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More "Plainness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an impatient rudeness, ill in harmony with the urbanity for which he was usually distinguished,—"sir, your person is strange to me, and your name I did not hear; but, at all events, I am not now at leisure to attend to you. Excuse my plainness." ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... exposed in extreme decollete style, as if to aid the unsuccessful elongation of nature. Her sallow complexion was dark, almost bistre, and the strongly marked irregular features were only redeemed from positive plainness by the large fiery black eyes, whose beauty was somewhat marred by the intrusive boldness of their expression. Bowing to some one opposite, her very full lips parted smilingly over a set of sound strong teeth, rather uneven in outline, and of the yellowish cast often observed in persons of ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... till you came. We are all plain people here. If any of us forget our plainness there are plenty who are glad enough to remind us ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... will go on) "that they are not the men they seem. They are merely men in a hurry. They want it understood that they have merely hurried so fast and hurried so long that they now wake up at last only to see, see with this terrific plainness what it really is that has been happening to them all their lives, viz.: for forty, fifty, or sixty years they have merely forgot who they were and overlooked ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... no places 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, ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... dense crowd of the poor on whom the fragments of the feast were afterwards to be bestowed, was followed by the entrance of two strangers, for whom the officers appointed to marshal the entertainment made room at the foot of one of the tables. Both these new-comers were clad with extreme plainness; one in a dress, though not quite monastic, that of an ecclesiastic of low degree; the other in a long grey mantle and loose gonna, the train of which last was tucked into a broad leathern belt, leaving bare the leggings, which ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... lounged up the path, lifting his head to nod in patronising fashion to his adorers. He was no Apollo of beauty, no Samson of strength, but just an ordinary-looking young man in an ordinary grey suit, with ordinary irregular features redeemed from plainness by an expression of quizzical good humour; yet each of the eight beholders gave a gasp of adoration as she beheld him. His mother's eyes swam with tears as she embraced her boy; Maud felt a ray of pure, unselfish happiness; even Lilias overlooked the fact that his collar was of an unfashionable ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... 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 in his conversation, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... back." In her capacity of public stenographer at the Burke Hotel, it was Pearlie's duty to take letters dictated by traveling men and beginning: "Yours of the 10th at hand. In reply would say . . ." or: "Enclosed please find, etc." As clinching proof of her plainness it may be stated that none of the traveling men, not even Max Baum, who was so fresh that the girl at the cigar counter actually had to squelch him, ever called Pearlie "baby doll," or tried to make a date with her. Not that Pearlie would ever have allowed ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... black veil and black mantle, but it was impossible to mistake her figure and her walk; and by her side was a short stout form, which he recognised as that of Monna Brigida, in spite of the unusual plainness of her attire. Romola had not been bred up to devotional observances, and the occasions on which she took the air elsewhere than under the loggia on the roof of the house, were so rare and so much dwelt on beforehand, ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... were, a thing which once was or still is of vital importance in the daily life of humans. The nouveaux-riches of the ancient and the modern world cannot find it easy to separate themselves from their traditions nor are they wont to put up with their plainness, hence the fancy trimmings. The development of the American pie is a curious analogy in this respect. We see in this the intricate working of human culture, its eternal strife for perfection. And perfection is synonymous with decay. The fare of the Carthusian monks, professed, stern vegetarians, ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... turned into that walk renowned for the beauty of its flowers and the plainness of the people who frequent it, and sat down on a bench. It was near the luncheon-hour; nursemaids, dogs, perambulators, old gentlemen—all were hurrying a little toward their food. They glanced with critical surprise ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... still of black, but it had suffered some change O'Neill did not trouble to define. He saw that it no longer had the formal plainness of the gown she had worn earlier. It achieved an effect. But the main change was in the woman herself. It was impossible to think of her and her years in the same breath. She had cast the long restraint from her completely; all her sad days of quiet were obliterated. ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... repentance. On Sunday I took the pulpit in the morning, and preached from First Kings, nineteenth, on the fire, the earthquake, and the voice, distinguishing the true spiritual power, and referring with such plainness as I dared to recent events in Falesá. The effect produced was great, and it was much increased when Namu rose in his turn and confessed that he had been wanting in faith and conduct, and was convinced of sin. So far, ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... believe no longer in an Incarnation and Resurrection,' he said slowly, but with a resolute plainness. 'Christ is risen in our hearts, in the Christian life of charity. Miracle is a natural product of human feeling and imagination; and God was in Jesus—pre-eminently, as He is in all great souls, but not otherwise—not otherwise in kind than He ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... more accomplished correspondent (there is nothing like disparagement in this comparison) is widely shared, as we have the best reason to know, by our readers on both sides of the Atlantic: 'JOHN WATERS! There is a drab-coated plainness about the name, which is at the same time liquid and musical; not more liquid and musical, howbeit, than those charming commentaries of his on every variety of quaint topic; full of an amiable grace, tinged with the most delicate hue of a fine humor; a refined ore drawn from no ordinary mine ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... shrugging his shoulders, "was only yesterday singing the praises of your uncultured plainness of speech; but to-day it is your pleasure to speak in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... somehow never had she seemed to 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 ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... Manners of the most remote Ages of the World, we discover human Nature in her Simplicity; and the more we come downwards towards our own Times, may observe her hiding herself in Artifices and Refinements, Polished insensibly out of her Original Plainness, and at length entirely lost under Form and Ceremony, and (what we call) good Breeding. Read the Accounts of Men and Women as they are given us by the most ancient Writers, both Sacred and Prophane, and you would think you were reading the History ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... nooks of their Alpine solitudes. With them there is no need of imaginative expression; the trouble of thought is useless; their words are the transparent revelation of their beliefs. The calm brought to the hyper-civilized spirit by this plainness and directness of Nature is absolutely indescribable; and when I came to reflect on the profoundness of mental quietude—I might say of consolation—that I had attained to during my wanderings, I could not help recognizing what a cruel, fatal part is played in the lives ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... carried out in all the teachings of the New Testament, with an emphasis and a plainness which no candid and unprejudiced mind can fail to understand. Jesus Christ has incorporated it into his sermon on the mount in many particulars, wherein he insists upon our social duties, while he teaches ...
— The Religious Duty of Obedience to Law • Ichabod S. Spencer
... Study plainness of language, always preferring the simpler word. 2. Shortness of sentences. 3. Distinctness of articulation. 4. Test and question your own arguments beforehand, not waiting for critic or opponent. 5. Seek a thorough digestion of, and familiarity with, your subject, and ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... A plainness of speech, amounting in some places to coarseness, and a deeply religious tone, are to many modern readers the most curious features of the book. A just estimate of it could not be formed if these two facts were overlooked. A century ago men and women were much more straightforward ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... as women of the lower class. The most touching 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 ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... juste milieu between these extremes that our prophetical speculators wrecked themselves. Men always had it to say that their prophecies had been either too plain or too obscure; or, if very plain, and yet as plainly written before the event, that their very plainness had insured their own accomplishment by prompting to the very actions and conduct they so ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... continued individual existence. But mixed with texts of this class there are others in which the final absolute identification of the individual Self with the universal Self is indicated in terms of unmistakable plainness. 'He who knows Brahman and becomes Brahman;' 'he who knows Brahman becomes all this;' 'as the flowing rivers disappear in the sea losing their name and form, thus a wise man goes to the divine person.' And if we look to the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... to her mind again in the evening, when Jack had gone home and she was sitting in her own room. She wheeled her chair around and took a steady look at herself in the mirror. A woman may never admit extreme plainness of feature, and she may deprecate her own fairness, if she be possessed of fairness, but she seldom has any illusions about one or the other. She knows. Hazel Weir knew that she was far above the average in point of looks. If she had never taken stock of herself before, the reflection ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the physicist, the same power of reproduction which we encountered when we were dealing with nerve substance, but under such far more complicated conditions. And what is known thus certainly from muscle substance holds good with greater or less plainness for all our organs. More especially may we note the fact, that after increased use, alternated with times of repose, there accrues to the organ in all animal economy an increased power of execution with an increased power of assimilation ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... rhetoricians: and as I said at the beginning, I cannot expect to get rid of such a mass of calumny all in a moment. And this, O men of Athens, is the truth and the whole truth; I have concealed nothing, I have dissembled nothing. And yet, I know that my plainness of speech makes them hate me, and what is their hatred but a proof that I am speaking the truth?—Hence has arisen the prejudice against me; and this is the reason of it, as you will find out either in this or in ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... of tears from her cheeks, but her eyes were red and swollen. The cheap mirror exaggerated her plainness, while memory pitilessly emphasised the beauty of the other woman. As she dressed, the thought came to her that, no matter what happened, she could still go on loving him, that she might always give, whether or not she received anything ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... became an author for this once, and what you may discover that I lack in literary ability, let me trust you will find compensated for in the plainness and simplicity of the facts, incidents and reminiscences that I relate. If not the manner, at least the matter ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... intensely, vitally alive. Her tiny feet skimmed the ground, her tiny head reared itself jauntily on the slender neck, the brilliance of her smile, the embracing kindliness of her glance more than compensated for the plainness of her features. Like most people who made the acquaintance of Pixie O'Shaughnessy, Stephen Glynn was already beginning to fall under her spell and marvel at the blindness of his first impression. She was not plain; she was not insignificant; ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... old Camden, in his Remains, relates a story of a trick played off on a citizen, which I give in the plainness of his own venerable style. Sir Philip Calthrop purged John Drakes, the shoemaker of Norwich, in the time of King Henry VIII. of the proud humour which our people have to be of the gentlemen's cut. This knight bought on a time as ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... under such circumstances, my inevitable duty to speak of the existing conditions of Art with plainness enough to guard the youths whose judgments I am entrusted to form, from being misled, either by their own naturally vivid interest in what represents, however unworthily, the scenes and persons of their own day, or by the cunningly devised, and, without doubt, powerful allurements ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... 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 of the Most High, whom ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... hope; she could wish to be better; she could admire good people; she could trust in God her Saviour. And now the loving God-made human heart in her was going into a new school that it might begin a fresh beautiful growth. She was old, I have said, and plain; but now her old age and plainness were about to vanish, and all that had made her youth attractive to young Tomkins was about to return to her, only rendered tenfold more beautiful by the growth of fifty years of learning according to her ability. God has such patience in working us into ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... smooth-shaven face and fair hair made him look younger than his years. It was a commonplace countenance, shrewd and intelligent enough, but not very attractive. There was a certain honesty in his eyes, however, which redeemed the plainness of his ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... to attend a mass-meeting at Springfield, "of unconditional Union men." The letter answered many objections urged against the President on account of the conduct of the war, his Emancipation Proclamation, and his purpose to enlist colored men as soldiers. For perspicuity, terseness, plainness, and conclusiveness of argument this letter stands among the best of all President Lincoln's writings. It came at an opportune time, and it did much to silence the caviler, to satisfy the doubter, and to reconcile honest people who sincerely desired the complete restoration ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... 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 ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... scarce be termed handsome, expressed sense and acuteness; he bore, in his aspect, that ease and composure of manner, equally void of awkwardness and affectation, which is said emphatically to mark the gentleman; and, although neither the plainness of his dress, nor the total want of the usual attendants, allowed Meg to suppose him a wealthy man, she had little doubt that he was above the rank of her lodgers in general. Amidst these observations, and while she was in the course of making them, the good landlady ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... highly 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 fine regular face, with a firm ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... be very distinct; place your paper 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 ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... anything of this story except your friend, Mr. Gouger. I know it is bold, sometimes I think it is brazen. I can conceive that there are excellent people who would say it never should have been written. To my mind, the moral I have drawn more than justifies the plainness of my speech. You can tell better than I where I have overstepped the proper bounds, if