Appearance Quotes

It is hard that a man's exterior should tally so little sometimes with his soul. ~W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, 1919  ["Dirk Stroeve had the passion of Romeo in the body of Sir Toby Belch.... What a cruel practical joke old Nature played when she flung so many contradictory elements together, and left the man face to face with the perplexing callousness of the universe." —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]


Appearances are not held to be a clue to the truth. But we seem to have no other. ~Ivy Compton-Burnett


I have always a sacred veneration for anyone I observe to be a little out of repair in his person, as supposing him either a poet or a philosopher. ~Jonathan Swift


It is only when the mind and character slumber that the dress can be seen. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Mirrors should think longer before they reflect. ~Jean Cocteau


Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearance only. ~Samuel Butler, Erewhon


Many a man has fallen in love with a girl in a light so dim he would not have chosen a suit by it. ~Maurice Chevalier


Men in general judge more from appearances than from reality. All men have eyes, but few have the gift of penetration. ~Niccolo Machiavelli


You need not think
It's vanity that makes me prink,
And take much care
To keep myself both fit and fair.
'Tis not false pride or vain conceit
That keeps me trying to be neat,
But just the plain and simple truth
That I have held to since my youth
That this old frame in which I dwell
Is nothing more than the hotel
In which my Soul and Hopes must stay
Until I'm called to move away,
And for their dwelling-place I plan
To give them quite the best I can,
And keep the place up spick and span.
~John Kendrick Bangs (1862-1922), "An Explanation" (February Twenty-third), The Cheery Way: A Bit of Verse For Every Day, 1920


A pair of powerful spectacles has sometimes sufficed to cure a person in love. ~Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human


Pretty is the queen that rules our land, o'er
hard-working peasants known by Substance.
~Carrie Latet


The weirder you're going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person. ~P.J. O'Rourke


The care that we bestow on our person is a species of politeness towards others... ~Charles Blanc, Art in Ornament and Dress, 1875


Polished brass will pass upon more people than rough gold. ~Lord Chesterfield


The world is governed more by appearance than realities so that it is fully as necessary to seem to know something as to know it. ~Daniel Webster


Things do not pass for what they are, but for what they seem. Most things are judged by their jackets. ~Baltasar Gracián, translated from Spanish