Quotes about shallows (222 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Ideas are like fish.
If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you've got to go deeper.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

Introduction, p. 1
Catching the Big Fish (2006)
Source: Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity
Context: Ideas are like fish.
If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you've got to go deeper.
Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They're huge and abstract. And they're very beautiful.

Idea , Fish , Water

“Choose love not in the shallows
but in the deep.”

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) English poet

Love

“I mean, is ‘fat’ really the worst thing a human being can be? Is ‘fat’ worse than ‘vindictive’, ‘jealous’, ‘shallow’, ‘vain’, ‘boring’ or ‘cruel’? Not me.”

Joanne K. Rowling (1965) British novelist, author of the Harry Potter series

from Pansy Hermiones, 2006
2010s

“There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.”

William Shakespeare Julius Caesar

Brutus, Act IV, scene iii.
Source: Julius Caesar (1599)

Life , Men

“Study hard, for the well is deep, and our brains are shallow.”

Richard Baxter (1615–1691) English Puritan church leader, poet, and hymn-writer

Source: The Reformed Pastor

Study

“There are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely-or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands.”

Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan

Source: Lady Windermere's Fan

Life , World , Falseness

“The quicker you are in attaching verbal or mental labels to things, people, or situations, the more shallow and lifeless your reality becomes, and the more deadened you become to reality”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

People , Reality

“A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring:
There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.”

Alexander Pope An Essay on Criticism

Source: "An Essay on Criticism", (1709)

Spring , Drink , Learning

“Learning is to a man as the leaves and branches are to a tree, and it can be said that he should not be without it. Learning is not only reading books, however, but is rather something that we study to integrate with our own way of life.
One who is born into the house of a warrior, regardless of his rank or class, first acquaints himself with a man of military feats and achievements in loyalty, and, listening to just one of his dictums each day, will in a month know 30 precepts. Needless to say, if in a year he learns 300 precepts, at the end of that time he will be much the better.
Thus, a man can divide his mind into three parts: he should throw out those thoughts that are evil, take up those ideas that are good, and become intimate with his own wisdom… I would honor and call wise the man who penetrates this principle, though he lacks the knowledge of a single Chinese character. As for those who are learned in other matters, I would avoid them regardless of how deep their knowledge might be. That is how shallow and untalented this monk is.”

Takeda Shingen (1521–1573) Japanese daimyo of the Sengoku period

William Scott Wilson, ‎Gregory Lee. Ideals of the Samurai: Writings of Japanese Warriors, 1982. p 95

Life , Wisdom , Books , Way

“Your shallowness or greatness of the soul shows up in your aura.”

Harbhajan Singh Yogi (1929–2004) Indian-American Sikh Yogi

The Eight Human Talents (2001)

Soul

“Those who try to make room for sex as mere casual enjoyment pay the penalty: they become shallow. At any rate the talk that reflects and commends this attitude is always shallow. They dishonour their own bodies; holding cheap what is naturally connected with the origination of human life.”

G. E. M. Anscombe (1919–2001) British analytic philosopher

Contraception and Chastity (1975)

Life , Penalty , Sex , Nature

“In shallow men the fish of little thoughts cause much commotion. In oceanic minds the whales of inspiration make hardly a ruffle.”

Yukteswar Giri (1855–1936) Indian yogi and guru

Autobiography of a Yogi (1946)

Men , Fish

“Silence is deep as Eternity, speech is shallow as Time.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Deep , Silence , Time

“It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible….”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

People , World , Appearance

“Modern life is so thin and shallow and fake. I look forward to when developers go bankrupt, Japan gets poorer and wild grasses take over.”

Hayao Miyazaki (1941) Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka

Life , Grass

“I hate people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow of them.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

Hate , People

“Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

“To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Variant: To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 17
Context: Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you are no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow. <!-- p. 205

Life , Mountain , Future

“I will not bare my soul to their shallow prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Soul , Heart

“Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Truth , Lovers , Knowledge , Water

“Cecily. This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners. When I see a spade I call it a spade.
Gwendolen. [Satirically. ] I am glad to say that I have never seen a spade. It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.”

Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

Source: The Importance of Being Earnest

Time

“Amid a world of noisy, shallow actors it is noble to stand aside and say, 'I will simply be.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

World

“You know, ogres only sound stupid. Most are pretty smart."

"And it's a shallow person who judges anyone by the way they sound. I'm so shallow I'm surprised I don't reflect myself.”

Tamora Pierce book First Test

Source: First Test

Stupidity , Way , Personality

“that which is eternal within the moment only becomes shallow if spread out in time.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Source: The Home and the World

Time

“His jest shall savour but a shallow wit, when thousands more weep than did laugh it.”

William Shakespeare Henry V

Source: Henry V

“Only the shallow know themselves.”

Oscar Wilde book Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young

Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young (1894)

“Women are considered profound. Why? Because we never fathom their depths. But women aren't even shallow.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Twilight of the Idols

Maxims and Arrows, 27
Twilight of the Idols (1888)

Women

“All our lives we sweat and save,
Building for a shallow grave.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

“The supreme vice is shallowness.”

Oscar Wilde book De Profundis

De Profundis (1897)

“There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and shallow: Yet it was the schoolboy who said "Faith is believing what you know ain't so."”

Mark Twain book Pudd'nhead Wilson

Following the Equator (1897)
Source: Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. XII

Faith

“I was born undisciplined. Never, even as a child, could I be made to obey a set rule. What little I know I learned at home. School was always like a prison to me, I could never bring myself to stay there, even four hours a day, when the sun was shining and the sea was so tempting, and it was such fun scrambling over cliffs and paddling in the shallows. Such, to the great despair of my parents, was the unruly but healthy life I lived until I was fourteen or fifteen. In the meantime I somehow picked up the rudiments of reading, writing and arithmetic, with a smattering of spelling. And there my schooling ended. It never worried me very much because I always had plenty of amusements on the side. I doodled in the margins of my books, I decorated our blue copy paper with ultra-fantastic drawings, and I drew the faces and profiles of my schoolmasters as outrageously as I could, distorting them out of all recognition.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in Denis Rouart (1972) Claude Monet, p. 21 : About his youth
after Monet's death

Life , Books , School , Home

“In estimating worldly values the Jew is not shallow, but deep. With precocious wisdom he found out in the morning of time that some men worship rank, some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship God, and that over these ideals they dispute and cannot unite--but that they all worship money; so he made it the end and aim of his life to get it. The cost to him has been heavy; his success has made the whole human race his enemy…”

Mark Twain book Concerning the Jews

Concerning the Jews (Harper's Magazine, Sept. 1899)

Life , Wisdom , Men , Money

“My real fans understand what it is I do, but on another level I have fans who just love my music and don’t know I write it and enjoy it shallowly — and that’s OK too. I think art and music should be just as powerful if you drink it shallow as if you drink it deep.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

The world goes crazy for Lady Gaga (2009)

