What does the saying, "Beauty is only skin deep" mean?

Question

The cliche, "Beauty is only skin deep."

What does it mean?

Answer 1

Looks may open the door for you, personality will keep it open.

Answer 2

Beauty is only skin deep

Meaning

Physical beauty is superficial.

Origin

Proverb. First found in a work by Sir Thomas Overbury's, 1613:

"All the carnall beauty of my wife, Is but skin deep."

What his wife thought isn't recorded. There is a fanciful work attributed to Overbury called A true and historical relation of the poysoning of Sir Thomas Overbury, 1651. Perhaps she had him worried?

'Skin deep' is now also used to allude to anything superficial. An early use of this was also attributed to Overbury in 1613, in Ordinary Fencer Works, 1856:

"His wounds are seldome above skin-deep."

Answer 3

it means that the chatecter of a person cannot be determined by his/her beauty. you can't juge people by their looks, coz looks can be pretty deceiving. anyone can beautyfy his/her self with makeup. but that makeup won't influence their charecter.

The beauty of a person is only skin deep. the mind lives still deep inside and cannot be defined by the physical beauty.

Answer 4

"beauty is in the eyes of the beholder" will shakespeare in the merchant of venice.
beauty is restricted to only the outer covering ,the physical appearence of ant article or a human person also.
the inner matter is a different thing altogether the intellegence and the emotional quotients are different.
as they say blondes are dumb. they may be beautiful but dumb

Answer 5

It sort of goes along with "Pretty is as pretty does." That is, if a pretty person does ugly things, then he or she is not really pretty. Likewise, if someone who is not particularly attractive does nice things, then those actions make the person attractive. I remember in 8th grade where we had 8 boys and 20 girls in the class. We heard that we were getting a new boy in class and all of us girls were hoping for someone really cute. When we first saw him, we were disappointed. However, when we saw how well he did playing basketball, our opinion changed and he became much more attractive and sought after.

Answer 6

A person's skin will change with age, illness, weight gain, accident, etc. but the inside of a person won't change so that is what you need to look for in someone. Also, someone's looks does not reflect what kind of a person they are.

Answer 7

Beauty is not a true reflection of the value or worth of a person. How they act and treat others is more important than how they look

Answer 8

To me it means that to be beautiful may be convenient but it is not what is important about being a person.
Everyone has the same feelings.

Answer 9

You can't judge a book by its cover. Substance is within.

In other words, someone beautiful may treat you like crap and be worthless trash -- or not. Same for someone who is definitely not beautiful on the outside.

Answer 10

I am sure that you heard it said that appearance does not matter so much and that it only matters what is on the inside. This is, of course, utter nonsense, because if it were true then people who were good on the inside, would never have to comb their hair or take a bath and then the whole world would smell worse than it already does." - Lemony Snicket
"Beauty is only skin deep." ~ Proverb. Possible origin
“Sight is a big part of our existence, but it shouldn't make us blind to other things.” - Moira Doolan on beauty and aesthetics.
Beauty is merciless. You do not look at it, it looks at you and does not forgive. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis
“The gift which you possess ... is not an art, but, as I was just saying, an inspiration; there is a divinity moving you... For all good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are inspired and possessed...” Socrates in Plato’s Ion.
“But what if man had eyes to see the true beauty--the divine beauty, I mean, pure and clear and unalloyed, not clogged with the pollutions of mortality and all the colours and vanities of human life--thither looking, and holding converse with the true beauty simple and divine?” - Plato’s Symposium
“Beauty is no quality in things themselves: it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.” - David Hume
"Beauty is skin deep but ugly goes all the way to the bones."
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.” - Voltaire
“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
"There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness." – Countess of Blessington
"A thing of beauty is a joy forever: Its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness." ~ John Keats
"Anybody who preserves the ability to recognize beauty will never get old." ~ Franz Kafka
"Beauty is ever to the lonely mind
A shadow fleeting; she is never plain.
She is a visitor who leaves behind
The gift of grief, the souvenir of pain."
~ Robert Nathan, "Beauty Is Ever to the Lonely Mind"
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." ~ Merchant of Venice
"Beauty is in the heart of the beholder." ~ Al Bernstein
"Beauty is in the imagination of the beholder." ~ David Newell
"Beauty is the evidence of why we are here." ~ Adrian D. Canfield
"Beauty will save the world." ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky
"BEAUTY: An aesthetic radiance that delights the soul; a quality much admired in women, landscapes and tropical fish, but curiously out of favor in art throughout the modern era." ~ Rick Bayan, The Cynic's Dictionary
"Enthusiasm is the most beautiful word in the world." ~ Christian Morgenstern (1871-1914)
"Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it." ~ Confucius
"Glance at the sun.
See the moon and the stars.
Gaze at the beauty of the earth's greenings.
Now,
Think." ~ Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179)
"He who marries a beauty, marries trouble." ~ Anonymous
"She had gained a reputation for beauty, and (which is often another thing) was beautiful." ~ Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit
"I have a message to deliver to the cute people of the world... if you're cute, or maybe you're beautiful... there's more of us UGLY MOTHERFUCKERS out there than you are!! So watch out." ~ Frank Zappa
" If a model pay food with a greenback this dollar is an important part of a balanced diet too." ~ Unknown Author
"Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but reality (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may." ~ Plato
"The moment one give close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself." ~ Henry Miller
"There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect." ~ Gilbert Keith Chesterton
"Through light and joy is the world opened up, revealed for what it is: ineffable beauty, unending creation." ~ Henry Miller
"To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms -- this knowledge, this feeling is at the center of true religiousness." ~ Albert Einstein
"Walk on a rainbow trail; walk on a trail of song, and all about you will be beauty. There is a way out of every dark mist, over a rainbow trail." ~ Navajo song
"When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other." ~ Chinese proverb
"Beauty, n. The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband." ~ Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
"Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time." ~ Albert Camus, Notebooks
"We fly to beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature." ~ Emerson, The Poet
"Beauty without expression tires." ~ Emerson, The Conduct of Life

Answer 11

i think it means that beauty comes with in..how u act