there be such places. You are, of course, a man ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... depended upon," Rose said, enigmatically. She was five years older than her sister, and had drawn the inference of her own plainness, comparatively, ever since Edith ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... the matter 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 ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... cornices or sculptured friezes on the external walls of their buildings; and even then its employment suggested rather that of a band of embroidery carefully disposed on some garment to relieve the plainness of the material. Crude brick, burnt brick, enamelled brick, but always and everywhere brick was the principal element in their construction. The soil of the marshes or of the plains, separated from the pebbles and foreign substances which it contained, mixed with grass or chopped ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... but along the walls are scrolls bearing in golden letters the name of the Prophet and the first four Caliphs, or a chapter of the Koran, the Arabic script being especially suitable for this kind of ornamental writing. [325] The severe plainness of the interior of a mosque demonstrates the strict monotheism of Islam, and is in contrast to the temples and shrines of most other religions. The courtyard of a mosque is often used as a place of resort, and travellers ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... an evening, however, when concealment is no longer possible, that the native taste bursts forth, the Anglo-Saxon standing declared in all her plainness. Strong is the contrast here, where they are placed side by side with all that Europe holds of elegant, and well-dressed Frenchwomen, whether of the "world" or the "half-world," are invariably marvels of fitness and freshness, the simplest materials being converted by ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... paths be strewed with flowers! It would have been truly to be lamented, that melancholy should have preyed upon a person so young and so distinguished by fortune, or that you should have sighed amidst all the magnificence of Naples for the uncultivated plainness of Palermo. So long as I reside here, your absence will constantly make me feel an uneasy void, but it is my earnest wish that not a particle of that uneasiness may reach ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... hath its food served up in earthen 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 ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... soldier, careful and judicious in his plans, patient and intrepid in their execution. His body was covered with the scars of his battles, till the natural plainness of his person was converted almost into deformity. He must not be judged by his closing campaign, when, depressed by disease, he yielded to the superior genius of his rival; but by his numerous expeditions by land and by water for the conquest of Peru and the remote Chili. Yet it ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... laid down by Erasmus, as my father wished it, with the utmost plainness; but my father's disappointment was, in finding nothing more from so able a pen, but the bare fact itself; without any of that speculative subtilty or ambidexterity of argumentation upon it, which Heaven had bestow'd upon man on ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... for a minute. Leave him, frightened and alone, out on the dark rocks! As she had herself said, such a little while ago, "not for a king's ransom." She only wanted the twins to go and leave her in peace, and so she told them with that plainness of speech which to Susie seemed to suit the occasion. "Please, please go," she said. "I can carry him quite well after he ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... 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 of ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... the light that always transfigured its plainness when he was in the grip of an idea. "Hold on, J. K. Let's get at this right. Is that what I'm here for? I didn't know it. There's a hazy notion in my noodle that I'm here ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... of a camel-driver is a scene that scarce could exist in the imagination of a European, and of its attendant distresses he could have no idea.—These are very happily and minutely painted by our descriptive poet. What sublime simplicity of expression! what nervous plainness in the opening ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... through nearly the whole of my version, though of course there are some passages where they could not be properly employed. Gifford says in the Essay on the Roman Satirists prefixed to his Juvenal that the general character of his translation will be found to be plainness: and if I do not misunderstand what he means by the term, it exactly represents the quality which I have endeavoured to attain myself. As a general rule, where a rendering presented itself to me which in dealing with another author ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... pupils boldly declare that vice is as good as virtue, provided a man can follow it with success, pride prevents them from seeing that this maxim is one of their own doctrines stripped of its equestrian robes, and shown in democratic plainness. They did not venture to deride the gods, or even to assert that they took no cognizance of human affairs; but they declared that offences against divine beings might be easily atoned for by a trifling portion of their own gifts—a sheep, a basket of fruit, ...
— Philothea - A Grecian Romance • Lydia Maria Child
... herself as the woman took her departure, "Miss King is able to penetrate the meaning of my verses, she won't like them. Without saying so in so many words, I have told her with sufficient plainness that I will have nothing to say to her. But stupidity is a shield sent by Providence to protect the greater part of mankind from many evils; so perhaps she ...
— Stories by English Authors: Orient • Various
... instance did they supply anything like the explanatory 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 ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... could not save me, when I have known that I had not an ounce of resource left, and have sat and watched the impulse of my soul die within me, and all my strength go from me, and seen myself with fearful plainness as a spark of yearning, a living thing in all its pitifulness and hunger, helpless and walled up in darkness. To feel that is to be very near indeed to the losing creatures and their sorrow, and the memory of ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... barbarism when about B.C. 880 the Assyrians swept over the various Semite lands. Loud were the laments of the Hebrews; terrible the tales of cruelty; deep the scorn with which the Babylonians submitted to the rude conquerors. We approach here a clearer historic period; we can trace with plainness the devastating track of war;[5] we can read the boastful triumph of the Assyrian chiefs, can watch them step by step as they adopt the culture and the vices of their new subjects, growing ever more graceful and more enfeebled, until they too ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... rapidly indeed, in order to keep pace with the increasing and incessant demands which are made upon it. We can borrow no more, and the knowledge of that fact alone, ought to set a limit to your extravagance. Excuse this plainness, my Lord, it is well meant and void of ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... intelligences might have seen in this priest a caricature of his profession, a figure to be copied for the curate of burlesque, so accurately did he reproduce the common signs of the ascetic school. His face would have been womanish in its plainness but for the gravity that had grown upon it, only occasionally dispersed by a smile of scholarliness and sweetness which had the effect of being permitted, conceded. He had the long thin nose which looked as if for preference it would be forever thrust among the pages ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... with politics 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 it in ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... 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, had he not also sought consolation ...
