"Plainness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... monks were falling from their first rigid simplicity — falling into those habits of extravagance which in days to come caused their fall and ultimate suppression — the Cistercians still held to their early regime of austere simplicity and plainness of life; and though no longer absolutely secluding themselves from the sight or sound of their fellow men, or living in complete solitude, they were still men of austere life and self-denying habits, and retained the reputation for sanctity of life that was being lost in other ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... other on her face on which hollows and protuberances abounded, imparted to it that suggestion of libertinism which the painter of love scenes gives to the rough sketch of his mistress. Everything about her,—her mouth, her eyes, her very plainness—was instinct with allurement and solicitation. Her person exhaled an aphrodisiac charm, which challenged and laid fast hold of the other sex. It unloosed desire, and caused an electric shock. Sensual thoughts were naturally and involuntarily aroused by her, by her gestures, her ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... had a full share of both these manly excellences, and practiced them in thoroughly feminine fashion. She was essentially true, hating humbug in all its disguises.... Her love of plainness and distaste for affectation were forms of veracity. But in narrative of hers one got much besides plain realities. These had their significance heightened by her eager emotion, and their picturesqueness by her happy artistry.... Of course ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... men, he cherished an ideal. Since meeting Constance Leigh, unconsciously to himself that ideal had grown very like her. But now he was sitting beside a fascinating young girl—for fascinating she was to Steve, even in her brusqueness and plainness of speech; a mere child, as it were, who was without home and without the protection of love and parental care, and as he looked into her eyes, still wet with tears, he felt his heart go out ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... trying to improve their minds. They screwed up their noses in the effort. Meaning to thrill the celebrated beauty who had been specially invited to meet him, he devoted himself to a plain woman for whose plainness a sudden pity had mastered him (for, like all true worshippers of beauty in women, he always showed best in the presence of plain ones). With the intention of being a gallant knight to Lady I-Won't-Tell-the-Name, ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... Nature, in a word, SCIENCE,—leading it at last, though slowly, and not by the most brilliant road, out of the bondage of the humdrum and common, into the better life. The universal dead-level of plainness and homeliness, the lack of all beauty and distinction in form and feature, the slowness and clumsiness of the language, the eternal beer, sausages, and bad tobacco, the blank commonness everywhere, pressing at last like a weight on ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... government there. It was in favor of liberty of conscience and in behalf of the Baptists, Quakers, and other sectaries that had been under persecution. The whole appeared to me to be written with a good deal of decent plainness and manly freedom. The six concluding lines I remember, though I have forgotten the two first of the stanza; but the purport of them was that his censures proceeded from good will and therefore he would be ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... task of mediating between science and the popular mind, is one that requires a peculiar gift of perspicuity, both in thought and style; and this, I think, the author possesses in an eminent degree. I am pleased with its comprehensiveness, its plainness, and its fidelity to the ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... the charm of such an incident. The minister was in the pulpit. His dress and hair were very plain, and his complexion was extremely dark. He was evidently a Welshman: there was no mistake about it: his gravity, plainness, attitude—all told the fact. I ventured forward, and walked along to the stove, which to me was an object of agreeable attraction. Around the stove were two or three chairs. A big aristocratic-looking Welshman, a sort of a "Blaenor," who occupied one of these chairs, invited me to take another ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... He will also convince the Scholar, that the Artifice of a Professor is never more pleasing, than when he deceives the Audience with agreeable Surprizes; for which reason he will advise him to have Recourse to a seeming Plainness, as if ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... the decease of his majesty was known, his next brother, William Henry, Duke of Clarence, was proclaimed by the title of William IV. The new monarch in a short time rendered himself very popular by the plainness of his habits and manners, and by the condescension, or rather the familiarity of his intercourse with his people—qualities which rendered him more popular by a comparison with the secluded life of his predecessors. No immediate change took place in the government, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a possibility. It arises when we shrink from that plainness of speech which is, after all, friendship's best service. Is it not better to offend, even to wound deeply, than to speak only the smoother things, however kindly the intent, and, so speaking, fail to produce that great