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More "Plainness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the tray for her simple meal stood ready, and beside it a volume of "The Divine Comedy," one of her mother's very rare gifts to her, in her motherless youth—for of late she had turned thirstily to poetry. There was a great peace and plainness about it all; and, besides, touches of beauty—tokens of the soul. Her work spoke in it; called to her; promised comfort and ennobling. She thought with yearning, too, of her parents; of the autumn holiday she was soon to spend ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... your prayers, and that which in the gospel is connected with prayers—watchfulness, upon my country's cause. It is not without design that I mention this word watchfulness; for it would be not appropriate for me to speak any word which might excite mere passion. I rely upon principles in their plainness, and make no appeal to blind excitement; but I venture to throw out the hint, that in certain quarters even the word religion is employed as a tool against that cause which you pronounce to be just; and therefore I may be permitted to claim ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... Katy half so lovely as now in the plain black gown which she wore all day long, with her hair tucked into a knot behind her ears. Her real beauty of feature and outline seemed only enhanced by the rigid plainness of her attire, and the charm of true expression grew in her face. Never had Katy admired and loved her friend so well as during those days of fatigue and wearing suspense, or realized so strongly the worth of her sweetness of temper, her unselfishness ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... Sprat and Clifford withdrawn that full correspondence of his heart which he had carried on many years. These letters were suppressed because, as Bishop Sprat acknowledges, "in this kind of prose Mr. Cowley was excellent! They had a domestical plainness, and a peculiar kind of familiarity." And then the florid writer runs off, that, "in letters, where the souls of men should appear undressed, in that negligent habit they may be fit to be seen by one or two in a chamber, but not to go abroad ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... interest which gives the illusion of life to a work of fiction, and fills us with delight or melts with woe, whether in the happiness or the suffering of some imagined being, uniting goodness with beauty, or virtue with plainness, or uncommon purity and intellect even with deformity; for even that may be so overpowered in the prominent harmony of superior intellect and moral worth, as to be virtually neutralized, at least, to become unobtrusive as a discordant force. Besides, it cannot ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... background. They were both to repair, on a given day, at a given hour, to a given office, in a given street, where they were to sign without inquiry, and even without perusal, whatever documents might then and there be presented to them. This course, the writer pointed out, with perspicuous plainness, was all in the end to their own ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... simplicity of the mansion and its inhabitants. We were introduced into the little family sitting-room, the floor of which was painted after the Yankee fashion; instead of being carpeted, the walls were of unornamented deal, and the furniture of the room of corresponding plainness. A large spinning-wheel, as big as a cart-wheel, nearly occupied the centre of the room, at which a neatly- dressed matron, of mild and lady-like appearance, was engaged spinning yarn; her little daughters were knitting beside ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill
... be an English frigate also in the roads, and he preferred sailing under any flag rather than the Bourbon. His equanimity seemed perfectly re-established from the moment when he set his foot on the British deck. He conversed affably with Captain Usher and the officers; and by the ease and plainness of his manners, his intelligent curiosity as to the arrangements of the ship, and the warm eulogies which he continued to pronounce on them, and on the character of the English nation at large, he succeeded in making a very favourable impression on all ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... future alone, but the whole universe seemed to lie in the closed palm of my hand. I knew that I was plain, that I was rough beside the velvet softness of the woman who had promised to share my life; but this plainness, this roughness, no longer troubled me since she had found in it something of the power that had drawn her to me. My awkwardness had dropped from me in the revelation of my strength which she had brought. The odour of burning leaves ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... require a pure air; every circumstance points out the country as the proper place for their education; the purity of the air, the variety of rustic sports, the plainness of diet, the simplicity and innocence of manners, all concur to recommend it. It is a melancholy fact, that above half the children born in London, die before they ...
— A Lecture on the Preservation of Health • Thomas Garnett, M.D.
... stagecoach, returned to see what had become of her. He had feared to find her stricken down in the road, and when he saw her clinging alone and in a maddened way to this tree, he made no bones of speaking to her with all necessary plainness. ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... the meaning of free and unrestricted vivisection. Its plainness of speech did not deter very distinguished physiologists and others from signing it as the expression of their views. One can hardly doubt that it represents the view of the physiological laboratory at the present day. Sixty years ago this view of vivisection ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... some members of congress towards him, and receiving the memorial of the legislature of Pennsylvania against his going into winter quarters, the General also discovered the failure already mentioned in the commissary department. On this occasion, he addressed congress in terms of energy and plainness which he had used on no former occasion. In his letter to that body he said, "Full as I was in my representation of the matters in the commissary's department yesterday, fresh and more powerful reasons oblige ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... the picture with my warm thanks, both for that, and your better favour the 'Messiah' which I assure you I have read through with great pleasure. The verses have great sweetness, and a New Testament plainness about them which affected me very much. I could just wish that in page 63, you had omitted the lines 71 and 72, and ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... particular one I should assume, I thought nothing appeared more likely to be remarkable among men, and therefore pleasing to women, than an egregious coxcomb: accordingly I arranged my hair into ringlets, dressed myself with singular plainness and simplicity (a low person, by the by, would have done just the contrary), and putting on an air of exceeding languor, made my maiden appearance at Lord Bennington's. The party was small, and equally divided between French and English: the former had been all emigrants, and the ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... This plainness of speech was not the only proof of the simplicity of former days that was to be found in Suffolk, in the first quarter of the century. The eastern end of Long Island lies so much out of the track of the rest of the world, that even ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... lustrous dark eyes, fringed by long soft lashes, an almost dark rose-tint on her cheeks. And in the look which she gave him there was something as soft as her eyes, which were those of a shy animal—something appealing, pathetic. He glanced hastily at her attire—simple, even to plainness—and wondered who she was, and what was her exact status in that big house, which seemed to require the services of ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... along the gloomy passage, that the bears were also compelled to slacken their pace and climb over intervening rocks as he had done. And it was plural, for the second one had joined the first, and they were coming steadily on, their light coats showing with terrible plainness in the gloom among ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... She ceased looking quizzically amused, and left off swinging her brown boot. She sat up, uncrossed her knees, and leaning her elbows upon them, held out her large capable hands to Lady Ingleby. Her noble face, grandly strong and tender, in its undeniable plainness, was full of womanly understanding ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... do otherwise; but put a stop to God's and the Levites' portion, I beseech you, and to the approaching ruins of His Church, as you expect comfort at the Last Great Day; for Kings must be judged. Pardon this affectionate plainness, my most dear Sovereign, and let me beg to be still continued in your favour; and the Lord still ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... before us, we know not whence, more beautiful than all the fountains of Versailles? Is not his Highland Girl a lovelier and truer expression of real beauty than Goethe's Helena, or Byron's Haidee? And then the plainness of his language, and the purity of his thoughts! Is it not a pity that we have never had such a poet? Schiller could have been our Wordsworth, had he had more faith in himself than in the old Greeks and Romans. Our Ruckert would come the nearest to him, ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... personal expenditures; you recollect but a week ago you gave two hundred dollars for that diamond coronet you have on—and you are constantly purchasing costly dresses and superb shawls. Do you not observe the plainness of my attire? Believe me, an elegant simplicity of dress is far more attractive to men of taste, than gaudy ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... your Letter you mention a Circumstance in Regard to my dress. I hope it did not Arise from your hearing I was too Extravagant that way, which I think they cant Tax me with. At same time I am not Remarkable for the Plainness of my Dress, upon proper Occasions I dress as Genteel as anyone, and cant say I am without Lace.... I find money some way or other goes very fast, but I think I can Reflect it has been spent with Satisfaction, ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... vitals—a type that strikes me more than any I met in your favourite countries. Of course you'll come back to the cathedrals and Titians, but there's a thought that helps one to do without them—the thought that though there's an immense deal of plainness, there's little misery, little squalor, little degradation. There is no regular wife-beating class, and there are none of the stultified peasants of whom it takes so many to make a European noble. The people ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... they succeeded where the Gentiles had failed? They enjoyed, indeed, great advantages over the heathen; for they possessed the oracles of God, in which the divine nature was exhibited in a form which rendered it inaccessible to human perversion, and the divine law was written with equal plainness in the same form. But had they profited by these advantages? It is one thing to know the law and another thing to do it; but it is doing, not knowing, which is righteousness. Had they, then, fulfilled the will of God, which ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... 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 ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... addressed to those then concerned in the 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 known to ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... selection of the words. Thought and expression, so to speak, breed in and in. There is a certain roughness in the strength of the man, which is ever asserting itself through his cultured vigor; and in the diction, rustic plainness of speech alternates with the nomenclature of metaphysics, rugged sense with lifting raptures, and curt, blunt, homely expression with vivid, whatever may be his form of words, he always loads them with meaning, and with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... the 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 History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... free from a boasting spirit. Factions or parties had arisen as a result. It was the bad world spirit of competition and rivalry in among Christ's followers where it should never come, yet where it still does come. In writing this letter Paul throughout blends great plainness and ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... a Funeral," as it is called, but the reverent and devout committal of the "body to the ground," "looking for the General Resurrection in the last day and the life of the world to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ." Plainness and simplicity should ...
