Quotes & Sayings About Plainness

Present is living with your feet firmly grounded in reality, pale and uncertain as it may seem. Present is choosing to believe that your own life is worth investing deeply in, instead of waiting for some rare miracle or fairytale. Present means we understand that the here and now is sacred, sacramental, threaded through with divinity even in its plainness. Especially in its plainness. — Shauna Niequist

One day, observing a child drinking out of his hands, he cast away the cup from his wallet with the words, A child has beaten me in plainness of living. — Diogenes

Whiles others fish with craft for great opinion, I with great truth catch mere simplicity; Whilst some with cunning gild their copper crowns, With truth and plainness I do wear mine bare. — William Shakespeare

She was never without dark glasses, she was always well groomed, there was a consequential good taste in the plainness of her clothes, the blues and grays and lack of luster that made her, herself, shine so. — Truman Capote

Socrates was the chief saint of the Stoics throughout their history ; his attitude at the time of his trial, his refusal to escape, his calmness in the face of death , and his contention that the perpetrator of injustice injures himself more than his victim, all fitted in perfectly with Stoic teaching. So did his indifference to heat and cold, his plainness in matters of food and dress, and his complete independence of all bodily comforts. — Bertrand Russell

Manifest plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, have few desires. — Lao-Tzu

Above all, you must illumine your own soul with its profundities and its shallows, and its vanities and its generosities, and say what your beauty means to you or your plainness ... — Virginia Woolf

It's right that you should do so, Fire. It's right and it's your right, because you're my beautiful child, and beauty has rights that plainness never will. — Kristin Cashore

It is with books as with women, where a certain plainness of manner and of dress is more engaging than that glare of paint and airs and apparel which may dazzle the eye, but reaches not the affections. — David Hume

In spite of her plainness that would have made wallflowers of other women, she radiated a great sense of self-importance. — Robert Galbraith

Knaves will thrive when honest plainness knows not how to live. — James Shirley

I am, sir. It is my way - it always was my way, by instinct - ever to meet the brief with brevity, the direct with plainness. — Charlotte Bronte

Modest plainness sets off sprightly wit,
For works may have more with than does 'em good,
As bodies perish through excess of blood. — Alexander Pope

We are often struck by the force and precision of style to which hard-working men, unpracticed in writing, easily attain when required to make the effort. As if plainness and vigor and sincerity, the ornaments of style, were better learned on the farm and in the workshop than in the schools. The sentences written by such rude hands are nervous and tough, like hardened thongs, the sinews of the deer, or the roots of the pine. — Henry David Thoreau

If a woman is fair and amiable, she is praised for both qualities, but especially the former, by the bulk of mankind: if, on the other hand, she is disagreeable in person and character, her plainness is commonly inveighed against as her greatest crime, because, to common observers, it gives the greatest offence; while, if she is plain and good, provided she is a person of retired manners and secluded life, no one ever knows of her goodness, except her immediate connections — Anne Bronte

Why was "plain" a euphemism for "ugly," when the very hallmark of human beauty was its plainness, the symmetry and simplicity that always seemed so young and so innocent. It was impossible not to think that here beauty was one of the most important things about her - something having to do with who she really was. — Elif Batuman

Obscurity in writing is commonly an argument of darkness in the mind. The greatest learning is to be seen in the greatest plainness. — John Wilkins

People tolerate a lot for looks. They tolerate much less for plainness. — Donna Lynn Hope

With a beautiful girl I could have consoled myself that she was out of my league; that I was so haunted and stirred even by her plainness suggested - ominously - a love more binding than physical affection, some tar-pit of the soul where I might flop around and malinger for years. — Donna Tartt

Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! - I have as much soul as you, - and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you! — Charlotte Bronte

She watched the glass, a plain woman, changing all to the delightful illusion of beauty. There was still time: for her ugliness was destined to bloom late, hidden first by the unformed gawkiness of youth, budding to plainness in young womanhood and now flowering to slow maturity in her early forties, it still awaited the subtle garishness which only decay could bring to fruition: a garishness which, when arrived at, would preclude all efforts at the mirror game. — Brian Moore

The truth is, the Science of Nature has been already too long made only a work of the Brain and the Fancy: It is now high time that it should return to the plainness and soundness of Observations on material and obvious things. — Robert Hooke