renunciation, ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... OF, a community of Christians popularly known as Quakers, founded in 1648 by GEORGE FOX (q. v.), distinguished for their plainness of speech and manners, and differing from other sects chiefly in the exclusive deference they pay to the "inner light," and their rejection of both clergy and sacrament as media of grace; they ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... last provokes your rage, the first provokes your pride; and in a word either of them is hurtful rather than useful. But the writer that strives to be useful, writes to serve you, and at the same time, by an imperceptible art, draws you on to be pleased also. He represents truth with plainness, virtue with praise; he even reprehends with a softness that carries the force of a satire without the salt of it; and he insensibly screws himself into your good opinion, that as his writings merit your regard, so they ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... warmth and heat which he, the dreamer, the recluse, the lover of abstract problems, could bring into such discussions. Here, at all events, his views were definite enough, and stated with a bold precision of English plainness that would have pleased the most pronouncedly Tory or Unionist newspaper editors ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... married off her three daughters in a way that people said was beyond their deserts, for they had the professional plainness only to be found, as a rule, among the female kind of the more legal callings. Her name was upon the committees of numberless charities connected with the Church-dances, theatricals, or bazaars—and she never ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of calm sense, and character, and the handwriting of life-work, and the dignity of mental calm, were unmistakeable now, and made her a person worth looking at. Charity was much younger, of course; but she had the plainness without the dignity; sense, I am bound to say, was ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... gods, and of men. "If they are guilty," continues he, "of any scandalous offence, they should be censured or degraded by the superior pontiff; but as long as they retain their rank, they are entitled to the respect of the magistrates and people. Their humility may be shown in the plainness of their domestic garb; their dignity, in the pomp of holy vestments. When they are summoned in their turn to officiate before the altar, they ought not, during the appointed number of days, to depart from the precincts of the temple; nor should a single day be suffered to elapse, without the prayers ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... description. "His eloquence was part of his intellectual character. It was plain, strong, terse, condensed, concise; sometimes impassioned, still always severe. Rejecting ornament, not often seeking far for illustration, his power consisted in the plainness of his propositions, in the closeness of his logic, and in the earnestness and energy of ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... Mudlake West, Pigeon Park and Appleblossom Villa. These influential factors combined were undoubtedly the foundations of the enormous mathematical ability which became apparent long before the boy attained the age of three, but unfortunately for the level development of his mentality, the repulsive plainness of Senator Mills-Tweeper coupled with the innate idiocy of General Udby, completely overshadowed the girlish charm of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Had Rupert been consulted would he have liked playing the game at all—holding the cards in the wrong hand as he did from the very ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... Link turned a scowling visage on the interrupter of his triumphal homeward progress. At his elbow stood a stockily-built man, dressed with severe plainness. ...
— His Dog • Albert Payson Terhune
... And upon the whole I find him a most exact and methodicall man, and of great industry: and very glad that he thought fit to show me all this; though I cannot easily guess the reason why he should do it to me, unless from the plainness that he sees I use to him in telling him how much the King may suffer for our want of understanding ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... glided away to Florence. There was something in Ferrers that was remarkable from its very simplicity. His clear, sharp features, with the short hair and high brow—the absolute plainness of his dress, and the noiseless, easy, self-collected calm of all his motions, made a strong contrast to the showy Italian, by whose side he now stood. Florence looked up at him with some little surprise at ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... into the room. She was dressed with extreme plainness, and looking so calm and sweet that it was no wonder Mr. Carlisle's eyes rested on her as on a new object of admiration. Few of his acquaintance looked so; and Eleanor did not ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... wood-pigeons completed this extraordinary menu. The sago pasty, the artocarpus bread, some mangoes, half a dozen pineapples, and the liquor fermented from some coco-nuts, overjoyed us. I even think that my worthy companions' ideas had not all the plainness desirable. ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... of wine in the common room. "When I came up at Easter, 1825, one of the first standing jokes against the college all over the university was the Oriel tea-pot." [6] Dean Church testifies to the plainness of the services at St. Mary's.