— The American Church Dictionary and Cyclopedia • William James Miller
... Tuned to the choral of Luther; the song on its mighty pinions Took every living soul, and lifted it gently to heaven, And each face did shine like the Holy One's face upon Tabor. Lo! there entered then into the church the Reverend Teacher. Father he hight and he was in the parish; a Christianly plainness Clothed from his head to his feet the old man of seventy winters. Friendly was he to behold, and glad as the heralding angel Walked he among the crowds, but still a contemplative grandeur Lay on his forehead as clear as on moss-covered ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... although his modesty had not diminished the indomitable courage with which he maintained the contest. He stood in the middle of the lists, his face ruddy with the exertion of the combat, and not less so from the modest consciousness proper to the plainness and simplicity of his character, which was disconcerted by finding himself the central point of the gaze of ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... was free both from country rusticity and professional pedantry; so that he had considerable powers both of address and persuasion, joined to an unshaken effrontery, which he affected to disguise under plainness of manner. Confident, therefore, in himself, he appeared at Woodbourne about ten in the morning, and was admitted as a gentleman come to ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... passing by the rest of thy brawlings, I shall come to thy several queries, and shall answer to them in the simplicity of my soul, not laying down any doubtful expressions, but in all plainness, and not as you do, for the better understanding of them by ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... notes which have added so greatly to the value of this issue of "Alf Laylah wa Laylah." Some of these are startling in their realism, and often the traveller who believed that he knew something of the East, winces at the plainness with which the Wazir's daughter tells her tales to Shahryar, King of the Banu Sasan. The language is, however, more frequently coarse than loose, and smacks more of the childish plainness with which high and low talk in the family circles from Tangier to Malayia, than of prurience or ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... to herself that everything about him was dear to her; his grey eyes, that never saw below the surface of things; his thin, brown face; his youthful affectation; the strange, new growth which shaded his long upper lip, and softened the plainness of the Crewys physiognomy, which Peter would not have bartered for the handsomest set of Greek features ever imagined by a sculptor. Even for his faults Lady Mary had a tender toleration; for Peter would not have ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... see through a glass darkly;" 1 Cor. xiii. 9, 12. And as this is true in general, so we may find it true if we descend to particular instances. The disciples seem to be ignorant of that great truth which they had often, and in much plainness, been taught by their Master once and again, viz., that his kingdom was not of this world, and that in the world they should suffer and be persecuted; yet in the 1st of the Acts, ver. 6, we read, that they asked of him if he would at this time restore the kingdom ...
— An Exhortation to Peace and Unity • Attributed (incorrectly) to John Bunyan
... beauty did I see here, nor elsewhere in the Rouergue. Plainness of feature in men and women is the rule throughout this extensive tract of country. But there is this to be said in favour of the girls and younger women, that they generally have well-shaped figures and a very erect carriage, which last is undoubtedly due to the habit of carrying weights upon ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... been said hitherto of Borrow's more purely literary characteristics from the point of view of formal criticism. They are sufficiently interesting. He unites with a general plainness of speech and writing, not unworthy of Defoe or Cobbett, a very odd and complicated mannerism, which, as he had the wisdom to make it the seasoning and not the main substance of his literary fare, is never disgusting. The secret of this may be, no doubt, in part sought ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... afterwards she judged the proper time had arrived, and boldly entered the Doctor's awful presence. "Doctor," she began, "I've come to have a little talk, and it's no use beatin' about the bush, plainness o' speech bein' one o' my ways; not that folks always thinks it a virtue, but oftentimes the contrary, and so may you, maybe; but when there's a worry in a house, it's better, whatsoever and whosoever, ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... appeasing his hunger with a bitter relish because more simply; and being unwilling to enfeeble his true valour with the tainted sweetness of sophisticated foreign dainties, or break the rule of antique plainness by such strange idolatries of the belly. He was also very wroth that they should go, to the extravagance of having the same meat both roasted and boiled at the same meal; for he considered an eatable which was steeped in the vapours of the kitchen, and which the skill of the cook ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... and plainness of the case, I pluck this pale and maiden blossom here, Giving my verdict on ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... suffered much from loneliness in that busy hive, where everyone has so many small affairs of his own to attend to. Just before the annual examinations he was seized with brain-fever and died. Doctor Peabody conducted the funeral services at the boarding-house of the unfortunate youth, and the plainness of the surroundings heightened the eloquence of his address. His prayer on that occasion was so much above the average character of his religious discourses that it seemed to come from a secret fountain of the man's nature, which could only be ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... elegance of the plain, broad hem, nor more disheartening than hemstitching which has broken from its moorings while the rest of the sheet is still perfectly good—a way it has. Hem-stitching may answer on linen sheets which are not in constant use, but ordinarily let us have the more profitable plainness. Good sheets are always torn—not cut—and finished with a 2 1/2- or 3-inch hem at the top and an inch hem at the bottom, the finished sheet measuring not less than 2 3/4 yards. There must be ample length to turn back well over ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... where she might sit or work by herself. An extraordinary watchfulness surrounded her every step: up to the day of her accession, she never went downstairs without someone beside her holding her hand. Plainness and regularity ruled the household. The hours, the days, the years passed slowly and methodically by. The dolls—the innumerable dolls, each one so neatly dressed, each one with its name so punctiliously entered in the ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... first, her shyness and modesty left nothing to be desired. Her clothes were simple even to plainness, her voice soft and deprecating, and her manner deferential in the extreme. She was always asking advice, and where that advice was given, she always followed it. Flattery ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... much more uncomfortable than he had expected, but he was rather a favorite with the doctor for his openness and plainness of speech; so blurted out, as he walked by the doctor's side, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... 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 ...