— Memories • Max Muller
... soft and sad plainness that seemed to Luna the supreme ideal of beauty in the midst of that struggling world of unfortunates and victims. She was the image of a woman of the people reared in the workmen's slums of great cities, anaemic from the mephitic air of the den in which she was born and from bad and ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... without forfeiting respect, something very manly in one who can break through the etiquette of his conventional rank and trust himself to the reason and intelligence of those who have elected him. No higher compliment was ever paid to a nation than the simple confidence, the fireside plainness, with which Mr. Lincoln always addresses himself to the reason of the American people. This was, indeed, a true democrat, who grounded himself on the assumption that a democracy can think. "Come, let us reason together about this matter," has been the tone of all his addresses ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... perhaps for the worse, in that cosmology which called itself "Christian." The protagonist of the Reformation, from whom the whole of the Evangelical sects are lineally descended, states the case with that plainness of speech, not to say brutality, which characterised him. Luther says that man is a beast of burden who only moves as his rider orders; sometimes God rides him, and sometimes Satan. "Sic voluntas humana ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... steaks, and parquet tickets for Maude Adams. That you may 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 ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... recollection of the forty tons of dynamite in the body of the Ferndale; not the sort of cargo one thinks of with equanimity in connection with a threatened collision. He gazed at the two small lights in the dark immensity filled with the angry noise of the seas. They fascinated him till their plainness to his sight gave him a conviction that there was danger there. He knew in his mind what to do in the emergency, but very properly he felt that he must call ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... 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. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... after my marriage with Mr. Smith, I did not think much about the plainness of our style of living; but after a while, contracts between my own parlors and those of one or two friends, would take place in my mind; and I often found myself wishing that we could afford a set of candelabras, a pair of china vases, ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... were 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 horizons ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... and fortune. He spoke of his works as of trifles that were beneath him; and hinted to me, in our first conversation, that I should visit him upon no other footing than that of a gentleman who led a life of plainness and simplicity. I answered, that had he been so unfortunate as to be a mere gentleman, I should never have come to see him; and I was very much disgusted at so unseasonable ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... ornamental, the shining parts of your character; which, if you neglect, upon my word you will render the solid ones absolutely useless; nay, such is the present turn of the world, that some valuable qualities are even ridiculous, if not accompanied by the genteeler accomplishments. Plainness, simplicity, and quakerism, either in dress or manners, will by no means do; they must both be laced and embroidered; speaking, or writing sense, without elegance and turn, will be very little persuasive; and the best figure ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... with the belly, to be selected later on. Some are plain, pear tree, in fact; others are also plain (I mean as regards figure, or flames, as the Germans say), and of sycamore, others are of maple. I do not select a handsome one for its beauty, just as surely as I do not reject an ordinary one for its plainness. This will show you at once that I am seeking for that which, to my mind, will yield me ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... adherence to the eighteenth century tradition of plainness is the most prominent characteristic of Hazlitt's prose. But his plainness is not precisely of the blunt type associated with Swift and Arbuthnot. It is modified by the Gallic tone of easy familiarity, by the ideal deemed appropriate for dignified converse among educated ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... tightly down upon his head, so as to make his ears protrude in an unnatural manner on either side, a custom which had earned for his party the title of 'prickeared,' so often applied to them by their opponents. His attire was of studious plainness and sombre in colour, consisting of his black mantle, dark velvet breeches, and silk hosen, with velvet bows upon his shoes instead of the silver buckles then in vogue. A broad chain of gold around his neck formed the badge of his office. In front of him strutted ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a frame; but now that Escombe was outside he was able to see that each window was provided with a shutter, something like the jalousies fitted to the houses in most tropical and sub-tropical countries, to keep out the rain. The only thing remarkable about the house, apart from its extreme plainness, was the fact that it appeared to be cut out of a single enormous block of stone; and it was not until he went close up to it, and examined it minutely, that he discovered it to be built of blocks of stone dressed to fit each other with such marvellous precision that the ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... 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 crew—with the exception of Hinton, ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... Cf. 'Introduction', p. xxvii. According to the 'Jessamy Bride,' Goldsmith sometimes aggravated his plainness by an 'assumed frown of countenance' ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... 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 ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... 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 basely leaving in the lurch one whose only fault had been a too great readiness ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... wilderness, by his appearing in the wilderness, with the preaching of repentance, and with. the announcement, that now the introduction to the true Canaan was near at hand. By proclaiming himself as the voice crying in the wilderness, announced by Isaiah, he showed with sufficient plainness how false was that carnal view which, without being able to distinguish the thought from its drapery, understood, and still understands, by the wilderness spoken of in this prophecy, some piece of land, limited as to space, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... lustrous with emotion. Lithe, graceful, with a supple strength in every rounded limb, in the slightly compressed red lips, the broad, dimpled chin, and the straight, resolute brows. The quaint gray costume, nun-like in its plainness, cannot make a ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... disagreeable piece of 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 ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... north aisle door, and then taking a position immediately under the great west window, facing east, there is before one the long perspective of the Norman nave, the choir and presbytery, while overhead comes the later vault, telling richly by contrast with the severe plainness of the earlier work below. The extreme length of the cathedral is about 407 feet. The nave, always long in Norman churches, is here over 200 feet from the west door to the choir screen. Although some critics object to the position of the organ on this same screen, there can be no doubt ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Norwich - A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief History of the Episcopal See • C. H. B. Quennell
... for his intended journey. When Cromwell put his state upon him, he did it with all dignity; there was no sparing of expense, no scant of attendants, no lack of guards—boldly and bravely were his arrangements formed; for he wisely knew that plainness and simplicity, although they may be understood and appreciated by the high-minded, are held in contempt by the low and the uneducated, because imagined to be within their own attainment. Had Cincinnatus ruled in England, he would never have abandoned a kingdom for ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... of the queer girl distracted her mind so that she could not go back to her attitude of lazy indifference. She had thought Anne a little commonplace until now; but it had not been a commonplace thing, that changing from prettiness to plainness. She even wondered if Anne had not done a finer act than she could ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... found another creature with whom she seems to have an understanding—an idiot peasant girl, who once, in spite of her plainness and imbecility, fell in love with a mason. The mason thought of marrying her because she had a little bit of land, and for a whole year poor Genevieve was the happiest of living creatures. She dressed ...
