APPEARANCES QUOTES
quotations about appearances
Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule.
CHARLES DICKENS
Great Expectations
In all aspects of life, we take on a part and an appearance to seem to be what we wish to be--and thus the world is merely composed of actors.
FRANCOIS LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims
But don't you see, pervading the letter and guiding the pen, the great intellectual and moral defect of the present day? I mean, the habit of dwelling on appearances, not on realities, of preferring the report to the bullet, and the echo to the report.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, June 1, 1880
Be the thing first, and you will grow to resemble it.
LIAM PERRIN
Sir Thomas the Hesitant and the Table of Less Valued Knights
Alas, the kingdom of the blind,
Where Erasmus's one-eyed man is king,
Is universal, even here
Where vision and freedom are said to ring:
Realm of short-sighted sovereigns,
And the undecided who look askance,
Who question and who take exception
Before they blindly countenance.
LEWIS KORNFELD
"Appearances", LXXXX Collected
Women spend an average of 55 minutes every day working on their appearance. Let's break that down a little further: That amounts to 335 hours every year -- or an entire two-week vacation -- lost to their looks.
MELISSA DAHL
"Stop obsessing: Women spend 2 weeks a year on their appearance, TODAY survey shows", Today, February 24, 2014
Appearances are deceitful, I know, but so long as they are, there's nothing like having them deceive for us instead of against us.
GEORGE HORACE LORIMER
Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son
All appearances are initially classed as real. Any appearance found self-contradictory is (deductively) illusory, and its contradictory is consequently self-evident and (deductively) real.
AVI SION
Logical Philosophy: A Compendium
So may the outward shows be least themselves:
The world is still deceived with ornament.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
The Merchant of Venice
When we are able to look beyond appearances and to behold that which we truly are, we recognize that our essence is interwoven with the divine and that we exist as one of its expressions.
ALEXANDRA KATEHAKIS
Mirror of Intimacy
Spoiler alert: appearances are deceiving, and lamb eyeballs are a lot tastier than they look.
ZAGAT STAFF
"Lamb Brains, Green Sausage and Corn Fungus", Zagat, March 16, 2016
To judge the appearances we receive of things, we should need a judicatory instrument; to verify this instrument, we should need a demonstration; to rectify this demonstration, we should need an instrument: so here we are arguing in a circle. Seeing the senses cannot decide our dispute, being themselves full of uncertainty, we must have recourse to Reason; there is no reason but must be built upon another reason, so here we are retreating backwards to all eternity.
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
"Apology for Raimund Sebond"
The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendance.
CHARLES DICKENS
A Tale of Two Cities
Knowing so much less than nothing, for we are entrapped in smiling and many-coloured appearances.
ARTHUR SYMONS
The Symbolist Movement in Literature
Things do not pass for what they are, but for what they seem. Most things are judged by their jackets.
BALTASAR GRACIAN
attributed, Quote Unquote
The vulgar herd catches at the gross apparent fact, but the man of insight knows what lies on the surfaces does lie.
ISRAEL ZANGWILL
The Big Bow Mystery
For me, it is as though at every moment the actual world had completely lost its actuality. As though there was nothing there; as though there were no foundations for anything or as though it escaped us. Only one thing, however, is vividly present: the constant tearing of the veil of appearances; the constant destruction of everything in construction. Nothing holds together, everything falls apart.
EUGENE IONESCO
Notes and Counter-Notes
Things are seldom what they seem,
Skim milk masquerades as cream.
W. S. GILBERT
H.M.S. Pinafore
The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
Crime and Punishment
You have to look at a thing long enough for it to really show itself to you.
KATE MILFORD
Shadowhunters and Downworlders