[7] Aubrey de Vere reports his urging Newman to make an expedition with him among the Wicklow Mountains, and the latter's "answering with a smile that life was full of work more important than the enjoyment of mountains and lakes. ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... blue and the other of bright scarlet. I was not ignorant that this peculiar feature in his toilet indicated a heart suffering from the tender passion. The flute, which he carried in his hand, added confirmation to the fact, while the joyous, animated expression of his countenance showed with equal plainness that he was ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... day, the distinct, earnest tones of this juvenile Joan of Arc were very sweet and charming. During her discourse, which was frequently interrupted, Miss Dickinson maintained her presence of mind, and uttered her radical sentiments with augmented resolution and plainness. Those who did not sympathize with her remarks, provocative as they were of numerous unmanly interruptions, were softened by her simplicity and solemnity. 'We are told,' said she, 'to maintain constitutions because they are constitutions, and compromises because ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... die. 375 Now strike at Hector. He is here;—himself Provokes thee forth; madness is in his heart, And in his rage he glories that our ships Have hither brought no Grecian brave as he. Then thus Achilles matchless in the race. 380 Laertes' noble son, for wiles renown'd! I must with plainness speak my fixt resolve Unalterable; lest I hear from each The same long murmur'd melancholy tale. For I abhor the man, not more the gates 385 Of hell itself, whose words belie his heart. So shall not mine. My judgment undisguised Is this; that neither Agamemnon ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... the time, the series begun by Richardson's (1689-1761) "Pamela," "Clarissa Harlowe," and "Sir Charles Grandison" have a virtuous aim, but they err by the plainness with which they describe vice. The tediousness and overwrought sentimentality of these works go far towards disqualifying the reader from appreciating their extraordinary skill in invention and ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... taste, when dress'd, The butcher shook his head in jest; "If for such prog your fancy is, Judge of the flavour by the phiz." This speech was not so true as keen, For I in life have often seen Good features with a wicked heart, And plainness acting ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... parish under my good friend's care is very pleasant. It is placed among meadows, washed by a clear trout-stream, and flanked on both sides with downs. His house, indeed, would not much attract the admiration of the virtuoso. He built it himself, and it is remarkable only for its plainness; with which the furniture so well agrees, that there is no one thing in it that may not be absolutely necessary, except books, and the prints of Mr. Hogarth, whom he ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... plainly," continued the physician, "and I crave pardon, sir, should it seem to require pardon, for this needful plainness of my speech. Let me ask as your friend, as one having charge, under Providence, of your life and physical well being, hath all the operations of this disorder been fairly laid open ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... dramatic situations it created. But these cannot be told. The valor for dragging the accused spirits among his acquaintance to the stake is not in the heart of the present writer. The reader must be content to learn that she knew how, without loss of temper, to speak with unmistakable plainness to any party, when she felt that the truth or the right was injured. For the same reason, I omit one or two letters, most honorable both to her mind and heart, in which she felt constrained to give the frankest ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... Elegant in plainness, the classic poet would have said of her hair and dress. She was of the women whose wits are quick in everything they do. That which was proper to her position, complexion, and the hour, surely marked her appearance. Unaccountably this night, the fair fleshly presence ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... you've been a damned good master to me, and I've been a damned good servant to you; we've been proud of each other from the first; but if you'll excuse my plainness, Mr. George, I never ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Judea, and in the regions of Asia under the ministries of Paul, and Silas, and Barnabas, and Peter, and others. He saw a tendency in the churches even in his day to depart from God's ordinances; and led by the Divine Spirit he felt it his duty to set these forth in their simplicity and plainness, as he had seen them instituted and exemplified in his own personal presence by ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... leader of the barons. From the first it is apparent that he is actuated by personal malice as much as by righteous indignation on behalf of his misgoverned country. He confides to his uncle that it is Gaveston's and the king's mocking jests at the plainness of his train and attire which make him impatient. But the unwisdom of the king serves him for a stalking-horse while secretly he pursues the goal of his private ambition. In adversity he is uncrushed. When he returns victorious he ruthlessly sweeps ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... wind round the sides of the court, up to the highest story. Our