Love , Art , Music , Drink

“We have taller buildings but shorter tempers; wider freeways but narrower viewpoints; we spend more but have less; we buy more but enjoy it less; we have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, yet less time; we have more degrees but less sense; more knowledge but less judgment; more experts, yet more problems; we have more gadgets but less satisfaction; more medicine, yet less wellness; we take more vitamins but see fewer results. We drink too much; smoke too much; spend too recklessly; laugh too little; drive too fast; get too angry; stay up too late; get up too tired; read too seldom; watch TV too much and pray too seldom.
We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values; we fly in faster planes to arrive there quicker, to do less and return sooner; we sign more contracts only to realize fewer profits; we talk too much; love too seldom and lie too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life; we've added years to life, not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We've conquered outer space, but not inner space; we've done larger things, but not better things; we've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul; we've split the atom, but not our prejudice; we write more, but learn less; plan more, but accomplish less; we make faster planes, but longer lines; we learned to rush, but not to wait; we have more weapons, but less peace; higher incomes, but lower morals; more parties, but less fun; more food, but less appeasement; more acquaintances, but fewer friends; more effort, but less success. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication; drive smaller cars that have bigger problems; build larger factories that produce less. We've become long on quantity, but short on quality.
These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men, but short character; steep in profits, but shallow relationships. These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure and less fun; higher postage, but slower mail; more kinds of food, but less nutrition. These are the days of two incomes, but more divorces; these quick trips, disposable diapers, cartridge living, throw-away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies and pills that do everything from cheer, to prevent, quiet or kill. It is a time when there is much in the show window and nothing in the stock room.”

Bob Moorehead

"The Paradox of Our Age"; these statements were used in World Wide Web hoaxes which attributed them to various authors including George Carlin, a teen who had witnessed the Columbine High School massacre, the Dalai Lama and Anonymous; they are quoted in "The Paradox of Our Time" at Snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/paradox.asp
Words Aptly Spoken (1995)

Love , Life , Men , Lie

“When swept out of its normal channel, life scatters into innumerable streams. It is difficult to foresee which it will take in its treacherous and winding course. Where to-day it flows in shallows, like a rivulet over sandbanks, so shallow that the shoals are visible, to-morrow it will flow richly and fully.”

Mikhail Sholokhov book And Quiet Flows the Don

And Quiet Flows the Don (1934)

Life

“Choke me in the shallow water before I get too deep.”

Edie Brickell (1966) singer from the United States

"What I Am"; the earliest references to this clearly indicate "choke" is the word used in the song; since then "chuck me" and "shove me" have sometimes appeared in internet renditions of the lyrics.
Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars (1988)

Water

“How many friends do you really have, seriously? You people… like "I have lots of friends." You don't. You have a lot of shallow relationships with people that talk behind your back and you call that drama a life because you hate your job.”

Marc Maron (1963) Comedian

Source: Final Engagement (2009)

Life , Hate , People

“Supermarket tabloids and celebrity gossip shows are not just innocently shallow entertainment, but a fundamental part of a much larger movement that involves apathy, greed and hierarchy. Celebrity doesn’t have anything to do with art or craft. It’s about being rich and thinking that you’re better than everybody else.”

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (1981) American actor, director, producer, and writer

The New York Times, March 25, 2007.

Art , Thinking , Parting

“Unhappiness. The distinction that lies in being unhappy is so great that when someone says, "But how happy you must be!" we usually protest.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 534
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation

Feeling , Happiness

“Mystical explanations are considered deep; the truth is, they are not even shallow.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Sec. 126; variant translation: Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.
The Gay Science (1882)

Truth

“The entire process seems simple and natural, i. e., possesses the naturalness of a shallow rationalism.”

Karl Marx book Das Kapital

Vol. II, Ch. III, p. 95.
Das Kapital (Buch II) (1893)

Nature

“As I was brought up in this tradition myself I can recognise it under strange disguises, and also sympathise with it, for even at its stupidest and most sentimental it is a comelier thing than the shallow self-righteousness of the left-wing intelligentsia.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

From a review of Malcolm Muggeridge's The Thirties, in New English Weekly (25 April 1940)
Context: It is all very well to be "advanced" and "enlightened," to snigger at Colonel Blimp and proclaim your emancipation from all traditional loyalties, but a time comes when the sand of the desert is sodden red and what have I done for thee, England, my England? As I was brought up in this tradition myself I can recognise it under strange disguises, and also sympathise with it, for even at its stupidest and most sentimental it is a comelier thing than the shallow self-righteousness of the left-wing intelligentsia.

“Your shallow men shall dream, dreams, your insightful men shall see visions.”

