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

From interview with Komal Nahta

"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.

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

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)

Source: Following the Equator (1897), Ch. XLI

Alternative models include the hundredth dune after the death of all camels, or the thousandth crevasse following the demise of all sled dogs.
Source: Wonderful Life (1989), p. 65

Inside Information
The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966)
Context: There is always something taboo, something repressed, unadmitted, or just glimpsed quickly out of the corner of one's eye because a direct look is too unsettling. Taboos lie within taboos, like the skin of an onion.

Eve to Cain, in Pt. I, Act II
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)