— Farewell • Honore de Balzac
... amazement there was none from Catherine! You mention her writing, and I cannot but suppose that your two letters must have been posted together. However, I received none from her, and I have all manner of doubts respecting the plainness of its direction. They will not produce the letters here as at Genoa, but persist in looking them out at the post-office for you. I shall send again to-morrow, and every day until Friday, when we leave here. If I find no letter from her to-morrow, I shall write to her nevertheless ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... you, a woman of fifty is worth still more in that respect than the Countess. You see such a one every day, it is her mother; why not become enamored of her instead? Why neglect a hundred women of her age, of her plainness, and of her merit, who make advances to you, and who would enact the same role with you that you play with the Countess? Why do you desire with so much passion to be distinguished by her from other men? Why are you uneasy when she shows them the least ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... to be bored by it, and the boys, who cared nothing for salvation in the abstract, no matter how anxious they were about the main chance, certainly shared this feeling with her. She was a pale, little, large-eyed lady, who always wore a dress of Quakerish plainness, with a white kerchief crossed upon her breast; and her aquiline nose and jutting chin almost met. She was very good to the children and at these times she usually gave them some sugar-cakes, and sent them out in the ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... 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, and Oldfield groaned inwardly ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... exceedingly different: that I had never failed to receive a civil reply to my questions—often communicating the information requested: and that I could not help suspecting that their failure to receive similar answers arose, in part at least, if not entirely, to the plainness, not to say the bluntness, of their manner in making their inquiries. The correctness of this charge, however, they sturdily denied, asserting that their manner of asking for information was good enough for those to whom they addressed themselves. Unable ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... distinct, earnest tones of this juvenile Joan of Arc were very sweet and charming. During her discourse, which was frequently interrupted, Miss Dickinson maintained her presence of mind, and uttered her radical sentiments with augmented resolution and plainness. Those who did not sympathize with her remarks, provocative as they were of numerous unmanly interruptions, were softened by her simplicity and solemnity. 'We are told,' said she, 'to maintain constitutions because they are constitutions, and compromises because they are compromises. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... south transept he made good, also, the interesting vaulting, with its oak ribs, which were decayed and threatening to fall. The spaces between them, which had been formerly boarded, he found filled only with lath and plaster. To the organ screen he gave back its original plainness, which made it rather an eyesore, as there was now no further screen in front of it, on the other side of the transept, as there had been when St. Nicholas' altar stood at the east end of the nave. For the organ a new case was made after his design, which, without any ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer
... of ingenious raillery, and that of making innocent Satyrs; nor must he be ignorant of that of composing of Verses, writing Letters, and making Orations." The "secrets of all hearts" must be his and "how to take away plainness and driness from Morality."[3] ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... there be light! and lo! the agitating fiat immediately went forth, and thus in one indivisible moment the whole universe was illumlned." We have here a sentence which I am certain many a writer would, in secret, prefer to the masterly plainness of Genesis. It is not a sentence which would have ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... about the neck of her dress, and this heightened the plainness and the pallor of her face. She shrank instinctively at the first sight of herself, and opened the drawer where the crimson cape was ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... sage of a parish, provided only she began her trade with an open and energetic mind, may here pass philosophers. Locke was nearly as sage, as homely, as real, as one of these strenuous women. The honest plainness of certain of his prescriptions for the preservation of physical health perhaps keeps us somewhat too near the earth. His manner throughout is marked by the stout wisdom of the practical teacher, who is content to assume good sense in his hearers, and feels no necessity for kindling a blaze or raising ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... 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. Plainness and jealousy go together. Faithful ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... keeping a coach. And truly, for his part, he could not conceive how the pleasure resulting from such a convenience could be any way adequate to the heavy expense attending it. I now thought it high time to speak with equal plainness, and told him, as the fortune I brought fairly entitled me to ride in my own coach, and as I was sensible his circumstances would very well afford it, he must pardon me if I insisted on ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... female heart") congenial roles for tragic actresses—Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Oldfield, Mrs. Cibber, Mrs. Siddons and Miss O'Neill. Otway was buried in the churchyard of St. Clement Danes, but a tablet to his fame is in Trotton church, which is of unusual plainness, not unlike an ecclesiastical barn. Here also is the earliest known brass to a woman—Margaret de Camoys, who lived ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... reconciles us to the baseness of his attitude. Fat Peg (LA GROSSE MARGOT) is typical of much; it is a piece of experience that has nowhere else been rendered into literature; and a kind of gratitude for the author's plainness mingles, as we read, with the nausea proper to the business. I shall quote here a verse of an old students' song, worth laying side by side with Villon's startling ballade. This singer, also, had an ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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
... 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— Mr. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... shall fly to town for the usual three months—I shall have a curate of course by that time. Elfride, I am past love, you know, and I honestly confess that I married her for your sake. Why a woman of her standing should have thrown herself away upon me, God knows. But I suppose her age and plainness were too pronounced for a town man. With your good looks, if you now play your cards well, you may marry anybody. Of course, a little contrivance will be necessary; but there's nothing to stand between you and a husband with a title, that I can see. Lady Luxellian was only a squire's ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... the country, to that persecution, as so many judgments of God to punish so heinous an offense, and exhorting a repeal of those uncharitable laws. The whole appeared to me as 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 be ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... features, and a complexion that tended to the brown. Brown were his eyes, and women thought them soft; dark brown his hair, in which the same critics sometimes regretted the absence of a little undulation. It was perhaps to conceal this plainness that he wore it very short. His teeth were white, his moustache was pointed, and so was the small beard that adorned the extremity of his chin. His face expressed intelligence and was very much alive; it had ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... make them look gaudy!" Pao-yue observed. "Yet with all their plainness, they should ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... 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 us: There hath been a long Endeavour to ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Socialism, it will mean the proletarian condition for all of us, and for a long time to come. There is no use in flattering ourselves and painting the future better than it is; the truth must be spoken with all plainness. If we work hard, and under capable guidance, each of us will at most have an effective income of 500 marks in pre-war values, or, say, 2000 marks for the family. This average will be higher if we proceed on the principles of ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... I understand 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 along two immense corridors ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... Hopper could never overcome his scruples about entering on a career of worldly ambition. He thought he had better keep humble, and resist temptations that might lead him out of the plainness and simplicity of the religious ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... doctrine 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 the beginning ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... more was learned from his brief and vigorous account of the theories and arguments of tedious writers, than an ordinary student could ever have derived from the most painful study of the originals, and that errors and absurdities became manifest from the mere clearness and plainness of his statement of them, which might have deluded and perplexed most of his hearers without that ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... which is agreeable to the same; and that in such a Language and Order as is most easy and plain for the understanding both of the Readers and Hearers. It is also more commodious, both for the shortness thereof, and for the plainness of the Order, and for that the Rules be ...
