Appearance

Appearance is the apparent likeness representing an external show. They are the way something appears to others.

Adopt the character of the twisting octopus, which takes on the appearance of the nearby rock. Now follow in this direction, now turn a different hue. ~ Theognis of Megara

Handsome is that handsome does. ~ Henry Fielding

Quotes

• All that glisters is not gold.
  • Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605-15), Part II, Chapter XXXIII. Googe—Eglogs, etc. (1563). Udall—Ralph Royster Doyster. (1566).

• Don't judge a book by its cover.
  • "Do not form an opinion about something or somebody based solely on outward appearance."
  • Martin H. Manser (2007). The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs. Infobase Publishing. p. 61. ISBN 978-0-8160-6673-5. 
  • Mieder, Wolfgang; Kingsbury, Stewart A.; Harder, Kelsie B. (1992). A Dictionary of American proverbs. pp. 710. , p. 311

• Handsome is that handsome does.
  • Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones (1749), Book IV, Chapter XII. Oliver Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield (1768), Chapter I.

• She had always thought she would be like her father, and fancied a tall, dark, and handsome face.
  • Letitia Elizabeth Landon, The New Monthly Magazine (1833), 'The Story of Hester Malpas'

• Those who take a superficial and unreflecting view of things observe the outward appearance of anything they meet, e.g. of a man, and then trouble themselves no more about him. The view they have taken of the bulk of his body is enough to make them think that they know all about him. But the penetrating and scientific mind will not trust to the eyes alone the task of taking the measure of reality; it will not stop at appearances, nor count that which is not seen among unrealities. It inquires into the qualities of the man's soul.
  • Gregory of Nyssa, On Virginity, Chapter 11.

• Do not be afraid because of their appearance, for ‘I am with you to save you,’ declares Jehovah.
  • Jeremiah 1:8

• All hoods make not monks.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VIII (c. 1613), Act III, scene 1, line 23.

• All that glisters is not gold;
  Often have you heard that told;
  Many a man his life hath sold
  But my outside to behold.
  • William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (late 1590s), Act II, scene 7, line 65.

• Gold all is not that doth golden seem.
  • Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1589-96), Book II, Canto VIII, Stanza 14.

• Will she pass in a crowd? Will she make a figure in a country church?
  • Jonathan Swift, Letter to Stella (Feb. 9, 1710).

• She looks as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.
  • Jonathan Swift, Polite Conversation (c. 1738), Dialogue I.

• Adopt the character of the twisting octopus, which takes on the appearance of the nearby rock. Now follow in this direction, now turn a different hue.
  • Theognis of Megara Line 215.

• The most important thing I learned on [[w:Tralfamadore|] was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.
  When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes."
  • Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, Or The Children's Crusade : A Duty-dance with Death, (1969), Ch. 2.

• A man of sense can artifice disdain,
  As men of wealth may venture to go plain.
  * * * * * *
  I find the fool when I behold the screen,
  For 'tis the wise man's interest to be seen.
  • Edward Young, Love of Fame, Satire II, line 193.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 34-36.

• Esse quam videri.
  • To be rather than to seem.
  • Latin version of the Greek maxim, found in Æschylus, Siege of Thebes.

• Non teneas aurum totum quod splendet ut aurum.
  • Do not hold everything as gold which shines like gold.
  • Alanus de Insulis, Parabolæ, in Winchester College Hall-book of 1401–2.

• O wad some power the giftie gie us
  To see oursel's as ithers see us!
  It wad fræ monie a blunder free us.
  And foolish notion;
  What airs in dress and gait wad lea'e us,
  And ev'n devotion!
  • Robert Burns, To a Louse.

• Think not I am what I appear.
  • Lord Byron, Brute of Abydos, Canto I, scene 12.

• As large as life, and twice as natural.
  • Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, Chapter VII.

• But every thyng which schyneth as the gold,
  Nis nat gold, as that I have herd it told.
  • Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Chanounes Yemanne's Tale. Preamble, line 17, 362.

• Hyt is not al golde that glareth.
  • Geoffrey Chaucer, House of Fame, Book I, line 272.