Nikki Sixx (1958) American musician

Men , Dreams

“Maybe a person's world can grow bigger in all the right ways, not too wide that it becomes shallow, just large enough to preserve its depth.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Fortunes of Indigo Skye

World , Way , Personality

“She didn't give a damn about some of them, but she had grown to learn that inattention can be a stratagem to avoid pain, and that it is often misread as shallowness and indifference.”

Thomas Harris The Silence of the Lambs

Source: The Silence of the Lambs

Pain , Learning , Indifference

“The church is like a swimming pool. Most of the noise comes from the shallow end.”

John Shelby Spong (1931) American bishop

Source: Eternal Life: A New Vision: Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell

“I’m almost never serious, and I’m always too serious. Too deep, too shallow. Too sensitive, too cold hearted. I’m like a collection of paradoxes.”

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) Swiss linguist

Heart

“And you’ll return to real life. You need to live it to the fullest. No matter how shallow and dull things might get, this life is worth living. I guarantee it.”

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Life

“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Men , Money , Dogs , Music

“Ah, well, being conflicted means you can live a shallow life without copping to be a shallow person.”

Gillian Flynn book Sharp Objects

Source: Sharp Objects

Life , Personality

“It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

Life , Personality

“I’m in a shallow hole, not filled with the humming orange bubbles of my hallucination but with old, dead leaves.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Dead

“The land is all too shallow
It is painted on the sky
And trembles like the wind-shook rain
When the Raven King passed by”

Susanna Clarke (1959) British author

Source: Jonathan Strange i pan Norrell. Tom 3

Painting

“Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge. The bridge was being repaired: she went right through the Danger sign. The car fell a hundred feet into the ravine, smashing through the treetops feathery with new leaves, then burst into flames and rolled down into the shallow creek at the bottom. Chunks of the bridge fell on top of it. Nothing much was left but charred smithereens.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin (2000) first lines

War , Cars , Sister

“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

Drink , Fish , Time

“A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

Source: Metaphysical Horror (1988)

Reading

“I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Fear

“I want to be first. I know that’s selfish, and maybe unattainable, and maybe shallow. But I just want to come first with someone. If that’s wrong of me, so be it. I’ll be wrong. But that’s the way I feel.” (Sookie Stackhouse)”

Charlaine Harris book From Dead to Worse

Source: From Dead to Worse

Way , Feeling , Selfishness

“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
Context: I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

People , Understanding

“I had been experiencing brief flashes of disassociation, or shallow states of non-ordinary reality.”

Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author

Source: The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge

Reality

“I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Hate , Hope , Knowledge , Study

“They dismissed me as a peasant, I dismissed them as shallow, and we were all happy like that.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Burn for Me

Happiness

“Perfection is shallow, unreal, and fatally uninteresting.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Perfection

“He might as well plant an oak in a flower-pot, and expect it to thrive, as imagine he can restore her to vigour in the soil of his shallow cares!”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Heathcliff (Ch. XIV).
Source: Wuthering Heights (1847)
Context: You talk of her mind being unsettled - how the devil could it be otherwise, in her frightful isolation? And that insipid, paltry creature attending her from duty and humanity! From pity and charity. He might as well plant an oak in a flower-pot, and expect it to thrive, as imagine he can restore her to vigour in the soil of his shallow cares!

Imagination , Flowers

“Hunger of the body is altogether different from the shallow, daily hunger of the belly. Those who have known this kind of hunger cannot entirely love, ever again, those who have not.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Love , Hunger

“We're in such a hurry most of the time we never get much chance to talk. The result is a kind of endless day-to-day shallowness, a monotony that leaves a person wondering years later where all the time went and sorry that it's all gone.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 1
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Chance , Time , Personality

“Everyone was a rose but even more complex than a mere flower. Everyone was made up of infinitely layered petals. And everyone had something indescribably precious at the heart of their being.
No one was shallow. Not really.”