— The Plain Man and His Wife • Arnold Bennett
... plainness of which meant nothing to such appetites as their out-door living had aroused, they sat on the porch, the men over their cigarettes and Dorothy quite content in the contemplation of the sweetness ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... imitation,—the Bible narrative; the one is an embodiment,—the other a substance; the one transcribes the actual by the personal,—the other is a return to the simplest originality; the one exalts its subjects by poetic freedom,—the other adheres to prosaic plainness. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... superbly rounded form, a rich complexion, and an affluence of golden brown hair, rippling all over her fine head, and gathered into a mass at the nape of her graceful neck. She wore an inexpensive, closely fitting dress of dark blue serge, whose very plainness set off the perfection of her figure and enhanced the brilliancy of her complexion, showing to the best advantage that splendid beauty, which at the age of thirty-five had reached its zenith. Just now, however, the vivid brightness of her bloom had faded to a pale rose ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... what he means. Somehow or other a well-ordered monastery represents the Least Common Multiple of nearly all pleasant houses. It has the largeness and amplitude of a castle, and the plainness of decent poverty. It has none of that theatricality which it is supposed to have, none of the dreaminess or the sentimentality with which Protestants endow it. He had passed just now through, first, a network of small stairways, archways, vestibules and passages, and then ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... is yet carried out, and this kind will take more developing for the completion of its idea, and may result in a greater beauty. I would therefore advise any young man of aspiration in the matter of beauty, to choose a plain woman for wife—IF THROUGH HER PLAINNESS SHE IS YET LOVELY IN HIS EYES; for the loveliness is herself, victorious over the plainness, and her face, so far from complete and yet serving her loveliness, has in it room for completion on a grander scale than possibly most handsome faces. In a handsome face one sees the lines of its coming ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... This brutal plainness created a sensation and several tried to dissuade me, but I had made ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... has been set out with more than mediaeval indifference to exactness of measurements and squareing, and the chancel diverges phenomenally from the axis of the nave. The elevations are gaunt in their plainness, and the now unplastered rubble-work is rough and uncomely, but the dimensions are ample, the walls lofty, and the chancel arch undeniably imposing." Of the bases here he says: "These slabs are commonly attributed ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... enormous size of the room, some twenty-five feet away, was the "chestard" the high "chest of drawers" that had won its name from the children's contracted pronunciation. This bleak article of furniture contained the smaller pieces of Malcolm Monroe's wardrobe, which matched in plainness and ugliness that of his wife. Stiff white collars caught and rasped when the shallow upper drawer was opened; the middle drawers were filled with brownish gray flannels, and shirts stiff-bosomed and limp of sleeves. But if a curious Martie, making the bed, or putting away the ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... in its plainness is beauty, Science itself is a charm, But the frown of a tyrant tutor Puts ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... requirement of a poet—he was not difficult to please. The life of society was superficial, but it is only very superficial people who object to the superficial. To the man who sees the marvellousness of all things, the surface of life is fully as strange and magical as its interior; clearness and plainness of life is fully as mysterious as its mysteries. The young man in evening dress, pulling on his gloves, is quite as elemental a figure as any anchorite, quite as incomprehensible, and ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... any Signification of their Thoughts; and if any Man measure his Words by his Heart, and speak as he thinks, and do not express more Kindness to every Man, than Men usually have for any Man, he can hardly escape the Censure of want of Breeding. The old English Plainness and Sincerity, that generous Integrity of Nature, and Honesty of Disposition, which always argues true Greatness of Mind and is usually accompanied with undaunted Courage and Resolution, is in a great measure lost amongst ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... wood-nymph on the edge of a pool, she asked herself for the first time if it were possible that she could have any pretensions to beauty. It was not in the least likely, of course. Her mother had always railed at her for the plainness of her looks. Did Eustace—did Scott—think her plain? She ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... cares less for the mode of reception, when I take mine ease at mine inn, than I do, for old soldiers are not very fastidious, and old travellers still less so; but give me sturdy John Bull, with his blunt plainness and true independence, before the silly insolence of a fellow, who thinks he shows his equality, by lowering the character of a man to that of a brute, in coarse exhibitions of assumed importance, which his ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... mean in chimney-pot hat and pomade, en route to its various creeds, some to one bell, some to another, some to ding dong, and some to dong ding; but the most of them directed their steps towards a silent chapel. This great building, plain beyond plainness, stood beside a fir copse, from which in the summer morning there floated an exquisite fragrance of pine. If all the angles of the architects could have been put together, nothing could have been designed more utterly ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... without waiting for an introduction. Maggie mumbled some reply; she later could not remember what it was. Indeed she never had met such a woman: so finished, so gracious, so unaffected, with a sparkle of humor in her brown eyes; and the rich plainness of her white linen frock made Maggie conscious that her own supposed simplicity was cheap and ostentatious. If Miss Sherwood had received her with hostility, doubt, or even chilled civility, the situation would have been easier; the aroused Maggie ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... a small octagonal room, designed in one of the towers that looked out over the sea; panelled in painted wood and furnished with extreme plainness. On one side a door opened upon the three little parlours that were used when the party was small; at the back a lobby led into the old hall itself; on the third side was the ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... a beautiful present. The rifle, designed with that plainness of ornament and simplicity of form peculiar to English weapons, was of the finest finish. Like the pistols, of which Roland had had opportunity to test the accuracy, the rifle was made by the celebrated Manton, and carried a twenty-four calibre ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... much alike, our rooms furnished with the same Spartan plainness. Only in Mistress Craven I happened on a good one, and abode with her all the days of my stay at College, till the way opened out for me to wider ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... day while she was thus exhibiting, somebody ventured to say, by no means inaudibly, "well, this is royally ill played!" The lesson was thrown away upon her, for never did she sacrifice to the opinion of another that which she thought permissible. When she was told that her extreme plainness in dress, the nature of her amusements, and her dislike to that splendour which ought always to attend a Queen, had an appearance of levity, which was misinterpreted by a portion of the public, she ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... not my love. How would they be affronted, if I were to say pity!—I think only of my two good aunts, at the present writing. Miss Clements, you know, is a youngish woman; and I respect her much. One would not jest upon the unsightliness of person, or plainness of feature: but think you she will not be one of those, who twenty years hence may put in a ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... "neither a matchmaker, especially for adventurers, nor a scheming politician, and on both grounds I decline to have anything to do with you. Your insistence compels me to speak with a plainness which I would rather have avoided, but you must blame yourself. It's a far cry to Loch Awe, and a farther cry to the pardon of the Black Colonel, but he thinks it might be contrived if he had Marget Forbes and her property for a trump card. A pretty scheme, but not one which my commission ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... by Cowper, which in stile is much above his usual, and emulates in noble plainness any old balad I have seen. Hayley has just published it &c. with a Life. I did not ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... sunshine, and cast a glory upon men and even nature. 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 ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... yet made up her mind what to do. She saw that he hid it from her assiduously. He did so more because he wished not to pain her than from furtiveness. By nature he was open and brave, and had always had a reputation for plainness and sincerity. She was in no sense his equal in intelligence or judgment, nor even in instinct. She was a woman of more impulse and constitutional good-nature than depth. It is probable that he knew that, and refrained from letting her into the knowledge of this vice, contracted ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... nature, daughter of the plains, with thee alone the queen of beauty dwells! What is it that adorns and enhances all the wild and uncultivated scenes of nature? It is plainness and artless simplicity. What is it that renders lovely and amiable her most favourite productions in the animal creation: the tender lamb, the cooing dove, and the vocal nightingale? It is simplicity; it is, that all their gestures wear ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... not to be done thus, after all: plainness and candor were best. She went back a third time; he did not see her now, and she lingeringly gazed up at his unconscious figure, loath to put an end to any kind of hope that might live on in him still. "Giles— ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... College, both 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 richness ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... minutes Marchand was back, bringing with him a middle-aged and somewhat pudgy woman, very pale; a younger woman of exceeding plainness, and sobbing steadfastly; and also an elderly man, evidently an invalid, and wearing a ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... together with Vespasian, Pertinax, Alexander, Severus, Claudius the Second, and Tacitus, who were raised to the empire by their merit, and whom all ages have admired as the greatest and the best of princes, were always fond of the greatest plainness in their apparel, furniture, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... the modern poet profit by another quality of Biblical style: its magic combination of a "magnificent Plainness" with the "Spirit of Imagery." This is the Hebrew virtue of concrete suggestiveness, so highly prized by 20th-century critics and so alien to the generalized abstractions and the explicit ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... than with pedigree. Sydney Smith, though he was as whole-hearted a reformer as ever breathed, knew that sternness towards crime was an essential part of government, and after the Bristol Riots of 1831 he warned Lord Grey against flaccidity with great plainness of speech. "Pray do not be good-natured about Bristol. I must have ten people hanged, and twenty transported, and thirty imprisoned. You will save lives by ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... of these works we forget the plainness of the building which contains them. May the fates be prosperous, and no conflagration reach this church, built as it is ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... was "John Campion of Dublin, Ireland." The art—and in Campion it was art, not artlessness—with which he made use of such rhymes as "hill" and "vigil," "sing" and "darling," besides his occasional use of internal rhyme and assonance (he rhymed "licens'd" and "silence," "strangeness" and "plainness," for example), has seemed to be more akin to the practices of Irish than of English poets. No evidence exists, however, as to whether Campion's grandfather was Irish in anything except his adventures. ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... speak with great plainness and directness upon this great matter and to avow my convictions with deep earnestness. I have tried to know what America is, what her people think, what they are, what they most cherish and hold dear. I ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... in vain for the poet whom I describe. We do not with sufficient plainness or sufficient profoundness address ourselves to life, nor dare we chaunt our own times and social circumstance. If we filled the day with bravery, we should not shrink from celebrating it. Time and nature yield us many gifts, but not yet ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... to time he went out to ask: "Hasn't she come yet?" They were expecting Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, known in society as le terrible dragon, a lady distinguished not for wealth or rank, but for common sense and frank plainness of speech. Marya Dmitrievna was known to the Imperial family as well as to all Moscow and Petersburg, and both cities wondered at her, laughed privately at her rudenesses, and told good stories about her, while none the less all without exception ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... together seen, heard and met with every detail of its entire contents. Nevertheless there is nothing in it but what is well known by some of us to be true and certain;—the most is known by all of us to be true. We hope Their High Mightinesses will pardon our presumption and be charitable with our plainness of style, composition and method. In conclusion we commit Their High Mightinesses, their persons, deliberations and measures and their people, at home and abroad, together with all the friends of New Netherland, to the merciful guidance and protection ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... impossible to say in what it consists, or to remember her on account of any peculiarity in it. If she is beautiful, let her dress aid her beauty by not drawing away the attention from it. If she is plain, let her not attract all eyes to her plainness. Let not people say of her, "Did you see that ugly girl with that scarlet feather in her hat?" or, "with that bonnet covered with pearl beads, contrasting with her dark and sallow complexion?" or, "with that bright green gown, which made her look ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... maternal character takes woman out of her sphere." The education which she demanded was the co-education of men and women in common schools. She attacked the dual standard of sexual morality with a brave plainness of speech. She demanded the opening of suitable trades and professions to women. She exposed the whole system which compels women to "live by their charm." But a less destructive reformer never set out to overthrow conventions. For her the duty always underlies the right, ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... followed two diverse styles; the Protestants cultivated excessive plainness, the Catholics excessive ornament. The iconoclasts had no sense for beauty, and thought, as Luther put it, that faith was likely to be neglected by those who set a high value on external form. Moreover the Protestant services necessitated a modification of the medieval cathedral style. What ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... a reply was little better than rebellion in one of the town's servants, and his blood boiled at such unheard-of plainness of speech to him, late representative to the general court, member of the school committee, one of the selectmen, and an ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... mele, apparently under the sanction of his poetic license, uses toward the great god Ku a plainness of speech which to us seems satirical; he speaks of him as makole, red-eyed, the result, no doubt, of his notorious addiction to awa, in which he was not alone among the gods. But it is not at all certain that the ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... appearance as it stood alone in an unfinished street-block, and as, opposite, hoardings still shut in all that had yet been raised of the great library, which would eventually overshadow it. The severe plainness of its long front, with the unbroken lines of windows, did not fail to impress the unused beholder, who had not for very long gone daily out and in; it suggested to him the earnest, unswerving efforts, imperative on his pursuit of the ideal; an ideal which, to many, was as it were ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... stranger she flushed over face and neck, and her bosom palpitated visibly. Her sister, two years younger, was a mere child, rather self-conscious, but of laughing temper. Their toilet suited ill with that of their mother; its plainness and negligence might have passed muster in London, but here, under the lucent sky, it seemed a wrong ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... advantage of being quite unusually pretty little girls (Judith being nothing less than a beauty), so that even on the few occasions when they were invited to a children's party in the faculty circle their burnished, abundant hair, bright eyes, and fresh, alert faces made up for the plainness of their ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... her woman straight to her chamber, and shortly emerged therefrom, stripped of her rich apparel, and clad in a gown of strong blue linen, her hair wound close, her white hands bare of any ornament, save the band of gold which was her wedding- ring. A serving-woman might have been clad so; but the plainness of her garb but made her height, and strength, so reveal themselves, that the mere sight of her woke somewhat that was like to awe in the eyes of the servants who beheld her as ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... tell you..." Helene went on. "You believe everything you're told. You were told..." Helene laughed, "that Dolokhov was my lover," she said in French with her coarse plainness of speech, uttering the word amant as casually as any other word, "and you believed it! Well, what have you proved? What does this duel prove? That you're a fool, que vous etes un sot, but everybody knew that. What will be the result? ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... forth through the wide doorway, I found passage close to the wall, and half circled the room, finally discovering a halting place in the recesses of a window, where, partially concealed myself by flowing curtains, I could gaze out over the brilliant assemblage. Half ashamed of the plainness of my own attire, and feeling a stranger and an alien, I was yet consciously seeking the one face which had lured me there. I saw fair ladies in plenty, and more than once my heart leaped, only to discover its mistake. There were so ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... Reserve sometimes shows like Exaggeration; take, for instance, the excessive plainness of dress affected by the Lacedaemonians: in fact, both excess and the extreme of deficiency partake of the nature of Exaggeration. But they who practise Reserve in moderation, and in cases in which the truth is not very obvious ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... two, at least, were 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 ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... interview with Lord John Russell, on the Canada Clergy Reserve 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
... and the irritating thing about her plainness was that it, at any rate, was not inevitable. She had had a hair's-breadth escape of being handsome in a somewhat original and eccentric way. And so her plainness was insistent; it would not let you alone, but forced you to look at it, worrying ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... some pride with want may be allowed, We in our plainness may be justly proud: Our royal master willed it should be so; Whate'er he's pleased to own can need no show. That sacred name gives ornament and grace, And, like his stamp, makes basest metal pass. 'Twere folly now a stately pile to raise, To build a playhouse, while you throw ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... obliquity of the serpent be compared to the swift directness of the arrow, as the duplicity of Mr. Hastings's ambition to the simple steadiness of genuine magnanimity. In his mind all was shuffling, ambiguous, dark, insidious, and little: nothing simple, nothing unmixed: all affected plainness, and actual dissimulation; a heterogeneous mass of contradictory qualities; with nothing great but his crimes; and even those contrasted by the littleness of his motives, which at once denoted both his baseness and his meanness, and marked him for a traitor and a trickster. Nay, in his ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... own plainness, Sarah adored Miss Sandbrook's beauty, took all admiration of it as personally as if it been paid to her bullfinch, and was never so charmed as when people addressed themselves to the governess as the daughter of the house. Lucilla, however, shrank into the background. She ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... father, and gazing motionless, with one little foot doubled under him, and one tiny white arm drooping over the crimson sofa cushion. Miss Piper sketched as if for her life. Theodora directed Arthur's attention to his little son. He spoke to him, and was surprised and pleased at the plainness of the reply, and the animated spring of gladness. In another minute he was sitting on the floor, most successfully entertaining the child, while Miss Piper could hardly help drawing that handsome black head in contrast with the small, white creature, whose morsels of hands were coaxing his ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Farmer emphasises his plainness, and promises the readers of his Letters only a matter-of-fact account of his pursuits, he has his full share of eighteenth-century "sensibility." Since he is, however, at many removes from the sophistications of London and Paris, he is moved, not by the fond ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... was thus thrust into a situation from which it seemed hard to escape at all, loved Veronica Serra with all his heart, with all his soul, with the broad, deep, simple passion of simpler times, having in him much of that old plainness of character which made men take without question the things they wanted, and hold them by main strength and stoutness of heart against all ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... it so,' she said, looking musingly at the fire. 'So,not in precise colour, of course, nor exact pattern,but in general qualityand plainnessand' she paused for ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... spent in reading the life and doctrines of our blessed Redeemer, the account of the sufferings of martyrs, and the history of the first rise of our Society, a belief was gradually settled in my mind, that if such as had great estates, generally lived in that humility and plainness which belong to a Christian life, and laid much easier rents and interests on their lands and moneys, and thus led the way to a right use of things, so great a number of people might be employed in things useful, that labor both ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... sober, clean, and modest; not to set off the beauty of your person, but to declare the sobriety of your mind; that your outward garb may resemble the inward plainness and ...