• Habit maketh no monke, ne wearing of guilt spurs maketh no knight.
  • Geoffrey Chaucer, Testament of Love, Book II.

• Appearances to save, his only care;
  So things seem right, no matter what they are.
  • Charles Churchill, The Rosciad (1761), line 299.

• Que tout n'est pas or c'on voit luire.
  • Everything is not gold that one sees shining.
  • Li Diz de freire Denise Cordelier (c. 1300).

• We understood
  Her by her sight; her pure and eloquent blood
  Spoke in her cheeks, and so distinctly wrought.
  That one might almost say her body thought.
  • John Donne, Funeral Elegies, Of the Progress of the Soul, by occasion of the Religious Death of Mistress Elizabeth Drury.

• All, as they say, that glitters is not gold.
  • John Dryden, Hind and the Panther.

• Cucullus (or Cuculla) non facit monachum.
  • The habit does not make the monk.
  • Quoted by Erasmus.

• He was one of a lean body and visage, as if his eager soul, biting for anger at the clog of his body, desired to fret a passage through it.
  • Thomas Fuller, Life of the Duke of Alva.

• By outward show let's not be cheated;
  An ass should like an ass be treated.
  • John Gay, Fables (1727), The Packhorse and Carrier, Part II, line 99.

• Things are seldom what they seem,
  Skim milk masquerades as cream.
  • W. S. Gilbert, H. M. S. Pinafore.

• Not all that tempts your wandering eyes
  And heedless hearts is lawful prize,
  Nor all that glisters gold.
  • Thomas Gray, Ode on a Favorite Cat.

• Gloomy as night he stands.
  • Homer, The Odyssey, Book XI, line 744. Pope's translation.

• Judge not according to the appearance.
  • John, VII. 24.

• Fronti nulla fides.
  • Trust not to outward show.
  • Juvenal, Satires (early 2nd century), II. 8.

• Garde-toi, tant que tu vivras,
  De juger des gens sur la mine.
  • Beware so long as you live, of judging people by appearances.
    • Jean de La Fontaine, Fables, VI. 5.

• Même quand l'oiseau marche on sent qu'il a des ailes.
  • Even when the bird walks one feels that it has wings.
  • Antoine-Marin Lemierre, Fastes, Chant. I.

• All is not golde that outward shewith bright.
  • John Lydgate, On the Mutability of Human Affairs.

• All is not golde that shewyth goldishe hewe.
  • John Lydgate, Chorle and Byrde.

• He had a head which statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the deformity of which the beggars in the streets mimicked.
  • Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, on Moore's Life of Lord Byron (1831).

• Whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones.
  • Matthew, XXIII. 27.

• All is not gold that glisteneth.
  • Thomas Middleton, A Fair Quarrel (1616), Act V, scene 1.

• Spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ipsæ.
  • They come to see, they come that they themselves may be seen.
  • Ovid, Ars Amatoria, 99.

• Non semper ea sunt, quæ videntur; decipit
  Frons prima multos: rara mens intelligit
  Quod interiore condidit cura angulo.
  • Things are not always what they seem; the first appearance deceives many; the intelligence of few perceives what has been carefully hidden in the recesses of the mind.
  • Phædrus, Book IV. Prol. 5.

• L'habit ne fait le moine.
  • The dress does not make the monk.
  • François Rabelais, Prologue. I.

• Looked as if she had walked straight out of the Ark.
  • Sydney Smith, Lady Holland's Memoir, Volume I, Chapter 7.

• A fair exterior is a silent recommendation.
  • Syrus, Maxims.

• Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum.
  • An immense, misshapen, marvelous monster whose eye is out.
  • Virgil, Æneid (29-19 BC), III. 658.

• Of the terrible doubt of appearances,
  Of the uncertainty after all, that we may-be deluded,
  That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all,
  That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only.
  May-be the things I perceive, the animals, plants, men, hills, shining and flowing waters,
  The skies of day and night, colors, densities, forms, may-be 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.

See also

• Superficiality
• Vanity
• Vision