“We may pretend that beauty is only skin deep, but Aristotle was right when he observed that "beauty is a far greater recommendation than any letter of introduction.””

— Diane Ackerman , book A Natural History of the Senses

The sad truth is that attractive people do better in school, where they receive more help, better grades, and less punishment; at work, where they are rewarded with higher pay, more prestigious jobs, and faster promotions; in finding mates, where they tend to be in control of the relationships and make most of the decisions; and among total strangers, who assume them to be interesting, honest, virtuous, and successful. After all, in fairy tales, the first stories most of us hear, the heroes are handsome, the heroines are beautiful, and the wicked sots are ugly. Children learn implicitly that good people are beautiful and bad people are ugly, and society restates that message in many subtle ways as they grow older. So perhaps it’s not surprising that handsome cadets at West Point achieve a higher rank by the time they graduate, or that a judge is more likely to give an attractive criminal a shorter sentence.
Source: A Natural History of the Senses (1990), Chapter 5 “Vision” (pp. 271-272)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "We may pretend that beauty is only skin deep, but Aristotle was right when he observed that "beauty is a far greater re…" by Diane Ackerman?

Diane Ackerman 30

Author, poet, naturalist 1948

Related quotes

“He used to say that personal beauty was a better introduction than any letter; 18 but others say that it was Diogenes who gave this description of it, while Aristotle called beauty "the gift of God"; that Socrates called it "a short-lived tyranny"; Theophrastus, "a silent deceit"; Theocritus, "an ivory mischief"; Carneades, "a sovereignty which stood in need of no guards."”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Aristotle, 9.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 5: The Peripatetics

“The saying that beauty is but skin deep is but a skin-deep saying.”

Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist

Vol. 2, Ch. XIV, Personal Beauty
Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative (1891)

“Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

“If there is anything beautiful other than absolute beauty, that can only be beautiful as far as it partakes of absolute beauty—and this I should say of everything. …by beauty all things become beautiful. …by greatness only great things become great and greater and greater, and by smallness the less becomes less.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

“She tried to remind herself that beauty was only skin deep, but that didn't offer any helpful excuses when she was berating herself for never knowing what to say to people. There was nothing more depressing than an ugly girl with no personality.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: Romancing Mister Bridgerton

“Like beauty, stardom too is skin-deep.”

Shahrukh Khan (1965) Indian actor, producer and television personality

From interview with Komal Nahta

“All the beauty of the world, 'tis but skin deep.”

Ralph Venning (1621–1673) English minister

"The Triumph of Assurance", Orthodox Paradoxes, Or, A Believer Clearing Truth by Seeming Contradictions (1647), p. 41. Compare: "Many a dangerous temptation comes to us in fine gay colours that are but skin-deep", Mathew Henry, Commentaries. Genesis iii.

“950. Beauty is but Skin deep; within is Filth and Putrefaction.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

“I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want—an adorable pancreas?”

Jean Kerr (1922–2003) Irish-American author and playwright

"Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, I Don't Want to Hear One Word Out of You"
The Snake Has All the Lines (1960)

“Aristotle would… by no means admit that mathematics was divorced from aesthetic; he could conceive, he said, of nothing more beautiful than the objects of mathematics.”

Thomas Little Heath (1861–1940) British civil servant and academic

Preface p. v
A History of Greek Mathematics (1921) Vol. 1. From Thales to Euclid

“We may pretend that beauty is only skin deep, but Aristotle was right when he observed that "beauty is a far greater recommendation than any letter of introduction.””

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Diane Ackerman 30

Related quotes

Related topics