— The Book of Common Prayer - and The Scottish Liturgy • Church of England
... I published, in England, a little book entitled the 'Glaciers of the Alps,' and, a couple of years subsequently, a second book, entitled 'Heat a Mode of Motion.' These volumes were followed by others, written with equal plainness, and with a similar aim, that aim being to develop and deepen sympathy between science and the world outside of science. I agreed with thoughtful men[1] who deemed it good for neither world to be ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... 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 Christ, to banish His truth from ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... birth, together with a school and college, about the year 1475. The building is still in existence and shows a good roof and fine Perpendicular window, but the twelve bedesmen and the one sister, who was to be chosen for her plainness, no longer ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... fancy, some quick stroke of repartee, some ludicrous way of putting a thing. But whether she told of the grumbler who could find nothing to complain of in heaven except that "his halo didn't fit," or said in her quick way, when the plainness of a lady's dress was commended, "Why, I didn't suppose that anybody could go to heaven now-a-days without an overskirt," or wrote her sparkling impromptu rhymes for our children's games, her mirth was all in harmony with her earnest life. Her quick ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... the presence of the audience gives a greater seeming reality to the work; it is less like doing a task, and more like speaking to men, than when one sits coolly writing at his table. Consequently there is likely to be greater plainness and directness in his exhortations, more closeness in his appeals, more of the earnestness of genuine feeling in his expostulations. He ventures, in the warmth of the moment, to urge considerations, which perhaps in the study seemed too familiar, and to employ modes of address, which are allowable ...
— Hints on Extemporaneous Preaching • Henry Ware
... E[xchequer], and laid on him terribly.... Legge answered Beckford very rationally and coolly. Lord K. spoke long. Sir F. D[ashwood] maintained the German war was most pernicious.... Lord B[arrington] at last got up and spoke half an hour with great plainness and temper, explained many hidden things relating to these accounts in favour of the late K., and told two or three conversations which had passed between the K. and himself relative to these expenses, which cast great honour upon the K.'s character. ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... truly feminine is thus described: "No coarseness was mingled with her plainness of speech; no boisterousness with her zeal. Her feelings, her sensibilities, her tastes were all characterized by a gentleness and delicacy seldom surpassed. While her heroic daring and unconquerable energy excited ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... continued the physician, "and I crave pardon, sir, should it seem to require pardon, for this needful plainness of my speech. Let me ask as your friend, as one having charge, under Providence, of your life and physical well being, hath all the operations of this disorder been fairly laid ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... orders that he should go on with his campaign, and promised to provide support for his family, and to see that some one was appointed to take care of his land. This story is thought to illustrate the extreme simplicity and plainness of all the habits of life among the Romans in those days. It certainly does so, if it is true. It is, however, very extraordinary, that a man who was intrusted by such a commonwealth, with the command of a fleet of a hundred and thirty vessels, and an army of a hundred and forty thousand ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... fortune (including what had been returned from Muskegon) scarce amounted to a thousand francs; and to crown my sorrows, the statuary contract had changed hands. The new contractor had a son of his own, or else a nephew; and it was signified to me, with business-like plainness, that I must find another market for my pigs. In the meanwhile I had given up my room, and slept on a truckle-bed in the corner of the studio, where as I read myself to sleep at night, and when I awoke in the ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... subject, we intend, as usual, to speak with all candor and plainness. We desire to approach and view this subject, as every subject, from the fair, firm standpoint of the opening words of the Formula of Concord, viz.: "We believe, teach and confess that the only rule and standard, ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... it where it ought to be present. It comes always from a disappointed expectation,—as where the lineaments that do not disgust in the potato meet us in the human face, or even in the hippopotamus, whom accordingly Nature kindly puts out of sight. It is bad taste that we suffer from,—not plainness, not indifference to appearance, but features misplaced, shallow mimicry of "effects" where their causes do not exist, transparent pretences of all kinds, forcing attention to the absence of the reality, otherwise perhaps unnoticed. The first step toward seemly building is to rectify ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... not especially prepossessing. She was short of form and inclined to be stout—"chubby," she called herself. She had red hair, a freckled face and a turned-up nose. But her eyes, round and blue and innocent in expression as those of a baby, dominated her features and to an extent redeemed their plainness. ...
