"Skin-deep" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... consequences of some dreadful feud. Presumably the two women had been principals in the original encounter, and the laird had probably been drawn into the quarrel by the ears, too late to be included in the present skin-deep reconciliation. ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Denise Lange, and in no walk of life is personal attractiveness so much appreciated as in a girls' school. It is only later in life that ces demoiselles begin to find that their neighbour's beauty is but skin-deep. The nuns—"fond fools," Mademoiselle Brun called them—concluded that because Denise was pretty she must be good. The girls loved Denise with a wild and exceedingly ephemeral affection, because she was little more than ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... rags; it can be washed off, and nowadays is washed off where such a thing would have been considered affectation in the days that were. Soap and water have worked a visible cure already that goes more than skin-deep. They are moral agents of the first value in the slum. And the day is coming soon now, when with real rapid transit and the transmission of power to suburban workshops the reason for the outrageous crowding shall cease to exist. It has been a long while, ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... compared with the heathen swarms with which we wage war incessantly here. Every evening, as soon as the sun sets, clouds of mosquitoes begin their war-dance round us; their sting is most venomous, and as my patience is not even skin-deep, I tear myself like a maniac, and then, instead of oil, pour aromatic vinegar into my wounds, and a very pretty species of torture is produced by that means, I assure you. Besides these winged devils, we have swarms of flies, which also bite and sting, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... William Shakspeare, if the learned doctor had kept thee longer in his house, and had shewn unto thee the danger of idleness, which hath often led unto deer-stealing and poetry. In thee we already know the one, although the distemper hath eaten but skin-deep for the present; and we have the testimony of two burgesses on the other. The pursuit of poetry, as likewise of game, is unforbidden to persons ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... us. When we are drawn to each other, it should be by a true cord, and by an influence which binds and cements for life. The influence of mere outward beauty is a false one. Those who are smitten by it, and drawn thus into a matrimonial union by an interest which is but skin-deep, and which may fade like the morning flower, are allured by a dazzling meteor, by a mere bubble, beautifully formed and colored, but empty within. It may dazzle the eye, but it blinds us to all its blemishes ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... memories—not quite dead—of that earlier time when her tears had flowed for the like cause, and when she had felt absolutely certain that she could never be happy again. But her love had been of a selfish and surface kind, and the wound, never more than skin-deep, had healed rapidly and left no scar. Was it surprising if she took it for granted that her daughter's was of the same class, and would heal with equal rapidity and completeness? Beside this, she thought it very unwise policy ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... doubting my wife's word; but I never knew genuine Kalydor, such as I use for my own complexion, to smell so much like cherry brandy. I was about to express my fears that the lotion would injure her skin, when an accident occurred which threatened more than a skin-deep injury. Our Jehu had carelessly driven over a heap of gravel and fairly capsized the coach, with the wheels in the air and our heels where our heads should have been. What became of my wits I cannot imagine; they have always had ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... is to "get there" quickly Climate which is rather worse now than before the scientists Content: not wanting that we can get Excuse is found for nearly every moral delinquency Frivolous old woman fighting to keep the skin-deep beauty Granted that woman is the superior being Held to strict responsibility for her attractiveness History is strewn with the wreck of popular delusions Hot arguments are usually the bane of conversation Idleness seems to be the last accomplishment of civilization Insists upon ...
