Surface Level Quotes

Academia is to knowledge what prostitution is to love; close enough on the surface but, to the non-sucker, not exactly the same thing.

Men in general judge more by the sense of sight than by the sense of touch, because everyone can see but few can test by feeling. Everyone sees what you seem to be, few know what you really are; and those few do not dare take a stand against the general opinion.

He will see most without who has the best eyes within; and he who only sees with his bodily organs sees but the surface.

Beauty is only skin deep; ugliness goes all the way through.

You are but an appearance, and not absolutely the thing you appear to be.

Conservatism is all about surfaces and labels and presentation, and drag says no, we refuse to follow any rules about that.

A lot of people don't like bumper stickers. I don't mind bumper stickers. To me a bumper sticker is a shortcut. It's like a little sign that says 'Hey, let's never hang out.'

We keep saying, 'No more 'band aid' solutions.'

Deep down, I'm pretty superficial.

On TV people look at your hair and then they look at your skin, and then they look at your clothes, and by the time they're listening to what you're saying, you're off the screen.

Sometimes you have to shove all the surface stuff to the side in order to see what's underneath.

To perceive Christmas through its wrappings becomes more difficult with every year.

Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create an artificial sense of profundity.

Everything we see… is just the visible part of reality.

Most people read poetry listening for echoes because the echoes are familiar to them. They wade through it the way a boy wades through water, feeling with his toes for the bottom: The echoes are the bottom.

Let's clear one thing up: Introverts do not hate small talk because we dislike people. We hate small talk because we hate the barrier it creates between people.

Television is to news as a bumper sticker is to Shakespeare.

I don't want to be about the way I look - my body, my hair, my makeup, all those boring things.

For this is the truth about our soul, he thought, who fish-like inhabits deep seas and plies among obscurities threading her way between the boles of giant weeds, over sun-flickered spaces and on and on into gloom, cold, deep, inscrutable; suddenly she shoots to the surface and sports on the wind-wrinkled waves; that is, has a positive need to brush, scrape, kindle herself, gossiping.

The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea.

Depth must be hidden. Where? On the surface.

While love ceaselessly strives toward that which lies at the hiddenmost center, hatred only perceives the topmost surface . . .

The truly great man dwells on what is real and not what is on the surface.

Pretending is the grease of non-relationships. Pretending is how you and I get through the day without ever having to know each other. When I walk in the room, you say to me, 'How are you?' Well, you don't want to know. And, frankly, I don't want to tell you. So I just say, 'Fine,' and you go, 'Fine.' And off we go.