— Parker's Second Reader • Richard G. Parker
... him myself, I presently saw such a plainness in his dealing and such honesty in his countenance that I made no scruple to tell him my whole story, viz., that I was a widow, that I had some jewels to dispose of, and also some money which I had a mind to send to England, and to follow there myself; but being but a woman, and having ...
— The Fortunate Mistress (Parts 1 and 2) • Daniel Defoe
... he spoke. "Oh, I just wish I'd known it was a Party!" she repeated. "I wish I'd known!" She glanced down at the plainness of her own attire and then ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... narrative we have thought proper to insert in the very words of the sufferer, as taken from his own mouth. The candid Reader will easily excuse the simplicity of its style, and the Plainness of its Expressions. It is the more like the man, and carries the greater evidence of the Honesty and Integrity of the Relator, viz. "An Account of the Sufferings of Richard Seller of Keinsey, a Fisherman, ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... simply and candidly. Did not Christ die for every soul of man? All theological subtleties aside, we joyfully believe that He did. The fact is stated over and over again in Scripture, with the utmost plainness; and it is assumed in a multitude of other passages. So clearly has this come to be recognized that the American Presbyterian Church formally adopted it, and put it in their "Brief Statement" some years ago. It is also proposed for acceptance in the creed of the united churches ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... good example and use equal plainness, Mr. Prynne. This wise man hath said that 'the simple believeth every word.' But if we should do likewise and believe every word that is told of you, we might say 'that Mr. Prynne was seduced by Sir Philip and ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... her, and got as lightly to her feet as if she were a wind-bowed flower tilting back to its perpendicular. Her father looked at her with as fond a delight as a lover could have felt in her fascination. She was, in fact, a youthful, feminine version of himself in her plainness; though the grace was all her own. Her complexion was not the leathery red of her father's, but a smooth and even white from cheek to throat. She let her loose cloak fall to the chair behind her, and showed ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... phrases, each with a special and almost a slang signification. Some international obscurity prevailed between me and the coloured gentleman at Council Bluffs; so that what I was asking, which seemed very natural to me, appeared to him a monstrous exigency. He refused, and that with the plainness of the West. This American manner of conducting matters of business is, at first, highly unpalatable to the European. When we approach a man in the way of his calling, and for those services by which he earns his bread, we consider him for the time being our ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was a pattern of plainness and simplicity. His furniture consisted of nothing fashionable or superfluous; and his table was equally marked by ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous
... near, Jesus increased His severity and plainness of speech. This parable, which was spoken very near the end of the protracted duel with the officials in the Temple, is transparent in its application, and hit its mark immediately. The rulers at once perceived that it was directed against them. The cap fitted too well not to be put on. But it ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... devoutly pious, and as "reliable as the sun, or the earth on its axis." They were unpolished and unceremonial, and he liked them all the more for that. He wrote to his sister in a vein of pleasantry, "They are wonderfully shy. But I admire their honest plainness of speech. About a year ago I invited two of them to dine with me; their answer was that they would if they could not do better. I suppose they did better, for I never saw them afterwards, and so had no opportunity of showing my miff if ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... would make his last request to the admirable heart of Iemon. Iwa is a plain girl. The end of time for man, and the carping comment of neighbours come to his ears, have opened the eyes of Matazaemon to the truth. Great has been the favour in disregarding this plainness and taking her to wife. Everything is in the hands of Iemon San. Consider her happiness and deign to use her well. Abstain if possible from taking a concubine. At all events conceal the fact from Iwa, if it be deigned to keep such company. ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... stockings and shoes, warmed his feet, and went off to bed; then the fool followed him; and finally the old man. He proceeded to make preparations for retiring, discoursing meanwhile with Panurgic plainness of speech on the ills to which old humanity is subject. We were a rare haul for him. He could commonly get none but ministers to talk to, though sometimes ten of them at once, and he was glad to meet ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Wheathedge the Calvary Presbyterian church was externally, to the passer-by, distinguished chiefly for the severe simplicity of its architecture, and the plainness, not to say the homeliness, of its surroundings. It is a long, narrow, wooden structure, as destitute of ornament as Squire Line's old fashioned barn. Its only approximation to architectural display is a square tower surmounted by four tooth-picks ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... ornamental fringed 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 a ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... lost all patience, and gave the Graf my opinion of his conduct in terms the plainness of which left nothing to be desired. I included him, his son, and the entire German people in one sweeping anathema. No Englishman, I said, would have been capable of either insulting an innocent lady, or of so ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... your own creating, my friend," answered Mrs. Bland with the plainness of speech warranted by the intimacy of their friendship; "and my advice is to come out of it as quickly ...
— After a Shadow, and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur
... stone-faced building, three lofty storeys high, was just now all the more imposing in appearance as it stood alone in an unfinished street-block, and as, opposite, hoardings still shut in all that had yet been raised of the great library, which would eventually overshadow it. The severe plainness of its long front, with the unbroken lines of windows, did not fail to impress the unused beholder, who had not for very long gone daily out and in; it suggested to him the earnest, unswerving efforts, imperative on his pursuit of the ideal; an ideal which, to ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... of Quakerism again on the subject of dress, that plainness and simplicity are required of those who profess the Christian character; that any deviation from these is unwarrantable, if it be made on the plea of conformity to the fashions of the world; that such deviation bespeaks ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... silk socks at a dollar an inch and wee slippers clasped with a simple emerald buckle. Therein, of course, the child only obeys the reigning fashion. Simplicity,—so I am informed by the last number of La Mode Parisienne,—is the dominant note of Parisian dress to-day,—simplicity, plainness, freedom from all display. A French lady wears in her hair at the Opera a single, simple tiara bound with a plain row of solitaire diamonds. It is so exquisitely simple in its outline that you can see the single diamonds sticking out from ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... said, and there came to me, hesitating, backward, abashed, a middle-aged woman, dressed with distressing plainness, when one thinks of the charming costumes to be seen on a Parisian boulevard. Her subdued manner was that of one to whom the world had been cruel. I rose, bowed profoundly, and placed a chair at her disposal, with the air I should have used if my caller had been a Royal Princess. I claim no credit ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... propositions? Let us examine this question a little. I must of necessity be brief in the limits to which I am here confined, and I must use the plainest language, for I am writing not for the school but for the general reader. Brevity and plainness of speech do not, however, necessarily imply superficiality, which, in truth, is not unfrequently veiled by a prolix ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... to speak with great plainness and directness upon this great matter and to avow my convictions with deep earnestness. I have tried to know what America is, what her people think, what they are, what they most cherish and hold dear. I hope that some of their finer passions ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... or the generalship of Grant. He was followed in the office of Chief Justice by another Ohioan of New England birth, who, like Chase, had passed all the years of his public life in our state. Morrison R. Waite, of Toledo, was perhaps even more Ohioan in those traits of plainness and simplicity in greatness which we like to claim for Ohio, only upon sober second thought to acknowledge that they are ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... should learn to put aside 395 Her trappings here, should strip them off abashed Before antiquity and stedfast truth And strong book-mindedness; and over all A healthy sound simplicity should reign, A seemly plainness, name it what you will, 400 Republican or pious. If these thoughts Are a gratuitous emblazonry That mocks the recreant age we live in, then Be Folly and False-seeming free to affect Whatever formal gait of discipline 405 Shall raise them highest in their own esteem— ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... dusk. Stella had never ridden to hounds. She had done little riding, indeed, since the days at the advanced Roman Convent when the girls went out on the Campagna in a flock, in charge of a discreet riding master, of unimpeachable age and plainness. ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... me—how abject that ever I be in your eyes—a profitable member within the same. Yea, Madam, to me it appertains no less to forewarn of such things as may hurt it, if I foresee them, than it does to any of the nobility; for both my vocation and conscience craves plainness of me. And therefore, Madam, to yourself I say that which I speak in public place: whensoever that the nobility of this realm shall consent that ye be subject to an unfaithful husband, they do as much as in them lieth to renounce ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... he passed on into the palace. Ample folding-doors stood open to receive him. The passage into which he first entered was high, but somewhat narrow; red tiling formed the floor, and the walls were tinted to correspond. Yet this plainness was a warning of ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... dress'd, What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd; Something, whose truth convinc'd at sight we find, That gives us back the image of our mind. 300 As shades more sweetly recommend the light, So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit. For works may have more wit than does 'em good, As bodies ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... to remain much longer unchallenged. The King's vagrant fancy was already turning to her younger sister, Marie, whose childish plainness had now ripened to a beauty more dazzling than her own—the witchery of large and brilliant black eyes, a complexion of pure olive, luxuriant, jet-black hair, a figure of singular suppleness and grace, and a sprightliness of wit and a gaiete de coeur which the Comtesse ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... order to frustrate their attainment of what they have an undoubted right to expect. We are under infinite obligations to our constituents, who have raised us to so distinguished a trust, and have imparted such a degree of sanctity to common characters. We ought to walk before them with purity, plainness, and integrity of heart,—with filial love, and not with slavish fear, which is always a low and tricking thing. For my own part, in what I have meditated upon that subject, I cannot, indeed, take upon me to say I have the honor to follow the sense of the people. The truth ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... introduction. Maggie mumbled some reply; she later could not remember what it was. Indeed she never had met such a woman: so finished, so gracious, so unaffected, with a sparkle of humor in her brown eyes; and the rich plainness of her white linen frock made Maggie conscious that her own supposed simplicity was cheap and ostentatious. If Miss Sherwood had received her with hostility, doubt, or even chilled civility, the situation would have been easier; the aroused Maggie would then have made use ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... were in the charge of muscular, aggressive dogs, that interpreted their duty too largely, and made themselves a nuisance. At intervals were patches of maize or pumpkins, or a bit of vineyard with a house hard by facing the road—a low ground-floor house solidly built, but its plainness unrelieved by the grace of a vine-trellis or a climbing flower. By-and-by the land became somewhat hilly, and the pasturage changed gradually to open wood and heath, where the gorse was already ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... remarks had fallen on an unheeding ear, there were always young men enough, in a different rank from her own, who were willing to compliment the pretty weaver's daughter as they met her in the streets. Besides, trust a girl of sixteen for knowing it well if she is pretty; concerning her plainness she may be ignorant. So with this consciousness she had early determined that her beauty should make her a lady; the rank she coveted the more for her father's abuse; the rank to which she firmly believed her lost aunt Esther had arrived. ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... 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, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... of the table to a shameful excess; and that the Queen was draining the treasury of the State in order to satisfy the most unbridled luxury. They almost all determined to see Petit Trianon. The extreme plainness of the retreat in question not answering the ideas they had formed, some of them insisted upon seeing the very smallest closets, saying that the richly furnished apartments were concealed from them. They ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... sat in silent astonishment at the manners of his fellow-travellers, which far exceeded the notions he had preconceived of English plainness and rusticity. He found himself a monument of that disregard and contempt which a stranger never fails to meet with from the inhabitants of this island; and saw, with surprise, an agreeable young creature sit as ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... of free and unrestricted vivisection. Its plainness of speech did not deter very distinguished physiologists and others from signing it as the expression of their views. One can hardly doubt that it represents the view of the physiological laboratory at the present day. Sixty years ago this view of vivisection would have found but ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... was used by the last Darius to denote that his able Greek general Memnon, who had offended him by his plainness of speech, was doomed to death. As he was being led away, Memnon exclaimed, in allusion to Alexander, who was then fast drawing near: "Thy remorse will soon prove my worth; my avenger is not far off." Droysen, Alex. d. Grosse, Diod. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... true, it may be partly due to the greater freedom of an age when well-bred men and refined women spoke their minds with an uncompromising plainness which would now be voted intolerable. I have said that the old Royal Dukes were distinguished by the racy vigour of their conversation; and the Duke of Cumberland, afterwards King Ernest of Hanover, was held to excel all his brothers in this respect. I was told by the late ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... the inner spirit of the herd. They would inevitably come to practise that sane asceticism, not incompatible with gaiety of heart, which consists in concentration on the real, and quiet avoidance of the attractive sham. Plainness and simplicity do help the spiritual life, and these are more easy and wholesome when practised in common than when they are displayed by individuals in defiance of the social order that surrounds them. The differences of temperament and of spiritual level in the group members ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... her he was not. It was just the driver of the stagecoach, returned to see what had become of her. He had feared to find her stricken down in the road, and when he saw her clinging alone and in a maddened way to this tree, he made no bones of speaking to her with all necessary plainness. ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... before the monarch's chair, And stood with rustic plainness there, And little reverence made: Nor head, nor body, bowed nor bent, But on the desk his arm he leant, And words like these he said, In a low voice—but never tone So thrilled through vein, and nerve, and bone:- 'My mother sent me ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... earliest training was in agricultural science, and the welfare of the Japanese countryside is near his heart. If he be a Carlyle, as his fibre and resolution, downright way of writing and speaking, hortatory gift, humour, plainness of life and dislike of officials, no less than his cast of countenance, his soft hat and long gaberdine-like coat have suggested, he is a Carlyle who is content to stay both in body and mind at Ecclefechan. He ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... visualize her at once I may say that Effie looked twenty-four—from the rear (all women do in these days of girlish simplicity in hats and tailor-mades); her skirts never sagged, her shirtwaists were marvels of plainness and fit, and her switch had cost her sixteen dollars, wholesale (a lady friend in the business). Oh, there was nothing tragic about Effie. She had a plump, assured style, a keen blue eye, a gift of repartee, and a way of doing her hair so that the gray ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... Pendleton was applauded by his audience; and he returned to his place in the House of Representatives at Washington prepared to give expression to his views with the same plainness and boldness which marked the utterances of ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... politics—the religion of political life—is the subject to which he is unequivocally directed; and of which it is my purpose to treat, at such length only as the limits of the occasion will allow, but with such plainness of speech as should alone be used before freemen by one as free as they when ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett
... and Sir Robin, springing on Ajax's back, trotted him up and down for Mary's inspection. He had a good seat in the saddle, and he looked his best on horseback. To be sure, Mary had not discovered that Sir Robin was plain, his mother's plainness militating in him against what share of beauty he might have inherited from his father. There was something so exhilarating to Mary in the afternoon's experience, after its beginning so badly, that she forgot ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... Fisk are also rich in the information they contain. He was able to preach in both the Italian and Modern Greek. Mr. King's labors were chiefly in the Arabic language, in which he preached the Gospel with the utmost plainness. Yet he appears to have secured in a remarkable degree the good-will of the people. He thus describes the scene connected with his departure from Deir el-Kamr, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... against the wall at the end of the room, and retire from it a greater or less distance according as you have drawn the figures larger or smaller. You will come to a point where, though you can see both the spots with perfect plainness, you cannot tell which is the square and which ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... tiers of columned galleries, was built in 1204, the choir in 1308, and the triforium in 1400. The sculptures of the portico are subjects from the life of St. Martin. Over the door on the left is a Descent from the Cross, by Nicolo di Pisa, 1233. Loftiness and simplicity, verging on plainness, characterise the interior of this church, as well as those of all the others in Lucca, with the exception of San Romano, which is profusely decorated. The windows are small and filled with modern glass, excepting the three at the eastern end, which are by P.Ugolino. All the pictures are covered, ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... and the Friends, each with their different costume of plainness and self-denial, and other noble-hearted women of no particular outward order, but kindred in spirit, have shown to womanhood, on the battle-field and in the hospital, a more excellent way,—a beauty and nobility before which all the common ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... whatsoever is wrong, in Finance or otherwise, will be righted,—as far as possible. Is it not as if Wisdom herself were henceforth to have seat and voice in the Council of Kings? Turgot has taken office with the noblest plainness of speech to that effect; been listened to with the noblest royal trustfulness. (Turgot's Letter: Condorcet, Vie de Turgot (Oeuvres de Condorcet, t. v.), p. 67. The date is 24th August, 1774.) It is true, as King Louis objects, "They say he never goes to mass;" ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... contrast than the two presented could not be imagined: the one tall, slender, dignified, with regular features and clear complexion; and the other short, square-set, with snub-nose and freckled skin, a face only redeemed from plainness by its merry, twinkling eyes and good-humoured mouth, which was always broadening into ...