Mary Balogh (1944) Welsh-Canadian novelist

Source: A Secret Affair

Flowers , Heart

“Shallow men believe in luck.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson Worship

Worship
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Men

“Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”

Eric S. Raymond book The Cathedral and the Bazaar

The Cathedral and the Bazaar

“Your gatherings are a living testimony of a determination to support these principles. It would be impossible to come into this presence, which is a symbol of more than 300 years of our advancing civilization, which represents to such a degree the hope of our consecrated living and the prayers of our hallowed dead, without a firmer conviction of the deep and abiding purpose of our country to live in accordance with this vision. There have been and will be lapses and discouragements, surface storms and disturbances. The shallows will murmur, but the deep is still. If We shall be made aware of the boisterous and turbulent forces of evil about us seeking the things which are temporal. But we shall also be made aware of the still small voice arising from the fireside of every devoted home in the land seeking the things which are eternal. To such a country, to such a cause, the American Legion has dedicated itself. Upon this rock you stand for the service of humanity. Against it no power can prevail.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

Hope , Home , Support , Evil

“Thus Kantian autonomy, once it is understood, will (and ought to) disappoint those shallow minds and immature souls who are attracted to the doctrine of autonomy for the wrong reasons. They were hoping for some radical individualist revolution in morality, in which paroxysms of human self-will overthrow the divine will’s numinous majesty (thereby replacing, as many such revolutions sadly do, one arbitrary and unjust tyranny with another and bringing to power merely a different mob of unprincipled scoundrels). The sober rationalism of Kantian ethics is equally incompatible with voluntarism in its theological and its Promethean forms.”

Allen W. Wood (1942) academic

Kantian Ethics (2008)

Hope , Disappointment , Soul

“I'm really shallow when I come to guys. I only date really good looking, well-endowed guys, with great bodies. My friends are always going on at me. I'm like "I can't help it! I'm just a woman with high standards!"”

Josie Maran (1978) American model and actress

IMDB Profile http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1036691/bio

Guy , Help

“The Church has consistently and justly refused to allow that reason might stand in opposition to faith, and yet be placed under subjection to it. The human spirit in its inmost nature is not something so divided up that two contradictory elements might subsist together in it. If discord has arisen between intellectual insight and religion, and is not overcome in knowledge, it leads to despair, which comes in the place of reconciliation. This despair is reconciliation carried out in a one-sided manner. The one side is cast away, the other alone held fast; but a man cannot win true peace in this way. The one alternative is, for the divided spirit to reject the demands of the intellect and try to return to simple religious feeling. To this, however, the spirit can only attain by doing violence to itself, for the independence of consciousness demands satisfaction, and will not be thrust aside by force; and to renounce independent thought, is not within the power of the healthy mind. Religious feeling becomes yearning hypocrisy, and retains the moment of non-satisfaction. The other alternative is a one-sided attitude of indifference toward religion, which is either left unquestioned and let alone, or is ultimately attacked and opposed. That is the course followed by shallow spirits.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German philosopher

Lectures on the philosophy of religion, together with a work on the proofs of the existence of God. Translated from the 2d German ed. by E.B. Speirs, and J. Burdon Sanderson: the translation edited by E.B. Speirs. Published 1895 p. 49-50
Lectures on Philosophy of Religion, Volume 1 (1827)

Peace , Faith , Religion , Way

“But that was only the beginning of her mortification. Harold had proved her wrong. He had seen that she was a shifty, shallow hypocrite. She had not dared to be alone with him since her exposure. She had never looked at him and had hardly spoken. He seemed cheerful, but what was he thinking? He would never forgive her.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

Albergo Empedocle
The Life to Come and other stories (1972)

Forgiveness , Thinking

“Our passions are most like to floods and streams;
The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb.”

