A smooth or blank tablet; a blank surface.
Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow;
He who would search for pearls must dive below. [ Dryden ]
Feeling is deep and still, and the word that floats on the surface
Is as the tossing buoy that betrays where the anchor is hidden. [ Longfellow ]
Spurn not a seeming error, but dig below its surface for the truth. [ Tupper ]
Nature always leaps to the surface, and manages to show what she is. [ Boileau ]
The world is satisfied with words: few care to dive beneath the surface. [ Pascal ]
Affection is a garden, and without it there would not be a verdant spot on the surface of the globe.
To stumble on a level surface is matter of jest; by a false step on a height you are hurled to the ground. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]
Time is like a river, in which metals and solid substances are sunk, while chaff and straws swim upon the surface. [ Bacon ]
You have to go below the surface of words and actually feel them. This helps you choose the just-right word for your copy. [ Kathy Kleidermacher, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Copywriter's Words And Phrases ]
To know; to get into the truth of anything, is ever a mystic act, of which the best logics can only babble on the surface. [ Carlyle ]
Probably the earliest flyswatters were nothing more than some sort of striking surface attached to the end of a long stick. [ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts ]
Genius is rarely found without some mixture of eccentricity, as the strength of spirit is proved by the bubbles on its surface. [ Mrs. Balfour ]
The happiest woman sees not gladness alone reflected from her mirror; its surface will inevitably be sometimes dimmed with sighs. [ Mme. Louise Colet ]
Everything falls and is effaced. A few feet under the ground reigns so profound a silence, and yet, so much tumult on the surface! [ Victor Hugo ]
The gentle breath of peace would leave him on the surface neglected and unmoved. It is only the tempest that lifts him from his place. [ Junius ]
Trials teach us what we are; they dig up the soil, and let us see what we are made of; they just turn up some of the ill weeds on to the surface. [ Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Gleanings among the Sheaves ]
It is much easier to meet with error than to find truth; error is on the surface, and can be more easily met with; truth is hid in great depths, the way to seek does not appear to all the world. [ Goethe ]
Great men stand like solitary towers in the city of God, and secret passages running deep beneath external Nature give their thoughts intercourse with higher intelligences, which strengthens and consoles them, and of which the labourers on the surface do not even dream. [ Longfellow ]
The common cause of waves is the friction of the wind upon the surface of the water; little ridges or elevations first appear, which by continuance of the force gradually increase until they become the rolling mountains seen where the wind sweeps over a great extent of water. [ F. Marryatt ]
The eye speaks with an eloquence and truthfulness surpassing speech. It is the window out of which the winged thoughts often fly unwittingly. It is the tiny magic mirror on whose crystal surface the moods of feeling fitfully play, like the sunlight and shadow on a still stream. [ Tuckerman ]
Of all studies, the most delightful and the most useful is biography. The seeds of great events lie near the surface; historians delve too deep for them. No history was ever true. Lives I have read which, if they were not, had the appearance, the interest, and the utility of truth. [ Landor ]
Ridicule intrinsically is a small faculty; we may say, the smallest of all faculties that other men are at the pains to repay with any esteem. It is directly opposed to thought, to knowledge, properly so called; its nourishment and essence is denial, which hovers on the surface, while knowledge dwells far below. [ Carlyle ]
Charms which, like flowers, lie on the surface and always glitter, easily produce vanity; hence women, wits, players, soldiers, are vain, owing to their presence, figure and dress. On the contrary, other excellences, which lie down like gold and are discovered with difficulty, leave their possessors modest and proud. [ Richter ]
The receipt to make a speaker, and an applauded one too, is short and easy. Take commonsense quantum sufficit (in sufficient quantity); add a little application to the rules and orders of the House of Commons, throw obvious thoughts in a new light, and make up the whole with a large quantity of purity, correctness and elegancy of style. Take it for granted that by far the greatest part of mankind neither analyze nor search to the bottom; they are incapable of penetrating deeper than the surface. [ Chesterfield ]