Plainer Quotes & Sayings

I move for a creed for all our denominations made out of Scripture quotations, pure and simple. That would be impregnable against infidelity and Appolyonic assault. That would be beyond human criticism. Let us make it simpler and plainer for people to get into the Kingdom of God. — Thomas De Witt Talmage

The shorter and the plainer the better. — Beatrix Potter

I should have made my meaning plainer," said Professor McGonagall, turning at last to look Umbridge directly in the eyes. "He has achieved high marks in all Defense Against the Dark Arts tests set by a competent teacher." Professor Umbridge's smile vanished as suddenly as a lightbulb blowing. She — J.K. Rowling

I remember Massensen, and Ikkin, and Gwafa, and Mennad. Massensen defeated three great-horned iron bulls on the Melos Plain in the Jadmar Rebellion. Ikkin Dancing Spear killed the Jadmar's war chief, the giant Amazul. Gwafa demolished the Nekril, the will-casting coven that laid siege to Aghbalu. Mennad gave his life saving the Prism in Pericol when he was there to sign the Ilytian Papers. All these heroes were one man. Massensen took a new name every time he performed another act that would make any other man a legend. Where others would take a name that celebrated their heroic act to remind people of it forever, Massensen did the opposite. He took a new, plainer name each time, and refused to become even a watch captain. He believed that all glory should be reflected to Orholam, and that his own fame should be shared with his companions and his Prism. — Brent Weeks

Facts speak plainer than words — Aesop

I think Miss Moore was right to cut "The Steeple-Jack" the poem seems plainer and clearer in its shortened state but she has cut too much ... The reader may feel like saying, "Let her do as she pleases with the poem; it's hers, isn't it?" No; it's much too good a poem for that, it long ago became everybody's, and we can protest just as we could if Donatello cut off David's left leg. — Randall Jarrell

Put plainer, my sense is that western culture would be a damn sight poorer today if John Lennon had been forced to carry a goddamn BlackBerry. — Merlin Mann

How much easier my life would be if I did not love you! I thought. How much less painful, but how much plainer. How much less color there would be in the world. — Cameron Dokey

If you listen long enough - or is it deep enough? - the silence of a lover can speak plainer than any words! Only you must know how to listen. Pain must have taught you how. — Phyllis Bottome

There can hardly be a plainer proof of the lowness of our nature, until we have laid hold of the higher nature that belongs to us by birthright, than this, that even a just anger tends to make us unjust and unkind. — George MacDonald

The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. It is marvelous, yet simple. — Victor Hugo

I am, in plainer words, a bundle of prejudices - made up of likings and dislikings. — Charles Lamb

But my later experience has taught me two lessons: first, that things are seen plainer after the events have occurred; second, that the most confident critics are generally those who know the least about the matter criticised. — Ulysses S. Grant

Nothing can be plainer, than that the motions, changes, decays, and dissolutions, which we hourly see befall natural bodies (and which is what we mean by the course of nature), cannot possibly affect an active, simple, uncompounded substance: such a being therefore is indissoluble by the force of nature, that is to say, the soul of man is naturally immortal. — George Berkeley

I did not then know that the world is often plainer than people imagine and that the truth, no matter how banal, is always alive and glowing. — Jean-Christophe Grange

Justice requires that you should not place the burdens of one man on the shoulders of another man, even though he is better able to bear them. In plainer words, that you should not make one set of men pay for what is used by another set of men. — Auberon Herbert

Finding witches not only explained evil, it also was tangible evidence of God's existence. As the sixteenth-century Cambridge theologian Roger Hutchinson argued, in a polished bit of circular reasoning, "If there be a God, as we most steadfastly must believe, verily there is a Devil also; and if there be a Devil, there is no surer argument, no stronger proof, no plainer evidence, that there is a God."13 And, conversely, as noted in a seventeenth-century witch trial, "Atheists abound in these days and witchcraft is called into question. If neither possession nor witchcraft [exists], why should we think that there are devils? If no devils, no God. — Michael Shermer

Be subtle, various, ornamental, clever, And do not listen to those critics ever Whose crude provincial gullets crave in books Plain cooking made still plainer by plain cooks. — W. H. Auden

This mannerism of what he'd seen of society struck Homer Wells quite forcefully; people, even nice people - because, surely, Wally was nice - would say a host of critical things about someone to whom they would then be perfectly pleasant. At. St. Cloud's, criticism was plainer - and harder, if not impossible, to conceal. — John Irving

One painful duty fulfilled makes the next plainer and easier. — Helen Keller

Promising is the very air o' th' time; it opens the eyes of expectation. Performance is ever duller for his act; and, but in the plainer and simpler kind of people, the deed of saying is quite out of use. To promise is most courtly and fashionable; performance is a kind of will or testament which argues a great sickness in his judgment that makes it. — William Shakespeare

The longer he stood, the plainer his reflections revealed their blackness through his features. — Emily Bronte