— Mary Louise Solves a Mystery • L. Frank Baum
... 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 ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... ventured to express myself on this subject with earnestness and plainness of speech because I can not rid myself of the belief that there lurk in the proposition for the free coinage of silver, so strongly approved and so enthusiastically advocated by a multitude of my countrymen, a serious menace to our prosperity and an insidious temptation of our people to wander ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... all that Stephen saw. And yet the very plainness of the man's appearance only added to his curiosity. Who was this stranger? His words, his action, too, had been remarkable. The art of administering a rebuke like that was not given to many men. It was perfectly quiet, perfectly final. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... methought there was a great deal in what he said. And upon the whole I find him a most exact and methodicall man, and of great industry: and very glad that he thought fit to show me all this; though I cannot easily guess the reason why he should do it to me, unless from the plainness that he sees I use to him in telling him how much the King may suffer for our want of understanding ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... of 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 temple; nor should a single day be suffered to elapse, without ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... blunt man, assisted in no such folly, but contented myself, when they complayned to me, with damning their souls for greasy interfering varlets. For I shall now make no scruple in declaring that my Lord was the most noble Earl of Southampton, being withheld from so saying before through very plainness and bluntness, desiring as a simple yeoman to make no boast of serving a man of ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... comprehension. His laudable endeavours were met by the zealous co-operation of Calvin, who had by this time extended his influence from Geneva over most of the Helvetic congregations, and was diligent in persuading them to recede from the unambiguous plainness of Zwingle's doctrine,—which reduced the Lord's supper to a simple commemoration,—and to admit so much of a mystical though spiritual presence of Christ in that rite, as might bring them to some seeming agreement ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... plainness of this lesson, and the authority which it possesses. Its meaning cannot be mistaken; we know what is spoken here, and we know who speaks. Hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good? The only begotten ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... primitive plainness of word and entire absence of complexity in thought, is peculiarly sensitive and susceptible to the touch of stranger hands; and he who has been able to acquaint himself with the Norske Folkeeventyr of Asbjoernsen and Moe (from which these stories are selected), ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... the old gentleman. "Here's plainness of speech. I suppose you think I am rich and that I have come to ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... evidently no intention of being satirical, but spoke with straightforward plainness what he would have regarded, had he given the matter any thought at all, as being a truth too obvious to need any disguises. His Philistinism was of the perfectly ingrained, inborn sort, which never having appreciated that it is naked has never felt the need of being ashamed; ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... the Jews for church government, is clear, 1. From the censure of the obstinate, who was to be reputed a heathen and a publican; wherein is a manifest allusion to the present estate of the Church of the Jews; and, 2. From the familiarity and plainness of Christ's speech, Tell the church, which church could not have been understood by the disciples had not Christ spoken of the Jewish judicatory; besides which they knew none for such offences as ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... would have 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
... She gave a slight start therefore, when she saw that young woman slowly pacing up and down, with the very quiet and meditative air of one who had been doing so for some little time. Miss Harman was dressed with almost studied plainness and simplicity. All the rich furs which the children had admired were put away. When she saw Mrs. Home she quickened her slow steps into almost a run of welcome, and clasped her toil-worn and badly gloved ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... also convince the Scholar, that the Artifice of a Professor is never more pleasing, than when he deceives the Audience with agreeable Surprizes; for which reason he will advise him to have Recourse to a seeming Plainness, as if he aim'd ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... faded from Harriet's face, and now that the animation had left it, it was rather plain. Her hair brushed straight back from a broad forehead, made more pronounced the undeniable plainness of her features. But when animated that face was fairly transformed. As Miss Elting had expressed it, "Harriet lighted up divinely." She was a tall, well built girl whose erect carriage and ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... 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 ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... looked 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, I ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... him since she had left Toronto, or recognized him on the two occasions when she chanced to meet him in the public street. Yet, a strange presentiment seemed to impress her that he had not, after all her plainness with him, abandoned the idea of obtaining her hand, notwithstanding the repugnance she had always evinced towards him. Now, however, that Nicholas was almost within hail of her, and that her friends, in Buffalo at least, were true ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... be known only to one or to a few, the offender is to be told his fault secretly, with Christian meekness, plainness, and love. If he profess his sorrow and resolution to amend, the whole matter ought to be carefully concealed; and those offended ought to be well pleased that their offending brother is gained. If, after one ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... 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, the manners of the fisherman were those of one ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... every movement and gesture in 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 herself tall and slim, with that ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... the women of the frontier was suited to the plainness of the habitations where they lived and the furniture they used. Homespun, linsey-woolsey and buckskin were the primitive materials out of which their everyday dresses were made, and only on occasions of social festivity were they seen in braver robes. Rings, broaches, buckles, and ruffles were ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... Rebekah read, when she sate At eve by the palm-shaded well? Who guards in her breast As deep, as pellucid a spring Of feeling, as tranquil, as sure? What bard, At the height of his vision, can deem Of God, of the world, of the soul, With a plainness as near, As flashing as Moses felt When he lay in the night by his flock On the starlit Arabian waste? Can rise and obey The beck of the Spirit ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... Some of these boats carry four stacks and some two. The author prefers four stacks as giving the boat a better appearance than two. The two little cabins near the stern of the boat are placed there merely to take away the plainness of construction. The guns mounted forward and aft are merely round pieces of wood with a piece of wire bent around them and forced into ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... and robust: his manners rustic, not clownish; a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity, which received part of its effect perhaps from one's knowledge of his extraordinary talents. His features are represented in Mr. Nasmyth's picture, but to me it conveys the idea that they are diminished as if seen in ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... 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 ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... 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 ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... Shelley's. For that conscious struggle against law, by which law is discovered, may easily enough be confounded with the utter repudiation of it. Both forms of mind will discuss the same questions; both will discuss them freely, with a certain plainness and daring, which may range through all grades, from the bluntness of Socrates down to reckless immodesty and profaneness. The world will hardly distinguish between the two; it did not in Socrates' case, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... 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
