability I will eventually starve to death because I have chosen to gorge myself on the very things that will keep me empty. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

She had liked him for himself, that was indisputable. And yet, much as she had liked him she had liked the bourgeois standard of valuation more. ~ Jack London

I am totally superficial, I know. But I believe superficiality can be very serious, a defense against the gravity of things, a manner of discretion. ~ Jeanloup Sieff

The Islamists had control over territory that was about half the size of the Federal Republic of Germany. For years, we have been putting the lives of our troops on the line, we have taken huge losses and the Europeans cut the budget? If money is more important than the lives of our children, what else is this than the usual arrogance and superficiality? And where is all this terror coming from? It is a result of mistakes the West committed in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the 1980s, when they armed the Islamic rebels against the Soviet troops. ~ Yoweri Museveni

The value of jazz still has to be clarified. People involve themselves with its superficialities without digging for its soul. ~ Stan Getz

When the superficial wearies me, it wearies me so much that I need an abyss in order to rest. ~ Antonio Porchia

Honesty has a beautiful and refreshing simplicity about it. No ulterior motives. No hidden meanings. An absence of hypocrisy, duplicity, political games, and verbal superficiality. As honesty and real integrity characterize our lives, there will be no need to manipulate others. ~ Charles R. Swindoll

Compassion is a sign of superficiality: broken destinies and unrelenting misery either make you scream or turn you to stone. ~ Emil M. Cioran

So now you know my eyes are green - because of my shirt? You never looked into my soul to know how much in me is green ... ~ John Geddes

Whereas religious prayers sing of peace and harmony, religion has divided human beings through an atrocious history of enmity and bloodshed. Yet, behind the veil of superficiality and hypocrisy, I always believed in the inherent beauty of God that lies at the essence of all true spiritual paths. ~ Radhanath Swami

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. ~ William E. Leuchtenburg

But it wasn't the right season to lift off. Not yet. I sat in my apartment and looked out over the city, and I just didn't feel any passion to write about the place. I didn't give a damn about local politics; I wasn't moved by the issues. I missed home. And I was frustrated by people who actually thought the world was a centre and that centre was here. 'The world's a sphere, everyone,' I wanted to say. 'The centre of a sphere doesn't lie on its surface. Look up the word 'superficial', when you have a chance. ~ Mohsin Hamid

But Sir Alistair's gaze was different. Those other men had looked at her with lust or speculation or crass curiosity, but they hadn't been looking at her really. They'd been looking at what she represented to them: physical love or a valuable prize or an object to be gawked at. When Sir Alistair stared at her, well, he was looking at her. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

One who aspires to greatness should read and study, pursuing the True Way with such a firm resolve that he is perfectly straightforward and open, rises above the superficialities of conventional behavior, and refuses to be satisfied with the petty or commonplace. ~ Yoshida Shoin

I am still a person with a sense of superficiality that I'm trying to challenge. ~ Gwendoline Christie

The emptiness of the narcissist often means that they are only focused on whatever is useful or interesting to them at the moment. If at that moment it is interesting for them to tell you they love you, they do. It's not really a long game to them, and when the next interesting issue comes up, they attend to that. The objectification of others - viewing other people as objects useful to his needs - can also play a role. When you are the only thing in the room, or the most interesting thing in the room, then the narcissist's charisma and charm can leave you convinced that you are his everything. The problem is that this is typically superficial regard, and that superficiality results in inconsistency, and emotions for the narcissistic person range from intense to detached on a regular basis. This vacillation between intensity and detachment can be observed in the narcissist's relationships with people (acquaintances, friends, family, and partners), work, and experiences. A healthy relationship should feel like a safe harbor in your life. Life throws us enough curve balls in the shape of money problems, work issues, medical issues, household issues, and even the weather. Sadly, a relationship with a narcissist can be one more source of chaos in your life, rather than a place of comfort and consistency. ~ Ramani Durvasula

Actors," he says, "should only be superficial on the surface. ~ Johnny Rich