All 20 Uses of

superficial

in

The Portrait of a Lady

They had had no regular education and no permanent home; they had been at once spoiled and neglected; they had lived with nursemaids and governesses (usually very bad ones) or had been sent to superficial schools, kept by the French, from which, at the end of a month, they had been removed in tears.†
Chpt 4

superficial = relating to a surface rather than to anything deep or penetrating

At the end of his life he had become, on his own ground, as mellow as he was rich; he combined consummate shrewdness with the disposition superficially to fraternise, and his "social position," on which he had never wasted a care, had the firm perfection of an unthumbed fruit.†
Chpt 5

My first impressions (of the people at large) are not rose-coloured; but I wish to talk them over with you, and you know that, whatever I am, at least I'm not superficial.†
Chpt 10

superficial = relating to a surface rather than to anything deep or penetrating

He was about to take a step which would astonish all his friends and displease a great many of them, and which had superficially nothing to recommend it.†
Chpt 12 *

Not to prove that poor Warburton's state of mind's superficial, because I'm pretty sure you don't think that.†
Chpt 15

superficial = relating to a surface rather than to anything deep or penetrating

She leaned back, with that low, soft, aspiring murmur with which she often uttered her response to accidents of which the brighter side was not superficially obvious, and yielded to the satisfaction of having refused two ardent suitors in a fortnight.†
Chpt 17

One always ended, however, by feeling that a charming surface doesn't necessarily prove one superficial; this was an illusion in which, in one's youth, one had but just escaped being nourished.†
Chpt 19

superficial = relating to a surface rather than to anything deep or penetrating

There was a certain cynicism in these mute comments which demands an explanation; the more so as they are not in accord either with the view—somewhat superficial perhaps—that we have hitherto enjoyed of Madame Merle's character or with the literal facts of Mrs. Touchett's history; the more so, too, as Madame Merle had a well-founded conviction that her friend's last remark was not in the least to be construed as a side-thrust at herself.†
Chpt 20

In the list of his resources his political reflections should not be omitted, for they were doubtless the animating principle of many hours that superficially seemed vacant.†
Chpt 20

You would have been much at a loss to determine his original clime and country; he had none of the superficial signs that usually render the answer to this question an insipidly easy one.†
Chpt 22

superficial = relating to a surface rather than to anything deep or penetrating

He wasn't a man of easy assurance, who chatted and gossiped with the fluency of a superficial nature; he was critical of himself as well as of others, and, exacting a good deal of others, to think them agreeable, probably took a rather ironical view of what he himself offered: a proof into the bargain that he was not grossly conceited.†
Chpt 24

I say fortunately, but this is perhaps a superficial view of the matter; since on perceiving the gentleman from Florence Ralph Touchett appeared to take the case as not committing him to joy.†
Chpt 27

—which perhaps was exactly why Ralph had made his old-time look of superficial sociability a reproach to him.†
Chpt 29

The words had been nothing superficially; but when in the light of deepening experience she had looked into them they had then appeared portentous.†
Chpt 42

She explained that she had called on the Countess because she was the only person she knew in Florence, and that when she visited a foreign city she liked to see something more than superficial travellers.†
Chpt 44

superficial = relating to a surface rather than to anything deep or penetrating

Henrietta had never prevaricated in her life, and, though on this occasion there might have been a fitness in doing so, she decided, after thinking some minutes, to make no superficial exception.†
Chpt 44

She threw herself into it, for now that she had made such a point of keeping her conscience clear, that was one way of proving she had not been superficial—the more so as the years, in their flight, had rather enriched than blighted those peculiarities which had been humorously criticised by persons less interested than Isabel, and which were still marked enough to give loyalty a spice of heroism.†
Chpt 47

The right thing would have been that Miss Stackpole should come to dine at Palazzo Roccanera once or twice, so that (in spite of his superficial civility, always so great) she might judge for herself how little pleasure it gave him.†
Chpt 47

It seemed to her she should never again feel a superficial embarrassment.†
Chpt 53

Definition:

relating to a surface rather than to anything deep or penetrating (often of injuries or thinking)