— Sarah's School Friend • May Baldwin
... consent to be economical. The little Ida must have everything she wanted. Timothy brought home nearly every day some little delicacy for her, which none of the rest thought of sharing. While Mrs. Harding, far enough from vanity, always dressed with extreme plainness, Ida's attire was always of good material and ...
— Jack's Ward • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... objected, it is not merely a matter of spiritual size. There is something more than plainness lacking in the symbolism of machinery. "The symbolism of machinery is lacking in fitness. It is not poetic." "A thing can only be said to be poetic in proportion as its form expresses its nature." Mechanical ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... very quiet, unobtrusive manners. La P. has the misfortune to be plain; her features are irregular, her complexion of a sickly paleness, and though her eyes are large and dark, they appeared totally devoid of lustre and expression. Her plainness, the bad taste of her dress, her awkward figure, and her timid and embarrassed deportment, all furnished matter of amusement and observation to some young people, (English of course,) whose propensities ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... experienced in their craft of merchandise, but who require no particular description. There was an elderly clergyman also, in his gown and cassock, a decent venerable man, partaking in his manners of the plainness of the citizens amongst whom ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... increases, as the months roll by. The call for men to join our fighting forces, which is our primary need, has been and is being nobly responded to here at home and throughout the empire. That call, we say with all plainness and directness, was never more urgent or more imperious than today. For this is a war not only of men but of material. To take only one illustration, the expenditure upon ammunition on both sides has been on a scale and at a rate which is not only without ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... introduction into a region which should never be approached by the guileless and the pure." (page 61) One or two individuals (Roman Catholic) soon formed a close intimacy with me, and discoursed with a freedom and plainness I had never, before encountered. My acquaintances, however, had been brought up in convents, or familiar with them for years, and I could not gainsay ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... composed is freedom from whim, flightiness, perverseness; patient fidelity to 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 the spirits of the traveller in Northern Germany, and making ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... Parliament, in one of those sudden fits of reaction with which they were sometimes seized from their love of popularity, issued a decree explanatory of their decision on the 24th of September. "The real intentions of the court," said the decree, "have been distorted in spite of their plainness. The number of deputies of each order is not determined by any law, by any invariable usage, and it depends upon the king's wisdom to adjudge what reason, liberty, justice, and the general wish may indicate." The Parliament ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... table—two feet by sixteen inches—was in all respects worthy of the chairs. At one end of the hut there was a bed-place, big enough for two; it was variously termed a crib, a shelf, a tumble-in, and a bunk. Its owner called it a "snoosery." This was a model of plainness and comfort. It was a mere shell about two and a half feet broad, projecting from the wall, to which it was attached on one side, the other side being supported by two wooden legs a foot high. A plank at the side, and another at the foot, in conjunction with the ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... fellow-labourers, he had for a short time taken some interest in observing a young woman, who had lately joined them. There was nothing remarkable about her, except what at first sight seemed a remarkable plainness. A slight scar over one of her rather prominent eyebrows, increased this impression of plainness. But the first day had not passed, before he began to see that there was something not altogether common in those ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... small octagonal room, designed in one of the towers that looked out over the sea; panelled in painted wood and furnished with extreme plainness. On one side a door opened upon the three little parlours that were used when the party was small; at the back a lobby led into the old hall itself; on the third side was the door used by ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... "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 ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... table, but that Brother Marshman's table far exceeded his.' I have also often been at Lord Hastings's table (I mean his private table), and I do therefore most positively deny the truth of the assertion; though I confess there is much domestic plainness at the table of the Governor-General of India (though nothing of meanness; on the contrary, everything is marked with a dignified simplicity). I suspect the informant never was at Lord Hastings's table, or he could have not been guilty of such misrepresentation. Lord Hastings's ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... bearing were directly the reverse of soldierlike, his tawdry uniform of green and gold, with massive epaulets and a profusion of lace, were no less absurd in our eyes, accustomed as we were to the almost puritan plainness of military costume. His rank, too, seemed as undefined as his information; for while he called himself "General," his companions as often addressed him by the title of "Captain." Upon some points his counsels, indeed, alarmed ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... yielding and yet withdrawing which is characteristic of woman and man never fully understands, plunged into a new topic. Frightened at the plainness of her revelation and almost seeming to divine his purpose, with her brightest talk she ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... using a few pet words which they love, not because they are a bit better than the synonyms used by other people, but just because other people don't use them, whereby they serve as a sort of passwords or Masonic signs among the initiated. Just now plainness is all the fashion. Ladies who are not in society talk of "dresses" and "gentlemen," and grammatically contract "are not" into "aren't;" so the ladies of the Upper Ten say "gowns" and "men" and "ain't" for distinction's sake. And ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... long words as if by an incantation. They do not call hunger "economic pressure"; they call it hunger. They do not call rich men "examples of capitalistic concentration," they call them rich men. And this note of plainness and of something nobly prosaic is as characteristic of Gorky, in some ways the most modern, and sophisticated of Russian authors, as it is of Tolstoy or any of the Tolstoyan type of mind. The very title of this story strike the note of this sudden and simple ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... and took them away. Then they kissed each other, and Nora went to look after the tea. She was a slim, pale-faced school-girl, with yellow-brown eyes, and yellow-brown hair, not as yet very attractive in looks, but her mother was convinced that it was only the plainness of the cygnet, and that the swan was only a few years off. Nora, who at seventeen had no illusions, was grateful to her mother for the belief but did not share it ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... face as well as the most dignified and beautiful face among them is that of the seated figure which used to be known as that of Agrippina but which, known now as that of a Roman matron, does not relieve the imperial average of plainness. The rest could rival the average American society woman only in the prevailing modernity of their expression; imperial Rome was very modern, as we all know, and nothing in our own time could be more up to date than the lives and looks of its ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... such as they used to build in Boston. No one of the family was in, and Oscar and Harry went up at once to the room of the former, which they were to share together. It was luxuriously furnished, so Harry thought, but then our hero had been always accustomed to the plainness of a ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... room to get herself in readiness for the journey she insisted upon taking. Wilford was glad she was going, as her presence at Silverton would relieve him of the awkward embarrassment he always felt when there; and magnanimously forgiving her for the plainness of her speech, he was the most attentive of brothers until Silverton was reached and he found Dr. Grant waiting for him. Something in his face, as he came forward to meet them, startled both Wilford and Bell, the latter ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... before, a lady so much advantaged by her residence in that fantastic nation" (for she loves not the French) "who brought home with her nothing of their affectation!"—She says, that the French politeness, and the English frankness and plainness of heart, appear happily blended in all we say and do. And she makes me a thousand compliments upon Lord and Lady Davers's account, who, she would fain persuade me, owe a great deal of improvement (my lord ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... hear the gentlemen who come to my shop say that it is not to be named to ears polite; and I am sure your ears are very polite.' He said this with the most offensive laugh, and I turned upon him and answered him, without mincing matters, with a plainness of speech which startled myself, but did not seem to move him, for he only laughed again. 