dining-room and bedrooms were in the latter region, and were all paved with brick, and without carpets; and the characteristic of the whole was all exceeding plainness and antique clumsiness of fitting up. We found ourselves sufficiently comfortable, however; and, as has been the case throughout our journey, had a very fair and well-cooked dinner. It shows, as perhaps ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... precise wording of the matter shows his speech to be the result of meditated preparation; for he has come with his mind so full of what he was to say, that he could think of nothing else; and Macduff, with characteristic plainness of ear and tongue, finds it "too nice." His comment, at once so spontaneous and so apt, is a delightful touch of the Poet's art; and tells us that Shakespeare's judgment as well as his genius was at home ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... of the feminine about him. There was not. Yet in spite of his good looks and astonishing colouring, Meg was right in her consciousness that for women there was more magnetic attraction in Mike's mobile plainness, in his sensitive, irregular features. When the two men were talking together, the senses and eyes of women would be drawn to ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... and looped flounce waved grandly out behind from the waist to the level of the knees; and the stomacher recalled the ornamentation of the flounce; and both the stomacher and flounce gave contrasting value to the severe plainness of the skirt, designed to emphasise the quality of the silk. Round the neck was a lace collarette to match the furniture of the wrists, and the broad ends of the collarette were crossed on the bosom and held by a large jet brooch. Above that you saw ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... thick black veil and black mantle, but it was impossible to mistake her figure and her walk; and by her side was a short stout form, which he recognised as that of Monna Brigida, in spite of the unusual plainness of her attire. Romola had not been bred up to devotional observances, and the occasions on which she took the air elsewhere than under the loggia on the roof of the house, were so rare and so much dwelt on beforehand, because of Bardo's dislike to be left without her, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... Quakers' address was esteemed somewhat singular for its plainness and simplicity. It was conceived in these terms: "We are come to testify our sorrow for the death of our good friend Charles, and our joy for thy being made our governor. We are told thou art not of the persuasion of the church ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... clearness insists on the great truth that bad education is responsible for bad life, and expresses with equal plainness the complementary truth that education, from the cradle upwards, is something which acts on the whole intellectual and moral nature, and that its object is the production of the ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... follows B in line 10, where A had Air, pillowy air. There is no comma at barebill in any MS., but a gap and sort of caesural mark in A. In a letter Aug. 14, '79, G. M. H. writes: 'I enclose a sonnet on which I invite minute criticism. I endeavoured in it at a more Miltonic plainness and severity than I have any- where else. I cannot say it has turned out severe, still less plain, but it seems almost free from quaintness and in aiming at one excellence ...
— Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins - Now First Published • Gerard Manley Hopkins
... as you read this by the plainness of my words, but you know them to be true, though you suppose that to insist on the facts is "impracticable" because you fancy that there is no way out of the marvellously absurd arrangements that exist. But there is a way out, though it is no royal road. It is this. Get the meaning ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... is." He took her hand, which she could not withdraw, or feigned to herself that she could not withdraw, and looked at her with a silent laugh, and a hardy, sceptical glance that she felt take in every detail of her prettiness, her plainness. Then he turned and went out, and she ran quickly and locked ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... pioneer of French thought. In education there is less room for scientific originality. The sage of a parish, provided only she began her trade with an open and energetic mind, may here pass philosophers. Locke was nearly as sage, as homely, as real, as one of these strenuous women. The honest plainness of certain of his prescriptions for the preservation of physical health perhaps keeps us somewhat too near the earth. His manner throughout is marked by the stout wisdom of the practical teacher, who is content to assume good sense in his hearers, and feels no necessity for kindling a blaze ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... was out exercising Calyste's horse, which the youth had not mounted for two months. The three women, mother, aunt, and Mariotte, shared in the tender feminine wiliness, which taught them to make much of Calyste when he dined at home. Breton plainness fought against Parisian luxury, now brought to the very doors of Guerande. Mariotte endeavored to wean her young master from the accomplished service of Camille Maupin's kitchen, just as his mother and aunt strove to hold him in the net of their tenderness ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... we pray to say, "Give us this day our daily bread." Yet a great number of