Superficial

Famous quotes containing the word superficial:

    The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German public asks for a controlling sincerity.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    What life is best?
    Courts are but only superficial schools
    To dandle fools:
    The rural parts are turned into a den
    Of savage men:
    And where ‘s a city from all vice so free,
    But may be termed the worst of all the three?
    Francis Bacon (1561–1626)

    Sometimes among our more sophisticated, self-styled intellectuals—and I say self-styled advisedly; the real intellectual I am not sure would ever feel this way—some of them are more concerned with appearance than they are with achievement. They are more concerned with style then they are with mortar, brick and concrete. They are more concerned with trivia and the superficial than they are with the things that have really built America.
    Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)