It's interesting that penny-pinching is an accepted defense for toxic food habits, when frugality so rarely rules other consumer domains. The majority of Americans buy bottled drinking water, for example, even though water runs from the faucets at home for a fraction of the cost, and government quality standards are stricter for tap water than for bottled. At any income level, we can be relied upon for categorically unnecessary purchases: portable-earplug music instead of the radio; extra-fast Internet for leisure use; heavy vehicles to transport light loads; name-brand clothing instead of plainer gear. "Economizing," as applied to clothing, generally means looking for discount name brands instead of wearing last year's clothes again. The dread of rearing unfashionable children is understandable. But as a priority, "makes me look cool" has passed up "keeps arteries functional" and left the kids huffing and puffing (fashionably) in the dust. — Barbara Kingsolver

It is raining DNA outside. On the bank of the Oxford canal at the bottom of my garden is a large willow tree, and it is pumping downy seeds into the air ... spreading DNA whose coded characters spell out specific instructions for building willow trees that will shed a new generation of downy seeds ... It is raining instructions out there; it's raining programs; it's raining tree-growing, fluff-spreading, algorithms. That is not a metaphor, it is the plain truth. It couldn't be any plainer if it were raining floppy discs. — Richard Dawkins

Playing a plainer role means everything is dependent on the credentials of the actor, not the fact that they are as pretty as Julia Roberts. People start to look at their talent rather than their appearance. And playing the ugly part often means less time in the make-up chair, which is a great benefit on set. — Laura Carmichael

Mr Hooke sent, in his next letter [to Sir Isaac Newton] the whole of his Hypothesis, scil that the gravitation was reciprocall to the square of the distance: ... This is the greatest Discovery in Nature that ever was since the World's Creation. It was never so much as hinted by any man before. I wish he had writt plainer, and afforded a little more paper. — John Aubrey

I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it. And that may be an encouraging thought. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I don't know how much plainer I can be than this. I love you, and that makes you the most important thing in my life, regardless of anything else. — Scarlett Cole

In science there is a dictum: don't add an experiment to an experiment. Don't make things unnecessarily complicated. In writing fiction, the more fantastic the tale, the plainer the prose should be. Don't ask your readers to admire your words when you want them to believe your story. — Ben Bova

Well, then I'll die.' Sooner than other people, obviously. But everybody knows that life isn't worth living. And when it came down to it, I wasn't unaware of the fact that it doesn't matter very much whether you die at thirty or at seventy since, in either case, other men and women will naturally go on living, for thousands of years even. Nothing was plainer, in fact. It was still only me who was dying, whether it was now or in twenty years' time. — Albert Camus

Wonder is our erotic affiliation with all of life. If we develop this, enjoy it, and follow its promptings, our wants will be fewer and our needs plainer. — Stephanie Mills

True economy consists in always making the income exceed the out-go. Wear the old clothes a little longer if necessary; dispense with the new pair of gloves; mend the old dress: live on plainer food if need be; so that, under all circumstances, unless some unforeseen accident occurs, there will be a margin in favor of the income. — P.T. Barnum

The plainer the dress, the greater luster does beauty appear. — E. F. L. Wood, 1st Earl Of Halifax

He scooted his chair so close to hers that she fought the urge to back away. She gulped at his nearness. The lustful gleam flashing in his eyes made him like the Big Bad Wolf looming over her. "How much plainer can I make it for you? You were so damn sexy in that green dress. Your hair was down and fell in waves around your shoulders. And you kept giving me those innocent little smiles from across the room." His breath scorched against her cheek before he whispered into her ear. "I've never wanted to fuck someone so much as I wanted to you. — Katie Ashley

Everything is plainer when spoken than when unspoken. — Socrates

Back then, things were plainer: less money, no electronic devices, little fashion tyranny, no girlfriends. There was nothing to distract us from our human and filial duty which was to study, pass exams, use those qualifications to find a job, and then put together a way of life unthreateningly fuller than that of our parents, who would approve, while privately comparing it to their own earlier lives, which had been simpler, and therefore superior. — Julian Barnes

For my nymphet I needed a diminutive with a lyrical lilt to it. One of the most limpid and luminous letters is "L". The suffix "-ita" has a lot of Latin tenderness, and this I required too. Hence: Lolita. However, it should not be pronounced as you and most Americans pronounce it: Low-lee-ta, with a heavy, clammy "L" and a long "o". No, the first syllable should be as in "lollipop", the "L" liquid and delicate, the "lee" not too sharp. Spaniards and Italians pronounce it, of course, with exactly the necessary note of archness and caress. Another consideration was the welcome murmur of its source name, the fountain name: those roses and tears in "Dolores." My little girl's heartrending fate had to be taken into account together with the cuteness and limpidity. Dolores also provided her with another, plainer, more familiar and infantile diminutive: Dolly, which went nicely with the surname "Haze," where Irish mists blend with a German bunny - I mean, a small German hare. — Vladimir Nabokov

But our superiority is not the kind that many dreamers have imagined we have. The dreamer isn't superior to the active man because dreaming is superior to reality. The dreamer's superiority is due to the fact that dreaming is much more practical than living, and the dreamer gets far greater and more varied pleasure out of life than the man of action. In other and plainer words, the dreamer is the true man of action. — Fernando Pessoa