persons, I may say, nearly all men, are not content with enough, they are not satisfied with sufficiency; they wish for something more than simplicity, and plainness, and gravity, and modesty, in their mode of living; they like show and splendour, and admiration from the many, and obsequiousness on the part of those who have to do with them, and the ability to do as they will; they like to ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... private audience of his Catholic Majesty, which was given me in the Buen Retiro, and therein did deliver myself in the sense of my instructions and directions; not in many words, because the King's weak state of body will not allow it; but with much plainness and humble freedom, concerning the languishing and desperate condition in which the peace and commerce between the Crowns and nations have long lain gasping, and expecting an utter dissolution, by frequent ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... between these extremes that our prophetical speculators wrecked themselves. Men always had it to say that their prophecies had been either too plain or too obscure; or, if very plain, and yet as plainly written before the event, that their very plainness had insured their own accomplishment by prompting to the very actions and conduct they ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... cut out the pearl for the slides and ornamentation on his bows. This accounts for the characteristic plainness of these features of his work. He was often at a loss for silver for the mountings, and the Doctor says it was highly diverting to him when a boy to hear the old housekeeper soundly rating Dodd for melting down another of her ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... a small canvas. Mabane was tall and fair and lean, with a mass of refractory hair which was the despair of his barber; a Scotchman with keen blue eyes, and humorous mouth amply redeeming his face from the plainness which would otherwise have been its lot. He also was ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... little dealings he 's forced to transact, He determines with plainness and candour to act; And the great point on which his ambition is set, Is to leave at the last neither riches nor ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... answered many objections urged against the President on account of the conduct of the war, his Emancipation Proclamation, and his purpose to enlist colored men as soldiers. For perspicuity, terseness, plainness, and conclusiveness of argument this letter stands among the best of all President Lincoln's writings. It came at an opportune time, and it did much to silence the caviler, to satisfy the doubter, ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... now mounted the papal chair under the name of Eugene III. As Eugene honored and loved the abbot Bernard as his spiritual father and old preceptor, so the latter took advantage of his relation to the Pope to speak the truth to him with a plainness which no other man would easily have ventured to use. In congratulating him upon his elevation to the papal dignity, he took occasion to exhort him to do away with the many abuses which had become so widely spread in the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... armour, wound his solitary way; His mail was black and unadorned; on his vizor waved no plume. But there was something in his carriage and mien, and the singular beauty of his coal- black steed, which appeared to indicate a higher rank than the absence of page and squire, and the plainness of his accoutrements, would have denoted to a careless eye. He rode very slowly; and his steed, with the licence of a spoiled favourite, often halted lazily in his sultry path, as a tuft of herbage, or the bough of some overhanging tree, offered its temptation. At length, ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... it as a principle to their own satisfaction, that feminine weaknesses were to be sternly discouraged as the main cause of the position held relatively to men. Thus they cultivated a certain brusqueness of speech, expressed their opinion uncompromisingly, and were distinguished by a certain plainness in the fashion of their gowns, and by the absence of trimmings, ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... oblique persuasion, Anita took up the jacket, and her quick fingers made the needles fly. Her glance was keen, and although apparently concentrated on her work, she saw the strange mixture of plainness and luxury in the little room. The floor was covered with a fine rug, and a little glass cupboard shone ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... to indicate a seat rather than a tomb, and the date as about the end of the twelfth century. Beneath the Johnson window there is another Norman relic, of about the same date, in the outline of the old Canons' Doorway, formerly connecting the aisle with the cloisters. The extreme plainness of the moulding will be contrasted with the elaborate work in the Prior's entrance further east, on the exterior of the same wall. The next window contains a memorial to Alexander Cruden, compiler of the Scripture Concordance, who died on 1st November, 1770, and was buried in the parish. This ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Southwark Cathedral • George Worley
