"Skin-deep" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... make their impressions rather on the outward senses, to tickle and please them, or the countenance, to put some pleasing shape upon it. But the wise man pronounceth all those joys that arise from external things to be superficial, only skin-deep. "In the midst of laughter the heart is sorrowful, and the end of that mirth is heaviness," Prov. xiv. 13. Extrema gaudii luctus occupat.(235) There is no solid recreation to the soul in its retired thoughts, from all the delights ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... let it not be forgotten, presumably extends to mind as well as to body. It is not merely skin-deep. Contrast the stoical Red Indian with the vivacious Negro; or the phlegmatic Dutchman with the passionate Italian. True, you say, but what about the influence of their various climates, or again of their different ideals of behaviour? Quite ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... skin-deep Papist. Her Catholicism did not exceed the amount necessary for fashion. She would have been a Puseyite in the present day. She wore great dresses of velvet, satin, or moire, some composed of fifteen or sixteen yards of material, with embroideries of gold and silver; ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... any service to render. Mrs. Argenter did not miss her; she read a great deal, and slept a great deal, and Sylvie was rarely gone long at a time. She was always ready at twilight to play backgammon, or a game of what she called "skin-deep chess," for her mother was not able to bear the exertion or excitement of chess in real, deep earnest. Sylvie brought her sewing, also,—work for Neighbor Street it was, mostly,—into the gray parlor, and "sewed for two," on the principle ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the facile intimacies of artists, Durtal had been attracted by this man's fastidious reserve. It was perfectly natural that Durtal, surfeited with skin-deep friendships, should feel drawn to Des Hermies, but it was difficult to imagine why Des Hermies, with his taste for strange associations, should take a liking to Durtal, who was the soberest, steadiest, most normal ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... some surprise. [In—OEuvres de Frederic,—x. 276-303.] Surprise, first at Voltaire's official fidelity; his frankness, rigorous strictness in this small duty: then at the kind of correcting, instructing and lessoning, that had been demanded of him by his Royal Pupil. Mere grammatical stylistic skin-deep work: nothing (or, at least, in these Specimens nothing) of attempt upon the interior structure, or the interior harmony even of utterance: solely the Parisian niceties, graces, laws of poetic language, the FAS and the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... surface of the deeply-rooted evil; it is folly to be querulous, and as silly to fancy that men are growing worse, as that they are much better than they used to be. The evils under which we suffer are not skin-deep, to be eradicated by changing the old physicians for new quacks. What is to be done under such conditions, but to hold fast as vigorously as we can to the rules of life and faith which have served our ancestors, and which, whatever their justifications, ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... brave. It was. I was only fifteen, and I had lived all my days in the thick of the mystery stuff, while my scepticism, very recently acquired, was only skin-deep. I could be a sceptic out in the open in the sunshine. But I was afraid of the dark. And in that twilight room, the bones of the dead all about me in the big jars, why, the old lady had me scared stiff. As we say to-day, she had my goat. Only I was brave and didn't let on. ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... green valley quickened by a running stream. The bells were all very pretty in their way, but I had heard some of the hollow notes of Pan's music. Would the wicked river drag me down by the heels, indeed? and look so beautiful all the time? Nature's good humour was only skin-deep, after all." ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... such-and-such a diet for a month, then go to Aix-les-Bains." But how would my lady be ashamed did he tell her plainly: "Madam, though I observe that you bathe frequently, your cleanliness, like your beauty, is only skin-deep. You are fair without and foul within. Your alimentary canal is overloaded and your blood is so unclean that it has poisoned your nervous system. Eat less, take more exercise and drink plenty—of water. Try to be as clean as your gardener." It has been remarked ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds |
