APPEARANCE

Related Subjects: Affection, Beauty, Dress, Face, Hypocrisy, Ostentation, Scandal, Sight, Worth

1. Appearances are deceptive.—AESOP, The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

2. Whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones.—Bible: Matthew 23:27

3. Judge not according to the appearance.—Bible: John 7:24

4. Men are valued not for what they are, but for what they seem to be.—BULWER-LYTTON, Money

5. They cover a dunghill with a piece of tapestry when a procession goes by.—CERVANTES, Don Quixote

6. Keep up appearances; there lies the test;
   The world will give thee credit for the rest.
   Outward be fair, however foul within;
   Sin, if thou wilt, but then in secret sin.—CHARLES CHURCHILL, Night

7. Good and bad men are each less so than they seem.—COLERIDGE, Table Talk

8. Keep up appearances whatever you do.—DICKENS, Martin Chuzzlewit

9. Be not hurried away by excitement, but say, "Semblance, wait for me a little. Let me see what you are and what you represent. Let me try you."—EPICTETUS, Discourses

10. Appearances to the mind are of four kinds: Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Rightly to aim in all these cases is the wise man's task.—EPICTETUS, Discourses

11. Things are seldom what they seem,
    Skim milk masquerades as cream.—W. S. GILBERT, H.M.S. Pinafore

12. Handsome is that handsome does.—GOLDSMITH, The Vicar of Wakefield

13. Those awful goddesses, appearances, are to us what the Fates were to the Greeks.—ARTHUR HELPS, Friends in Council

14. He seem'd
    For dignity compos'd and high exploit:
    But all was false and hollow.—MILTON, Paradise Lost

15. Things are not always what they seem.—PHAEDRUS, Fables

16. O that such an imposing appearance should have no brain!—PHAEDRUS, Fables

17. Handsome is as handsome does.—Proverb

18. Be as you would seem to be.—Proverb

19. A straight stick is crooked in the water.—Proverb

20. Thus ornament is but the guiled shore
    To a most dangerous sea; the beauteous scarf
    Veiling an Indian beauty; in a word,
    The seeming truth which cunning time puts on
    To entrap the wisest.—SHAKESPEARE, The Merchant of Venice

21. So may the outward shows be least themselves:
    The world is still deceived with ornament.—SHAKESPEARE, The Merchant of Venice

22. And give to dust that is a little gilt
    More laud than gilt o'er-dusted.—SHAKESPEARE, Troilus and Cressida

23. By economy and good management,—by a sparing use of ready money and by paying scarcely anybody,—people can manage, for a time at least, to make a great show with very little means.—THACKERAY, Vanity Fair

24. Of the terrible doubt of appearances,
    Of the uncertainty after all, that we may be deluded,
    That maybe reliance and hope are but speculations after all,
    That maybe identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only,
    
    Maybe the things I perceive, the animals, plants, men, hills, shining and flowing waters,
    
    The skies of day and night, colors, densities, forms, maybe these are (as doubtless they are) only apparitions, and the real something has yet to be known.—WALT WHITMAN, Of the Terrible Doubt of Appearances

25. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances.—OSCAR WILDE, The Picture of Dorian Gray