APPEARANCES QUOTES

quotations about appearances

Appearances quote

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

Tags: Francois La Rochefoucauld, actors


Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule.

CHARLES DICKENS

Great Expectations

Tags: Charles Dickens


So may the outward shows be least themselves:
The world is still deceived with ornament.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

The Merchant of Venice

Tags: William Shakespeare


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


Be the thing first, and you will grow to resemble it.

LIAM PERRIN

Sir Thomas the Hesitant and the Table of Less Valued Knights


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

Tags: Lord Acton


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

Tags: reality, illusion


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


The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendance.

CHARLES DICKENS

A Tale of Two Cities

Tags: Charles Dickens


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

Tags: George Horace Lorimer, deception


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"

Tags: Michel de Montaigne


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


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


Knowing so much less than nothing, for we are entrapped in smiling and many-coloured appearances.

ARTHUR SYMONS

The Symbolist Movement in Literature

Tags: Arthur Symons


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

Tags: Eugene Ionesco


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

Tags: facts


Things are seldom what they seem,
Skim milk masquerades as cream.

W. S. GILBERT

H.M.S. Pinafore

Tags: W. S. Gilbert


The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence.

FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

Crime and Punishment

Tags: Fyodor Dostoevsky


You have to look at a thing long enough for it to really show itself to you.

KATE MILFORD

Shadowhunters and Downworlders