Walter Raleigh (1554–1618) English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer

Sir Walter Raleigh to the Queen (published 1655); alternately reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919) as:
"Passions are likened best to floods and streams:
The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb"
and titled The Silent Lover. Compare: "Altissima quæque flumina minimo sono labi", (translated: "The deepest rivers flow with the least sound"), Q. Curtius, vii. 4. 13. "Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep", William Shakespeare, 2 Henry VI. act iii. sc. i.

Passion

“On the dust of our heroic ancestors we too sit ballot-boxing, saying to one another, It is well, it is well! By inheritance of their noble struggles, we have been permitted to sit slothful so long. By noble toil, not by shallow laughter and vain talk, they made this English Existence from a savage forest into an arable inhabitable field for us; and we, idly dreaming it would grow spontaneous crops forever,—find it now in too questionable a state.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The Present Time (February 1, 1850)

Dreams , Question , Laughter , Box

“Why bother to remake Fame if you don't have clue about why the 1980 movie was special? Why take a touching experience and make it into a shallow exercise? Why begin with a R-rated look at plausible kids with real problems and tame it into a PG-rated after-school special? Why cast actors who are sometimes too old and experienced to play seniors, let alone freshmen?”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/fame-2009 of Fame (23 Sep 2009)
Reviews, Two star reviews

School , Exercises , Problem

“Ardently alert means that when the mind is staying with the breath, you try to be as sensitive as possible in adjusting it to make it feel good, and in monitoring the results of your efforts. Try long breathing to see how it feels. Try short breathing, heavy breathing, light breathing, deep, shallow. The more refined you can make your awareness, the better the meditation goes because you can make the breath more and more refined, a more and more comfortable place for the mind to stay. Then you can let that sense of comfort spread throughout the body. Think of the breath not simply as the air coming in and out the lungs, but as the flow of energy throughout the whole body. The more refined your awareness, the more sensitive you can be to that flow. The more sensitive you are, the more refined the breath becomes, the more gratifying, the more absorbing it becomes as a place to stay.”

Thanissaro Bhikkhu (1949) Theravadin Buddhist Monk and Scholar

"Meditation: The How and the Why" (2003)

Feeling , Thinking , Sense , Effort

“The Buddha also counseled the monks and nuns to avoid wasting any precious time by engaging in idle conversation, oversleeping, pursuing fame and recognition, chasing after desires, spending time with people of poor character, and being satisfied with only a shallow understanding of the teaching.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Old Path White Clouds : Walking in the Footsteps of the Buddha (1991) Parallax Press ISBN 81-216-0675-6

People , Understanding , Time

“p>Come live with me and be my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Or woods or steepy mountain yields.And we will sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies.”

Christopher Marlowe The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love (unknown date), stanzas 1 and 2. Compare: "To shallow rivers, to whose falls / Melodious birds sings madrigals; / There will we make our peds of roses, / And a thousand fragrant posies", William Shakespeare, Merry Wives of Windsor, act iii. scene i. (Sung by Evans.)

Love , Pleasure , Mountain , Bird

“Courage is more important than to be deceived by shallow victory waiting for a delayed defeat.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Reality http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/reality-168/
From the poems written in English

Courage , Waiting , Victory

“For most of us, the seductive and unstated part of "if I had enough time" is the unstated sentence "to hear myself think." In other words, we imagine that if we had time we would quiet our more shallow selves and listen to a deeper flow of inspiration. Again, this is a myth that lets us off the hook— if I wait for enough time to listen, I don't have to listen now, I don't have to take responsibility for what is trying to bubble up today.”

Julia Cameron book The Right to Write

Source: The Right to Write (1998)

Imagination , Thinking , Time , Waiting

“In shallow shoals, English soles do it
Goldfish in the privacy of bowls do it.”

Cole Porter (1891–1964) American composer and songwriter

"Let's Do It, Let's Fall in Love"
Paris (1928)

“Youth rebellion is a world wide phenomenon that has not been seen before in history. I don't believe they will calm down and be ad execs at thirty as the establishment would like to believe. Millions of young people all over the world are fed up with shallow unworthy authority running on a platform of bullshit.”