... wish to be better; she could admire good people; she could trust in God her Saviour. And now the loving God-made human heart in her was going into a new school that it might begin a fresh beautiful growth. She was old, I have said, and plain; but now her old age and plainness were about to vanish, and all that had made her youth attractive to young Tomkins was about to return to her, only rendered tenfold more beautiful by the growth of fifty years of learning according to her ability. ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... severe as it might be, to the desires and interests of his country. With the letter Madison sent a draft of an address, and in reference to it remarked: "You will readily observe that, in executing it, I have aimed at that plainness and modesty of language which you had in view, and which indeed are so peculiarly becoming the character and the occasion; and that I had little more to do, as to the matter, than to follow the just and comprehensive outline which ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... There was a total absence of every object of ornament. On the table figured merely an earthenware vase, in which were placed several chrysanthemums. A few books and teacups were also conspicuous, but no further knicknacks. On the bed was suspended a green gauze curtain, and of equally extreme plainness were the coverlets and mattresses ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... opinions, though I readily admit that he is not accountable for them to me—who may, in his peculiar opinions, withdraw her from that notice and favour, she is at any time at liberty to do so. We are obliged to you for the plainness with which you have spoken. It will have no effect of itself, one way or other, on the young woman's position here. Beyond this, we can make no terms; and here we beg—if you will be so ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... the neck of her dress, and this heightened the plainness and the pallor of her face. She shrank instinctively at the first sight of herself, and opened the drawer where the crimson cape was folded, ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... it is, having too this strange interest, that though mainly characterised by a great plainness and simplicity of thought, and, in the earlier stages, of expression, we feel, oftentimes, a sudden weirdness, a strange glamour shoots across the poem when the tale seems to open for a moment into mysterious depths, druidic secrets veiled by time, unsunned caves of thought, indicating a ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... liking for knocks. Courage tempered by stupidity (as in the persons of Fluellen, etc.) is what he loves in a man. He, himself, has plenty of his favourite quality. His love of plainness and bluntness makes him condemn sentiment in ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... destined to bear the persons of females, of a rank that it was not usual to meet so far in the wilds of the country. A third wore trappings and arms of an officer of the staff; while the rest, from the plainness of the housings, and the traveling mails with which they were encumbered, were evidently fitted for the reception of as many menials, who were, seemingly, already waiting the pleasure of those they served. At a respectful distance from this unusual show, were gathered divers ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... Bill. Mr. [afterwards Sir James] Stephen was present. We pointed out to His Lordship the injustice of the bill, and the probable consequences if it were passed in its present shape. We spoke at some length, but with great plainness; intimating that we regarded the measure as the forfeiture of good faith on the part of Her Majesty's Government, as the violation of the constitutional rights of the inhabitants of Upper Canada, and as the cause of the unpopularity of the British Government in that ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... folk and left the sea and found work in the West Indies and bided there for five-and-twenty years. And now he came back, brown as a berry and ugly as need be. At forty you might say Jack Cobley couldn't be beat for plainness; and yet, after all, I've seen better-looking men that was uglier, if you understand me, because, though his countenance put you in mind of an old church gargoyle, yet it was kindly and benevolent ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... clean oval Face, just edged about with little thin Plaits of the purest Cambrick, received great Advantages from the Shade of her black Hood; as did the Whiteness of her Arms from that sober-coloured Stuff, in which she had Cloathed her self. The Plainness of her Dress was very well suited to the Simplicity of her Phrases; all which put together, though they could not give me a great Opinion of her Religion, they did ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... villages, in smaller towns, in greater towns, as we gained experience in war and knowledge in the art of ruling people, and so tediously won our promotion. I am speaking in Tatho's private abode, that was mine own not two hours since, and I would have an answer with that plainness which we always ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... at a Visitation in Essex, one in Orders (of good estate and extraction) appeared before him very gallant in habit, whom D'r Laud (then Bishop of London) publickly reproved, shewing to him the plainness of his own apparrel. My Lord (said the Minister) you have better cloaths at home and I have worse, whereat the Bishop rested very ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... savage plainness of these words and the excited ring of the angry voice, the sculptor could scarcely recognise his gentle courteous friend, to whom mere living used to be a joy. The absent expression in his eye, the anxious wrinkle on his brow, and the heat of