— Quotes and Images From The Works of Charles Dudley Warner • Charles Dudley Warner
... pictures are as vivid and as clear, but two great differences distinguish the ones from the others: humour and sympathy. Already we find humour well developed in Chaucer; his sly jests penetrate deeper than French jests; he does not go so far as to wound, but he does more than merely prick skin-deep; and in so doing, he laughs silently to himself. There was once ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... was a series of ingeniously-contrived manoeuvres in which the moving power of the machinery was the desire of sharing the spoils. Walpole's talk about Magna Charta and the execution of Charles I. could, it is plain, imply but a skin-deep republicanism. He could not be seriously displeased with a state of things of which his own position was the natural out-growth. His republicanism was about as genuine as his boasted indifference ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... became Miss Rosa McRamsey. And she graced the transition. Beauty is only skin-deep, but the nerves lie very near to the skin. Nerve—but just here will you oblige by perusing again the quotation with ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... "Miss is a beauty!—And we see no French beauties like Master Davers and Miss."—"Beauty! my dear," said I; "what is beauty, if she be not a good girl? Beauty is but a specious, and, as it may happen, a dangerous recommendation, a mere skin-deep perfection; and if, as she grows up, she is not as good as Miss Goodwin, she shall be ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Why, her face is a fortune: she will of course captivate a rich man; and what more can a father wish? As for Emily—I fear Emily, my dear, you're rather plain than otherwise; but what, I would ask, is beauty?—fleeting, transitory, skin-deep. The happiest marriages are those of mutual affection—not one-sided admiration: so, on the whole, I should say that my mind is easier about Emily than Jane. As for Maria, she's so clever, she can't but get on. As a musician, an artist, an authoress, ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... complacently pluck a butterfly, wing from wing, or cower in abject terror before a lean, nervy fellow, not half his size. He was a selfish cry-baby, hidden behind a man's mustache and stature, and glossed over with a skin-deep veneer of culture and conventionality. Yes; he was a clubman and a society man, the sort that grace social functions and utter inanities with a charm and unction which is indescribable; the sort that talk big, and cry over a toothache; the sort that put more hell into a woman's ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... the power of transforming plainness into the beauty of old age. Physical beauty is doubtless a great advantage, and it is never lost if mind shines through it (there is nothing so unlovely as a frivolous old woman fighting to keep the skin-deep beauty of her youth); the eyes, if the life has not been one of physical suffering, usually retain their power of moving appeal; the lines of the face, if changed, may be refined by a certain spirituality; the gray hair gives dignity and softness and the charm of contrast; the low sweet voice vibrates ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... higher, To God comes no nigher; But the arch-fiend Pride Mounts at her side, Foiling her high emprize, Sealing her eagle eyes, And, when she fain would soar, Make idols to adore; Changing the pure emotion Of her high devotion, To a skin-deep sense Of her own eloquence; Strong to deceive, strong to enslave,— ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... more particulars: that a barber in the Via Lincoln had been so much frightened that he cut the throat of the customer he was shaving, fortunately, however, no damage was done as the wound was only skin-deep; that a woman ran naked into the Via Garibaldi, not having time in her fright to put any clothes on; that a waiter handing a dish to a lady in the Birraria Svizzera dropped it on her silk dress, which was ruined; and that a priest in the Quattro Canti was seen moving his arms like an electric ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... a subtile sense of fitness, and die of their own accord rather than live in an unseemly contrast with youth and novelty: but the secret may be, after all, that hair-dyes, false teeth, modern arts of dress, and other contrivances of a skin-deep youthfulness, have not crept into these antiquated English towns, and so people grow old without the weary necessity of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... to minor affairs. As I look around me, it appears more and more evident that self-preservation is the dominant, mean characteristic of modern mankind. The universal attitude is: spare me and take all my less worthy neighbours. In gaining in skin-deep civilisation we have lost in the animal-fighting capacity. We are truly mainly grotesque when ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... dead sunset. I never dared so write. There was that between them that he had never shared with me, and yet all his old caution, as with me. I thought not, however, so much of his feelings as of hers, for I think his care for women is but skin-deep at-best. He was ever willing to take the tribute of their hearts—nay, of their lives; but should they incommode him, or trespass across the line he hath marked—this careless liking is changed to hatred, and ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... troops or leave to follow. We meanwhile arrived at Staggia, where we were in safety. There we sent for a doctor, the best who could be had in such a place; and on his examining Pagolo, we discovered that the wound was only skin-deep; so I felt sure [2] that he would escape without mischief. Then we ordered dinner; and at this juncture there arrived Messer Cherubino and that Milanese simpleton, who kept always muttering: "A plague upon your quarrels," and complaining that he was excommunicated because he had ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... in giving less for more, is more vital than it would appear on the surface. The capitalist and labor groups are locked together in desperate battle, and neither side is swayed by moral considerations more than skin-deep. The labor group hires business agents, lawyers, and organizers, and is beginning to intimidate legislators by the strength of its solid vote; and more directly, in the near future, it will attempt to control legislation by capturing it bodily through ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London |