William S. Burroughs (1914–1997) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer

"The Coming of the Purple Better One"
Exterminator! A Novel (1971)

People , Youth , World , History

“The operational sciences hoped to nourish business management, which however largely ignored them, and the latter continues to be undernourished by the business schools which are fairly broad but shallow everywhere. By over focus on short-range financial values, business management in the United States has lost a dozen major markets to the Japanese, added pollution in all its forms, and enriched itself out of all proportion to its value as just one factor of production.
Action science, developed by the social sciences over many years in relative isolation from the applied physical sciences, and which might otherwise have humanized them and made engineering more productive, was doomed to fail by being on one end of the two-culture problem wherein science and the humanities do not even speak the same language.
I could go on listing a few dozen paradigms: art, law, computer software design, medicine, politics, and architecture, each addressed to a certain context, level, or phase, each good in itself, but each limited to the fields of its origin and its purposes. The methodological problem is the same as if, in designing any large system, each subsystem designer were left to design each subsystem to the best requirements he knew. The overall requirement might not be met; overall harmony could not be achieved, and conflict could ensue to cause failure at the system level.
What is envisioned is a new synthesis, a unified, efficient, systems methodology (SM): a multiphase, multi-level, multi-paradigmatic creative problem-solving process for use by individuals, by small groups, by large multi-disciplinary teams, or by teams of teams. It satisfies human needs in seeking value truths by matching the properties of wanted systems, and their parts, to perform harmoniously with their full environments, over their entire life cycles”

Arthur D. Hall (1925–2006) American electrical engineer

Source: Metasystems Methodology, (1989), p.xi-xii, cited in Philip McShane (2004) Cantower VII http://www.philipmcshane.ca/cantower7.pdf

Life , Truth , School , Law

“Contemporary man has begun to lose his naiveté as … the deep causes of the situation in which he finds himself are becoming clearer. He realizes that to attack these deep causes is the indispensable prerequisite for radical change. And so he has gradually abandoned a simple reformist attitude regarding the existing social order, for, by its very shallowness this reformism perpetuates the existing system.”

Gustavo Gutiérrez (1928) Peruvian theologian

Source: A Theology of Liberation (1971), p. 48

Change

“The '80s to me, more than anything else, represents a time of real criminal activity in the office of the president: an incredibly disparate economy in terms of the class distinctions and whatnot, and a tremendous shallowness—a lot of sort of bank robbery by executives. This is the '80s to me. And a lot of synthesizer music. And, of course, Madonna and the beginning of MTV.”

Martha Plimpton (1970) American actress

Interview with Keith Phipps March 3, 1999 http://www.avclub.com/articles/martha-plimpton,13582/

Music , Time

“I killed my dinner
with karate
kicked him in the face, taste the body, shallow work is the work that I do.”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

The Book of Right-On
The Milk-Eyed Mender (2004)

“At the Ashram I was told that the Maharshi was in the hall and anybody was free to walk in and see him. As I entered, I saw on the couch an elderly man, wearing but a loincloth, reclining against a round bolster. I sat down at the very foot of the couch. The Maharshi suddenly opened his eyes and looked straight into mine: I looked into his. A mere look, that was all. I felt that the Maharshi was, in that split moment, looking deep into me – and I was sure that he saw all my shallowness, confusions, faithlessness, imperfections, and fears. I cannot explain what happened in that one split moment. I felt opened, cleaned, healed, and emptied! A whirl of confusions: my atheism dropping away, but scepticism flooding in to question, wonder, and search. My reason gave me strength and I said to myself, ‘It is all mesmerism, my own foolishness.’ Thus assuring myself, I got up and walked away.”

Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) Indian spiritual teacher

Quoted in Forever is in the Now: The Timeless Message of Sri Ramana Maharshi http://books.google.co.in/books?id=K1YqAAAAYAAJ, p. 192

Fear , Search , Question

“I recognize that the career draws applicants from a certain psychological pool. Garrett came from somewhere near the shallow end.”

Eric Garcia (1972) An amazing author who has written several wonderful books!

Source: The Repossession Mambo (2009), Chapter 15 (p. 248)

Drawing

“The schism between Christianity and the arts has had two profound consequences, two vast impoverishments--one for the arts world, the other for the Church. First, for the arts world, the loss of a transcendent religious vision, a refined and rigorous sense of the sacred, the breaking and discarding of the two thousand years of Christian mythos, symbolism, and tradition has left contemporary American art spiritually diminished. The shallow novelty, the low-cost nihilism, and the vague and sentimental spiritual pretensions of so much contemporary art—in every medium—are the legacy of this schism, as well as the cynicism that pervades the arts world”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

26
Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991), The Catholic Writer Today (2013)

World , Art , Sense , Loss

“The emergence of this high-tech scientific medicine may be a prime example of what William Blake denounced as 'single vision', the kind of myopia which (literally and metaphorically) comes from looking doggedly down a microscope. Single vision has its limitations in explaining the human condition; this is why Coleridge called doctors 'shallow animals', who 'imagine that in the whole system of things there is nothing but Gut and Body'. Hence the ability of medicine to understand and counter pathology has always engendered paradox. Medicine has offered the promise of 'the greatest benefit to mankind', but not always on terms palatable to and compatible with cherished ideals. Nor has it always delivered the goods. The particular powers of medicine, and the paradoxes its rationales generate, are what this book is about.”

Roy Porter (1946–2002) British historian

Source: The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity (1997), Chapter 1; as cited nytimes.com http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/p/porter-benefit.html 1998

Books , Imagination , Understanding , Animals

“Every woman I knew secretly longed to have many lovers but she stopped herself for so many reasons. I had the capacity to love many at a time and for this had been called shallow and wayward and a good-time girl…”

Protima Bedi (1948–1998) Indian model and dancer

She wrote in "Timepass: The Memoir of Protima Bedi" quoted in She had a lust for life, 5 February 2000, The Tribune http://www.tribuneindia.com/2000/20000205/windows/above.htm,

Love , Girl , Lovers , Time

“"All this beauty makes a person realize how insignificant they are," Paul says.
"How insignificant I am. You're the insignificant one"
He grins real big as he realizes how his words sounded. "I didn't mean it like that," he chuckles.
"No, I know what you meant, bud. I was just thinking kind of the same thing. I was looking at all this depth and it came to me how very shallow you are."
"Ha, ha," Paul chortles. He takes a few steps down the trail and turns. "You know, Don, I was just looking at this little flowery cactus here and thinking how nice it looks and it made me realize how ugly you are."
"Is that right," I say. "Well, I was just considering how smart these rocks look and it made me realize how dumb you are." With that I give him a little kick in the backside.
"How smart these rocks are?" he heckles. "Well, I was just looking at that cloud up there, reflecting on its beauty and stuff, and it hit me how much you smell."
"Is that right," I say. "The cloud made you realize that, huh?"
Paul distances himself a little and keeps turning to see if I am going to kick him again. He's got this grin going like he got the last laugh.
"You know, Paul, I was just looking at this pebble and it made me realize that I'm going to tackle you and throw you off the ledge."
"I see. That's real deep, Don. The pebble; you got that from a pebble?"”

Donald Miller (1971) American writer

Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (2000, Harvest House Publishers)

Beauty , Thinking , Personality

“He was out of tune with what a younger generation of poets were writing, and railed against the shallowness and commercialisation of the modern world, from his fastness: a farmhouse surrounded by orchards in Middleton, Suffolk.”

Michael Hamburger (1924–2007) British translator, poet, critic, memoirist and academic

Obituary in The Guardian http://books.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2099883,00.html
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