Quotes about appearances

Just as dyed hair makes older men less attractive, it is what you do to hide your weaknesses that makes them repugnant.

[E]conomists are evaluated on how intelligent they sound, not on a scientific measure of their knowledge of reality. (page 85)

From the standpoint of an institution, the existence of a risk manager has less to do with actual risk reduction than it has to do with the impression of risk reduction.

He did his best to interest the girl in himself—that is to say, his work—and she, after the manner of women, did her best to appear interested in, what behind his back, she called "Mr. Wressley's Wajahs"; for she lisped very prettily. She did not understand one little thing about them, but she acted as if she did. Men have married on that sort of error before now.

And I says back to him, “Calvin, sounding like an educated man don’t make you educated,” and he says back to me, “I'd rather be ignorant and sound educated than be educated and sound ignorant,” and I said, “Why?” and he says to me, “Because if you sound educated then nobody ever tests you to find out, but if you sound ignorant they never stop.”

Frozen, right? But to others, it looks like you're calm as could be. That's why some of the others tease you so mercilessly sometimes. They think you're made of stone, and they want to break in and touch the human feelings. They just don't know that when you seem most stony, that's when you're the most frightened and breakable.

Even the good she found in him was really the goodness she had put in him, the goodness he had put on himself as a disguise in order to get her to marry him.

I am afraid that I rather give myself away when I explain. Results without causes are much more impressive.

"Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing," answered Holmes thoughtfully. "It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different."

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

"What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence," returned my companion, bitterly. "The question is, what can you make people believe that you have done?"

Sociability is just a big smile, and a big smile is nothing but teeth.