'Are you not afraid,' I said, 'that I will leave your shop and ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... it may be as well to set down, beyond possibility of misapprehension, my belief that in Esther Waters we have the most artistic, the most complete, and the most inevitable work of fiction that has been written in England for at least two years. Its plainness of speech may offend many. It may not be a favorite in the circulating libraries or on the bookstalls. But I shall be surprised if it fails of the place I predict for it in the esteem of those who know the true aims of fiction and respect the conscientious ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... diamonds, will but hurt sore eyes instead of curing them; and an aching head will be no more eased by wearing a crown, than a common night-cap." In a far better style, and more accordant with his own humour of plainness, are the concluding sentences of his "Discourse upon Poetry." Temple took a part in the controversy about the ancient and the modern learning; and, with that partiality so natural and so graceful in an old man, whose state engagements ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... just contrived to be pleasant to the eye of women, who, in my observation, have, the most sensible of them, as great a contempt for the mere fop as they have for the sloven. It took, indeed, trimness of apparel to make up for the plainness of his face. Not that he was ugly or harsh-favoured,—he was too genial for either; he was simply well-favoured enough to pass in a fair, as the saying goes, which is a midway between Apollo and plain Donald But what with ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... assembled to the number of twelve; and in the audience that was given them, the King was placed upon an elevated throne, in his habits of ceremony. Damake was seated lower, opposite to him, leaning upon a sofa, dressed with the greatest plainness, but shining with every charm of youth and every gift of nature, surrounded by the twelve sages, venerable by their extreme age and their flowing beards, leaning upon a large table, round which they and she were seated. The ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... is more entertaining than Colburne, as immoral people are apt to be to those who suffer nothing from them. "His contrasts of slanginess and gentility, his mingled audacity and insouciance of character, and all the picturesque ins and outs of his moral architecture, so different from the severe plainness of the spiritual temples common in New Boston," do take the eye of peace-bred Northerners, though never their sympathy. Throughout, we admire, as the author intends, Carter's thorough and enthusiastic soldiership, and we perceive ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... No elaborate carving, or beadwork should be permitted on the outside work of a country house at all; and only a sufficient quantity of ornamental tracery of any kind, to break the monotony of a plainness that would otherwise give it a formal, or uncouth expression, and relieve it of what some would consider a pasteboard look. A farm house, in fact, of any degree, either cheap or expensive, should wear the same appearance as a well-dressed person of either sex; ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... sentimentality. The members of the trio fall on each other's necks with unpleasant frequency and fervor. But the picture of that home itself, with its well-ordered housekeeping, its liberality and its plainness, is interesting and attractive. "Since the masters of this house have taken it for their dwelling, they have turned to their use all that served only for ornament; it is no longer a house made to be seen, but to be lived in. They have built up ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... competition among women for the opportunity of marriage. To realize how helpless were women in your day, to assume toward men an attitude of physical, mental, or moral dignity and independence, it is enough to remember their terrible disadvantage in what your contemporaries called with brutal plainness the ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... elegance of figure, and with a face the outlines of which were beautiful, while its expression of discontent, accentuated by lines of worry, made its owner distinctly unattractive. She was clothed in all the glory of richly exaggerated plainness and in the latest fashion for morning walking dress. Her daughter, simply the beautiful mother over again without the disagreeable expression, though her young face was clouded by grief and concern, was the other caller. Joseph announced the names of the fair interlopers, ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... this, and was struck with the intelligence of the speaker, who, notwithstanding his plainness and his remarks about foreigners, seemed still to have the tastes and delicate perceptions of the educated man. He asked several questions as to the American judiciary, and informed the Judge that the works of some of the American ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... in your Letter you mention a Circumstance in Regard to my dress. I hope it did not Arise from your hearing I was too Extravagant that way, which I think they cant Tax me with. At same time I am not Remarkable for the Plainness of my Dress, upon proper Occasions I dress as Genteel as anyone, and cant say I am without Lace.... I find money some way or other goes very fast, but I think I can Reflect it has been spent with Satisfaction, and to my ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... an ordinary servant can arrange. In part, he was interested in the talk of his son and daughter, who always looked well. The vanity of Mrs. Hurstwood caused her to keep her person rather showily arrayed, but to Hurstwood this was much better than plainness. There was no love lost between them. There was no great feeling of dissatisfaction. Her opinion on any subject was not startling. They did not talk enough together to come to the argument of any one point. In the accepted and ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... features, swept over the girl's face, and, picking up Elizabeth's hand, she kissed it softly again and again. "I won't kiss her face," she thought, "I am so homely!" but from that day she slipped into the queenly place she had a right to occupy, and it was not long before every one forgot her plainness. ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... need not enlarge upon this subject, I have told you my thoughts of it again and again with faithfulness. It seems the plainness of my language has hurt the delicate feelings of some, and the faithfulness I have used has excited the censure and ill-will of others. But why am I blamed, if I have only affirmed and proved from the scriptures, ...
— An Address to the Inhabitants of the Colonies, Established in New South Wales and Norfolk Island. • Richard Johnson
... round on their faces. I had a strange feeling of helplessness, and seemed to be able to do nothing but throw the truth at them in blunt plainness. Let them make what they could of it, ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... Plainness and Sincerity, that generous Integrity of Nature, and Honesty of Disposition, which always argues true Greatness of Mind, and is usually accompanied with undaunted Courage and Resolution, is in a great ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... breeds pride, pride breedeth discontent: Black discontent, thou urgest to revenge: Revenge opes not her ears to poor men's prayers. That dolt destruction is she without doubt, That hales her forth and feedeth her with nought. Simplicity and plainness, you I love! Hence, double diligence, thou mean'st deceit: Those that now serpent-like creep on the ground, And seem to eat the dust, they crouch so low— If they be disappointed of their prey, Most traitorously will trace their nails and sting. Yea, such as, like[98] the lapwing, build their ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... feelings towards you all, above described, we may and ought to tell you, and that with the greatest plainness, of anything that we deem improper in any part of your conduct, either in a civil, social, or religious view. This we feel it our duty to do and shall continue to do as long as we live; and it will ever ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... of worship belonging to the Quakers in this Province. There are however, a few of these primitive worshippers scattered through the country, who joining sincerity and honesty with plainness, are ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... Bridge. This book has freshness and plainness combined with thoroughness, and must commend itself to young students and ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... go to her help, and together they spread the table, and apologized for the disparity between the cups and the plainness ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... he begged to be allowed to speak to Laurentia, they found some excuse for refusing him the opportunity of so doing, until they had talked to her themselves, and brought up every argument and fact in their power to convince her—a plain girl, and conscious of her plainness—that Mr. Mark Gibson had never thought of her in the way of marriage till after her father's accession to his fortune; and that it was the estate—not the young lady—that he was in love with. I suppose it will never be known in this world how far this supposition ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... temptation. Sweet innocents! They have my reverence, if not my love. How would they be affronted, if I were to say pity!—I think only of my two good aunts, at the present writing. Miss Clements, you know, is a youngish woman; and I respect her much. One would not jest upon the unsightliness of person, or plainness of feature: but think you she will not be one of those, who twenty years hence may put in a boast of ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... a more usual Venetian basis. I was willing to pay the venerable woman with whom my pecuniary dealings were such a discord twice as much as any other padrona di casa would have asked, but I was not willing to pay her twenty times as much. I told her so plainly, and my plainness appeared to have some success, for she exclaimed, "Very good; you have done what I ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... ware; It is a thing to walk with, hand in hand, Through the everydayness of this workday world, Baring its tender feet to every flint, Yet letting not one heart-beat go astray From Beauty's law of plainness and content; A simple, fireside thing, whose quiet smile Can warm earth's poorest hovel to a home; Which, when our autumn cometh, as it must, And life in the chill wind shivers bare and leafless, Shall still be blest with Indian-summer youth In bleak November, and, with thankful ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the same in all, and which, according to every one's account, signified the same thing, we ventured to record, with a very few others, which, from the simplicity of the subject, and the ease of expressing our question with plainness and precision by a sign, have ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... the operation might be of service in giving vent to any blood that might be extravasated, either above or below the dura mater. The lady and her son were clear for trying the experiment; and Grieve was dismissed with some marks of contempt, which, perhaps, he owed to the plainness of his appearance. He seemed to be about the middle age, wore his own black hair without any sort of dressing; by his garb, one would have taken him for a quaker, but he had none of the stiffness of that sect, on the contrary he was very submissive, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... each other. The fact is, I was much entertained by contrasting in my own mind, the open manner of the kind-hearted Joshua Geddes, with the abrupt, dark, and lofty demeanour of my entertainer on the preceding evening. Both were blunt and unceremonious; but the plainness of the Quaker had the character of devotional simplicity, and was mingled with the more real kindness, as if honest Joshua was desirous of atoning, by his sincerity, for the lack of external courtesy. On the contrary, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... experienced can tell 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, ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... 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 ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
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