the hand which grasped Vedrine's, ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... against counter-evidence of still greater weight. Even the Swedes themselves, if they still retain the convictions of their forefathers, have grown tolerant of opposite convictions; and Geijer has not scrupled to intimate, with tolerable plainness, that he considers the charge against the Duke of Saxe ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... declared his opposition to any amendment to the Constitution. "The Union," he said, "is indissoluble, and no State can secede. I will lay down my life for it.... We must have the arbitration of reason, or the arbitrament of the sword." Amaziah B. James, another New Yorker, possessed the same plainness of speech. "The North will not enter upon war until the South forces it to do so," he said, mildly. "But when you begin it, the government will carry it on until the Union is restored and its enemies put down."[655] ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... the lines of the furniture, were all subdued, even a little austere. Quiet greens and blues, mingled with white, showed the artistic mind; the chairs and sofas were a trifle stiff and straight legged; the electric fittings were of a Georgian plainness to match the Colonial architecture of the house; the beautiful self-coloured carpet was indeed Persian and costly, but it betrayed its costliness only to the expert. Altogether, the room, one would have ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his excellent cigar with all the enjoyment of a satisfied connoisseur. His glance played from one article of furniture to another, from the floor to the ceiling, from bookcase to bookcase, from picture to picture. The very plainness of the room seemed to fascinate him. His gaze sought out the ugliest picture, and became fixed on it. Tranter turned over all the cards, and shrugged ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... of the sins of Jerusalem and the judgments of heaven that are about to fall upon her. With these are interspersed denunciations of the false prophets that flatter the people in their sins, and fervent addresses to his fellow-captives remarkable for their plainness and evangelical spirit. The second part opens with a series of prophecies against seven foreign nations, in which the order of time is not observed—first, short prophecies against the four neighboring nations, Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia (chap. 25); secondly, a series of prophecies ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... for the streaked daffodil," the Captain went on to say, believing that he was stating the case with incontrovertible plainness, "and if he does not have the true bulb he must have the money back; otherwise he will, with justice, say he has been cheated, for I guaranteed ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... the old comedy was introduced, which had a magisterial freedom of speech, and by its very plainness of speaking was useful in reminding men to beware of insolence; and for this purpose too Diogenes used to ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... it so,' she said, looking musingly at the fire. 'So,not in precise colour, of course, nor exact pattern,but in general qualityand plainnessand' ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... To dine at the rude board table with the young officers of one of the companies of a battalion, perhaps in a bare hut, on the floor of which lay the lads' beds, was something sacred and sacramental. Their apologies for the plainness of the repast were to me extremely pathetic. Was there a table in the whole world at which it was a greater honour to sit? Where could one find a nobler, knightlier body ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... explication as he gave, but it was greatly needed in the theological world, which at that time was sunk in a sea of metaphysical definition, and consumed with a lust for explaining everything in heaven and earth in terms of alphabetic plainness. Dr. Bushnell was not only justified by the necessity of his situation in resorting to his theory, but he had the right which every man of genius may claim for himself. Any one whose thought is broader than that about him, whose feeling is deeper, whose ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... was laid down by Erasmus, as my father wished it, with the utmost plainness; but my father's disappointment was, in finding nothing more from so able a pen, but the bare fact itself; without any of that speculative subtilty or ambidexterity of argumentation upon it, which Heaven had bestow'd upon man on purpose to investigate truth, and fight for her on all sides.—My ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... of the very gravest character; and in the course of what follows, it will appear with sufficient plainness wherein it consists. For the moment,—singly considered,—it is my painful duty to condemn Dr. Temple's Essay ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... half without notes, the people listening as still as mice. There has been a great row about Tyndall's address, and I had some reason to expect that I should have to meet a frantically warlike audience. But it was quite otherwise, and though I spoke my mind with very great plainness, I never had a warmer reception. And I am not without hope that I have done something to allay the storm, though, as you may be sure, I did not sacrifice plain speaking to that end...I have been most creditably quiet here, and have gone to no dinners or breakfasts or other such fandangoes ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... the wealth that was displayed before my eyes. My own poor preparations lost all their charm, and I had not been above half an hour in the place before I was seeking a quiet corner in which to hide the poverty of my coat and the plainness of my cloak. But the desire for privacy thus bred in me was not to find satisfaction. Darrell, whom I had not met all day, now pounced on me and carried me off, declaring that he was charged to present me to the Duke of York. ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... some of their state apartments, in cornices or sculptured friezes on the external walls of their buildings; and even then its employment suggested rather that of a band of embroidery carefully disposed on some garment to relieve the plainness of the material. Crude brick, burnt brick, enamelled brick, but always and everywhere brick was the principal element in their construction. The soil of the marshes or of the plains, separated from the pebbles and foreign substances which it contained, mixed with grass ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... house with all its plainness seemed very cosy as she took leave of it, and the woman instinct for home made its outcry in her when she turned her face resolutely from its sheltering warmth and felt the force of the north wind whipping mercilessly upon her. But she steeled herself to meet the cold, and her spirits rose ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... of that great scheme of which this life is a part. It is an apparently essential element and fulfilment of the wonderful apparatus of retribution, reward, and discipline, intended to educate us as members of God's eternal family. Because from the little which we now understand we cannot infer with plainness and certainty the precise means and method by which we can discriminate our friends in heaven need be no obstacle to believing the fact itself; for there are millions of undoubted truths whose conditions and ways of operation we can nowise fathom. Upon the whole, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... learned Orientalists, steeped in recondite knowledge of all kinds; men who had worked their way to knowledge through hardship and grinding labour, and not to be outdone in Germany itself for devouring love of learning and a scholar's plainness of life. In the other class may be mentioned Frederic Faber, J.D. Dalgairns, and W.G. Ward, men who have all since risen to eminence in their different spheres. Faber was a man with a high gift of imagination, remarkable powers of assimilating knowledge, and a great ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... Robert Howard.] the best that I ever saw at that house, being a great play and serious; only Lacy did act the country-gentleman come up to Court, who do abuse the Court with all the imaginable wit and plainness about selling of places, and doing every thing for money. The play took very much. Thence I to my new bookseller's, and there bought "Hooker's Polity," the new edition, and "Dugdale's History of the Inns of Court," of which there was but ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... consist of Monosyllables. I speak chiefly of the Gothick, Saxon, and Teutonick. It must be confest that in the Saxon, there are many Primitive Words of one Syllable, and this to those who know the Esteem that is due to Simplicity and Plainness, in any Language, will rather be judged a Virtue than a Vice: That is, that the first Notions of things should be exprest in the plainest and simplest manner, and in the least compass: and the Qualities and Relations, ...
— An Apology For The Study of Northern Antiquities • Elizabeth Elstob
... here, at a third entertainment (181), servants are bringing in wine and necklaces—a kind of hospitality to which, as regards the latter object, modern ladies would in no way object. The ancient Egyptian ladies had their bouquets, their ornaments, and their couches, and exacted a plainness of costume from their servants, as in the present time. On passing south from the Egyptian Saloon, between the two great lions, the visitor at once gains the central saloon, but without pausing here, or turning to the right into the tempting Phigalian and Elgin Saloons, he should ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... say with plainness, I who am no longer in a public character, that if by a fair, by an indulgent, by a gentlemanly behaviour to our representatives, we do not give confidence to their minds, and a liberal scope to their understandings; if we do not permit our members to act upon a VERY ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... camel-driver is a scene that scarce could exist in the imagination of a European, and of its attendant distresses he could have no idea.—These are very happily and minutely painted by our descriptive poet. What sublime simplicity of expression! what nervous plainness in the opening of ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... mature and successful, as I have hitherto regarded him. He may be unsuccessful in a worldly sense; but from my present point of view I do not much care whether he is unsuccessful in that sense. I know that plain men are seldom failures; their very plainness saves them from the alarming picturesqueness of the abject failure. On the other hand, I care greatly whether the plain man is mature or immature, old or young. I should prefer to catch him young. But he is difficult to catch young. The fact is that, just as he is seldom a failure, so he is seldom ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett |
