Superficiality Quotes

“I often stood in front of the mirror alone, wondering how ugly a person could get.”
― Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye

“I am aware that I am less than some people prefer me to be, but most people are unaware that I am so much more than what they see.”
― Douglas Pagels

“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

“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, Sceptical Essays

“Constantly exposing yourself to popular culture and the mass media will ultimately shape your reality tunnel in ways that are not necessarily conducive to achieving your Soul Purpose and Life Calling. Modern society has generally ‘lost the plot’. Slavishly following its false gods and idols makes no sense in a spiritually aware life.”
― Anthon St. Maarten

“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

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

“Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

“songs, to me, were more important than just light entertainment. They were my preceptor and guide into some altered consciousness of reality. Some different republic, some liberated republic... whatever the case, it wasn't that I was anti-popular culture or anything and I had no ambition to stir things up. I just thought of mainstream culture as lame as hell and a big trick. It was like the unbroken sea of frost that lay outside the window and you had to have awkward footgear to walk with.”
― Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One

“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

“So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and chance conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk, and suddenly the words come as though from the air: the situations that seemed blocked in a hopeless impasse move forward: the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends.”
― Graham Greene, The End of the Affair

“Now, 75 years [after To Kill a Mockingbird], in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.

[Open Letter, O Magazine, July 2006]”
― Harper Lee

“Access to information can be empowering. When it overwhelms us, constantly bombarding us with data, infobesity eventually estranges us from ourselves and holds us back from proper decision-making. Obsessively waiting for the latest records creates fragmented minds, hinders us from deep thinking or exercising sensible choices, and makes us float on the wishy-washy waves of superficiality. (“The Infinite Wisdom of Meditation“)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“We live in a world where the funeral matters more than the dead, the wedding more than love and the physical rather than the intellect. We live in the container culture, which despises the content.”
― Eduardo Galeano

“A woman who holds her head up too high, is trying to breathe from her own pollution.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“True beauty is measured by the number of pearls within you, not those around your neck.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Anya looked upon Nin admirably. Having him as a partner-in-crime—if only on this one occasion, which she hoped would only be the start of something more—was more revitalizing than the cheap thrills of a cookie-cutter shallow, superficial romance, where the top priority was how beautiful a person was on the outside.”
― Jess C Scott, The Other Side of Life

“A utopian system, when established by men, is likely to be synonymous with a dystopian depression. The only way for perfect peace by man is absolute control of all wrongs. Bully-cultures find this: with each and every mistake, another village idiot is shamed into nothingness and mindlessly shut down by the herd. This is a superficial peace made by force and by fear, one in which there is no freedom to breathe; and the reason it is impossible for man to maintain freedom and peace for everyone at the same time. Christ, on the other hand, transforms, instead of controls, by instilling his certain inner peace. This is the place where one realizes that only his holiness is and feels like true freedom, rather than like imprisonment, and, too, why Hell, I imagine, a magnified version of man's never-ending conflict between freedom and peace, would be the flesh's ultimate utopia - yet its ultimate regret.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Lacey shrugged bashfully. “Do you think I’m superficial?”
“Well, yeah.” I thought of myself standing outside Becca’s bedroom, hoping she’d take her shirt off. “But so am I,” I added. “So is everyone.”
― John Green, Paper Towns

“The midwest is full of these types of people. The nice enoughs but with a soul made of plastic. Easy to mold, easy to wipe down. The woman's entire music collection is formed from Pottery Barn compilations. Her books shelves are stocked with coffee table crap The Irish in America, Mizzou Football - A History in Pictures, We Remember 911, something dumb with kittens. I knew I needed a pliant friend for my plan, someone I could load up with awful stories about Nick. Someone who would become overly attached to me. Someone who would be easy to manipulate. Who wouldn't think to hard about anything I said because she felt privileged to hear it.”
― Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl

“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., Loving God with All Your Mind: Thinking as a Christian in the Postmodern World

“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, Black Boy

“Christ delves far beyond the means of superficiality, not simply because of his immaculate love, but also because he considers the distinct cases of each individual rather than withholding a broadened perception by use of stereotypes.”
― Criss Jami, Salomé: In Every Inch In Every Mile

“Once upon a time there were mass media, and they were wicked, of course, and there was a guilty party. Then there were the virtuous voices that accused the criminals. And Art (ah, what luck!) offered alternatives, for those who were not prisoners to the mass media.

Well, it's all over. We have to start again from the beginning, asking one another what's going on.”
― Umberto Eco, Travels In Hyperreality

“It is complicated,’ they say. I am so sick of this response. Many people use it repeatedly to escape depth and confronting reality. They use it to take solace in the fact that they don’t know (or don’t wish to know) the ugly truth of what is happening right in front of their eyes. They reduce crimes, injustice, war, pain, hunger, rape, and everything that must be unpacked, dissected, and confronted to this: ‘It is complicated.’ They say this about COVID-19, too. Oh, how I have grown to hate this response. Every time I hear this statement from someone, it sounds like ‘I am a loser’ to my ears. ‘It is complicated’ is the favorite response of lazy brains that refuse to think and do. Oh, my friends, I insist it is not complicated. If you really want to know, it is not so complicated. However, if you are really looking for reasons and excuses to justify your silence, complicity, and to protect your self-interest, then you are absolutely right – it is complicated!”
― Louis Yako

“It was as though Cutflower was so glad to be alive that he never lived. Every moment was vivid, a coloured thing, a trill or a crackle of words in the air. Who could imagine, while Cutflower was around, that there were such vulgar monsters as death, birth, love, art and pain around the corner? It was too embarrassing to contemplate. If Cutflower knew of them he kept it secret. Over their gaping and sepulchral deeps he skimmed now here, now there, in his private canoe, changing his course with a flick of his paddle when death's black whale, or the red squid of passion, lifted for a moment its body from the brine.”
― Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast

“I wish to forget, a considerable part of every day, all mean, narrow, trivial men (and this requires usually to forego and forget all personal relations so long), and therefore I come out to these solitudes, where the problem of existence is simplified. I enter some glade in the woods, perchance, where a few weeds and dry leaves alone lift themselves above the surface of the snow, and it is as if I had come to an open window. I see out and around myself.”
― Henry David Thoreau, The Journal, 1837-1861

“After this speech the two girls sat many minutes silent, each thoughtful: Fanny meditating on the different sorts of friendship in the world, Mary on something of less philosophic tendency.”
― Jane Austen, Mansfield Park

“Superficiality is a mentality. Those who love for superficial reasons will also hate for superficial reasons; those who vote for one candidate for superficial reasons will also dislike the other for superficial reasons; those who live for superficial reasons are more susceptible to burying themselves deeply in an existential debt, and then it comes: regret when on the bed of death.”
― Criss Jami

“Botox"
In a friendly exchange with a shopper in a grocery story line, she joyfully declared:
“Today is my 50th birthday!”
I said, “It looks like the hands of Time have touched your face gently. Happy birthday!”
“The hands of Time weren’t gentle on me, my dear. What you see are the wonders of botox,” she said.
“They say it freezes face features and expressions. Is that true?” I inquired half-jokingly.
“At this stage of my life, it makes no difference. I no longer need any expressions. There is nothing worth smiling for or frowning upon. I spent decades expressing in every physical and verbal way possible, all in vain,” she said. Her words were followed by a hopeless giggle that reminded me of the philosopher who wrote that as we advance in age, our fears are replaced with giggles.
She then continued, “There is a time when you discover that all verbal and physical expressions are futile. In everyone’s life, there’s one defining event that freezes everything in their lives. Anything that happens after that event is no more than desperate and hopeless attempts to pretend that we are okay.”
Before I managed to find the appropriate words, the cashier called on her. The timing was ideal as words froze on my tongue just like the botox freezes features and expression in a world in which words and expressions are of no use anymore.

[Original text published in Arabic on October 14, 2024 at ahewar.org]”
― Louis Yako