It is God himself, the Lord and Creator of all things, who is so small here, who is hidden here in the corner, who enters into the plainness of the world, who meets us in the helplessness and defenselessness of a child, and wants to be with us. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Cressida: My lord, will you be true?
Troilus: Who, I? Alas, it is my vice, my fault:
Whiles others fish with craft for great opinion,
I with great truth catch mere simplicity;
Whilst some with cunning gild their copper crowns,
With truth and plainness I do wear mine bare.
Fear not my truth: the moral of my wit
Is "plain and true"; there's all the reach of it. — William Shakespeare

What could two men, so different from each other, see in this "brown patch", as Mary called hereself? It was certainly not her plainness that attracted them (and let all plain young ladies be warned against the dangerous encouragement given them by Society to confinde in their want of beauty) — George Eliot

My plainness of speech makes them hate me, and what is their hatred but a
proof that I am speaking the truth. — Socrates

I kept wishing with real regret that I were capable of living in such continued simplicity. But I am not. Sometimes I honestly want to live in a plain room with a narrow bed, a chair, a table. But then I would need a bookcase. I would see a poster I must put on the wall. I would pick up a shell here, a bowl or vase there, another poster, enough books for two bookcases, a soft rug someone might give me--and where would the first plainness be? I cannot fight too hard against it, but I regret it. — M.F.K. Fisher

In the early forties and fifties almost everybody "had about enough to live on," and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby. — M. E. W. Sherwood

And do I ask, wherefore my heart
Falters, oppressed with unknown needs?
Why some inexplicable smart
All movement of my life impedes?
Alas! in living Nature's stead,
Where God His human creature set,
In smoke and mould the fleshless dead
And bones of beasts surround me yet! — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

When a woman is plain, people say, 'What beautiful eyes you have, beautiful hair. — Anton Chekhov

The approach to style is by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity. — William Strunk Jr.

This is some fellow,
Who having been prais'd for bluntness, doth affect
A saucy roughness and constrains the garb
Quite from his nature: he can't flatter, he!
An honest mind and plain,
he must speak truth!
And they will take it so; if not he's plain.
These kind of knaves I know, which in this plainness
Harbor more craft, and far corrupter ends,
Than twenty silly, ducking observants,
That stretch their duty nicely. — William Shakespeare

O guide my judgment and my taste,
Sweet Spirit, author of the book
Of wonders, told in language chaste
And plainness, not to be mistook.

O let me muse, and yet at sight
The page admire, the page believe;
"Let there be light, and there was light,
Let there be Paradise and Eve!"

Who his soul's rapture can refrain?
At Joseph's ever pleasing tale
Of marvels, the prodigious train,
To Sinai's hill from Goshen's vale.

The psalmist and proverbial seer,
And all the prophets sons of song,
Make all things precious, all things dear,
And bear the brilliant word along.

O take the book from off the shelf,
And con it meekly on thy knees;
Best panegyric on itself,
And self-avouch'd to teach and please.

Respect, adore it heart and mind.
How greatly sweet, how sweetly grand,
Who reads the most, is most refind'd,
And polish'd by the Master's hand. — Christopher Smart

No education can be of true advantage to young women but that which trains them up in humble industry, in great plainness of living, in exact modesty of dress. — William Law

I can't relate to your razzle-dazzle, your wish
for voluptuous when my symphony is spanx. — Kelli Russell Agodon

Plainness has its peculiar temptations and vices quite as much as beauty; it is apt either to feign amiability, or not feigning it, to show all the repulsiveness of discontent. — George Eliot

That's the thing: You can change things. You can repair mistakes. You can restart your whole life if you have to.
But some things you never get back. Certain people. Certain moments in time when you don't know better than to shield your heart.
You don't see those moments coming, you don't know it when they're happening, but later, as the plainness of life begins to show itself, you realize how important they were. You understand who really changed you, who made you what you are. — Blake Nelson

Who has not experienced how, on near acquaintance, plainness becomes beautified, and beauty loses its charm, exactly according to the quality of the heart and mind? And from this cause am I of opinion that the want of outward beauty never disquiets a noble nature or will be regarded as a misfortune. It never can prevent people from being amiable and beloved in the highest degree. — Fredrika Bremer

Why couldn't she have slid it under the door? he wondered. Why couldn't she have folded it? It looked just like any other note she would leave him, like, Could you try to fix the broken knocker? or I'll be back soon, don't worry. It was so strange to him that such a different kind of note - I had to do it for myself - could look exactly the same: trivial, mundane, nothing. He could have hated her for leaving it there in plain sight, and he could have hated her for the plainness of it, a message without adornment, without any small clue to indicate that yes, this is important, yes, this is the most painful note I've ever written, yes, I would sooner die than have to write this again. Where were the dried teardrops? Where was the tremor in the script? — Jonathan Safran Foer

Be neat, Philothea; let nothing be negligent about you. It is a kind of contempt of those with whom we converse, to frequent their company in uncomely apparel; but, at the same time, avoid all affectation, vanity, curiosity, or levity in your dress. Keep yourself always, as much as possible, on the side of plainness and modesty, which, without doubt, is the greatest ornament of beauty, and the best excuse for the want of it. — Saint Francis De Sales

56. Manifest plainness and embrace the genuine; lessen self-interest and make few your desires. — Lao-Tzu

Accentuated plainness and accentuated vice ought to bring about harmony. Beauty lies in harmony, in style, whether it be the harmony of ugliness or beauty, vice or virtue. — Yevgeny Zamyatin

It wasn't until I had performed by first autopsy that I realized that even the drabest human exteriors could contain the most beautiful viscera. After that, I would console myself for the plainness of my fellow bus-riders by dissecting them in my imagination. — John B. S. Haldane

I find the plainness and economizing record of materials handled calming. Realistic yet not austere, because what corresponds - the words oil on canvas - has everything and nothing to do with what I'm looking at. — Durga Chew-Bose

The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty, and to someone else if she is plain. — Oscar Wilde

True Wit is Nature to advantage dress'd
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd;
Something whose truth convinced at sight we find,
That gives us back the image of our mind.
As shades more sweetly recommend the light,
So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit. — Alexander Pope

If Beauty is excuse enough for Being, it sure takes Plainness then to feel the real necessity for - Doing. — Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

One ought not to be unkind to a woman merely on account of her plainness, any more than one had a right to take liberties with her merely because she was handsome — Murasaki Shikibu

[In the Royal Society, there] has been, a constant Resolution, to reject all the amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style: to return back to the primitive purity, and shortness, when men deliver'd so many things, almost in an equal number of words. They have exacted from all their members, a close, naked, natural way of speaking; positive expressions; clear senses; a native easiness: bringing all things as near the Mathematical plainness, as they can: and preferring the language of Artizans, Countrymen, and Merchants, before that, of Wits, or Scholars. — Thomas Sprat

Trust a girl of sixteen for knowing well if she is pretty; concerning her plainness she may be ignorant. — Elizabeth Gaskell

He will find one English book and one only, where, as in the "Iliad" itself, perfect plainness of speech is allied with perfect nobleness; and that book is the Bible. — Matthew Arnold

But any idea of plainness is simply contrary to the fancy color that is red. — Marion Roach

I do not find myself beguiled, let alone enchanted by mortal man or woman with their pretense, show or adornments, yet when I'm alone in the pine-scented cloak of forested mountains, I'm both.

It was nearing sunset in the treasure state with not another soul in sight and despite my own plainness and insignificance, I never felt more grounded or at peace; it's a tranquility only the curvaceous, imposing landscape of the frontier can provide and I was free of the trepidation within my thoughts as I gratefully and prayerfully walked with God. All was well within me and around me for that blissful yet brief moment in time. — Donna Lynn Hope

She that would raise a noble love must find Ways to beget a passion for her mind; She must be that which she to the world would seem, For all true love is grounded on esteem: Plainness and truth gain more a generous heart Than all the crooked subtleties of art. — Theresa Villiers

It becomes possible to admit that plainness may coexist with nobility of nature, and fine features with baseness; and yet to hold that mental and physical perfection are fundamentally connected, and will, when the present causes of incongruity have worked themselves out, be ever found united. — Herbert Spencer

To this end, nothing is to be more carefully consulted than plainness. In a lady's attire this is the single excellence; for to be what some people call fine, is the same vice, in that case, as to be florid is in writing or speaking. — Joseph Addison

The very essence of truth is plainness and brightness; the darkness and crookedness is our own. The wisdom of God created understanding, fit and proportionable to truth, the object and end of it, as the eye to the thing visible. If our understanding have a film of ignorance over it, or be blear with gazing on other false glitterings, what is that to truth? — John Milton