... collect all that comes to their knowledge, and faithfully to record all things, without choice or discrimination, leave to us the entire judgment of discerning the truth. Such, for example, amongst others, is honest Froissart, who has proceeded in his undertaking with so frank a plainness that, having committed an error, he is not ashamed to confess and correct it in the place where the finger has been laid, and who represents to us even the variety of rumours that were then spread abroad, and the different reports that were made to him; ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... Visitation in Essex, one in Orders (of good estate and extraction) appeared before him very gallant in habit, whom D'r Laud (then Bishop of London) publickly reproved, shewing to him the plainness of his own apparrel. My Lord (said the Minister) you have better cloaths at home and I have worse, whereat the ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various
... of the above note—having, in justice to the Spaniards, spoken with great plainness and freedom—feels it necessary to add a few words, that it may not thence be concluded that he is insensible to Sir J. Moore's claims upon his respect. Perhaps—if Sir J.M. could himself have given us his commentary upon these letters, and have restricted the extension of such passages ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... care would permit; and when I had uncovered the whole mass, and rising from my knees, had retreated a little way, so that the effect of the whole might fall on me, I saw before me with sufficient plainness—though at the same time with considerable indistinctness, arising from the limited amount of light the place admitted, as well as from the nature of the object itself—a block of pure alabaster enclosing the form, apparently in marble, of a reposing ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... entirely with a cloth or spread was pretty good proof that the piece of furniture was cheap and shabby; so in no William Morris library or dining-room would you find a table entirely covered. The round dining-table is in very general use now, but few people realize how its plainness was scouted when ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... out exercising Calyste's horse, which the youth had not mounted for two months. The three women, mother, aunt, and Mariotte, shared in the tender feminine wiliness, which taught them to make much of Calyste when he dined at home. Breton plainness fought against Parisian luxury, now brought to the very doors of Guerande. Mariotte endeavored to wean her young master from the accomplished service of Camille Maupin's kitchen, just as his mother and aunt strove ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... a robust, brave-looking man, of unaffected manners, bordering on plainness, though highly educated, and accustomed in Europe, where he was chaplain to Lord C——d, to the most aristocratic society. Perhaps it was owing to his knowledge of the vanity of aristocratic airs that he affected ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... Percival ushered in was young and petulantly, decidedly, freshly, consciously, and intentionally pretty. She was dressed with such expensive plainness that she made you consider lace and ruffles as mere tatters and rags. But one great ostrich plume that she wore would have marked her anywhere in the army of beauty as the wearer of the merry ...
— Options • O. Henry
... character has been predominant, and contrast the genial courtesy, the warm and graceful freedom of that region, with what they call (though I utterly disagree with them) the frigidity of our Northern manners, and the Western plainness of the President. They have a conscientious, though mistaken belief, that the South was driven out of the Union by intolerable wrong on our part, and that we are responsible for having compelled true patriots to love only half their country instead of the ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... necessary; but along the walls are scrolls bearing in golden letters the name of the Prophet and the first four Caliphs, or a chapter of the Koran, the Arabic script being especially suitable for this kind of ornamental writing. [325] The severe plainness of the interior of a mosque demonstrates the strict monotheism of Islam, and is in contrast to the temples and shrines of most other religions. The courtyard of a mosque is often used as a place of resort, and travellers ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... on the subject in this work, and in my pamphlet on the Bible, are not new. You may find them in the works of quite a number of Evangelical Authors. The only credit to which I am entitled is, that I state them with great plainness, and without reserve, and that I do not, after having given them on one page, take them back ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... 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 from afar, Sir King, ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... and my own advancement towards the world's opinion, I know I should, in spite of all my own arguments to the contrary, have pursued them. Such as commonly say, in opposition to what I profess, that what I call freedom, simplicity, and plainness in my manners, is art and subtlety, and rather prudence than goodness, industry than nature, good sense than good luck, do me more honour than disgrace: but, certainly, they make my subtlety too subtle; and whoever has followed me close, and pryed ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... why Temper is significant. It is not in what it is alone, but in what it reveals. This is why I speak of it with such unusual plainness. It is a test for love, a symptom, a revelation of an unloving nature at bottom. It is the intermittent fever which bespeaks unintermittent disease within; the occasional bubble escaping to the surface which betrays some rottenness underneath; a sample of the most hidden products of the soul dropped ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... things continued in this situation, there were a great many play-houses, sometimes six or seven open at once. Of these some were large, and in part open, where they acted by day light; others smaller, but better fitted up, where they made use of candles. The plainness of the theatre made the prices small, and drew abundance of company; yet upon the whole it is doubtful, whether the spectactors in all these houses were really superior in number, to those who have frequented the theatres in later times. If the spirit and ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... spite of myself the colour flooded my face. He looked at me from head to foot—my plainness, my miserable physique, my lameness, my feeble frame—everything was comprehended in ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... was not content with uttering cheering words; she offered to accompany Els and secure the place to which she was entitled. Frau Rosalinde had formerly often visited the matron to seek counsel, and had shown her, with embarrassing plainness, how willingly she admitted her superior ability. She disliked the old countess—but with whom would not the self-reliant woman, conscious of her good intentions, have dared to cope? Since the daughter of the house had left her relatives, the place beside his father's sick-bed ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and plainness of the case, I pluck this pale and maiden blossom here, Giving my verdict on the ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... 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 ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... 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, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 267, August 4, 1827 • Various
... (as he always called them) admired him without disguise. His manner towards them was gallant yet deferential, tender yet manly. He conceded everything to their weakness; yet no man in Troy could treat a woman with greater plainness of speech. The confirmed spinsters (high and low, rich and poor, we counted seventy-three of them in Troy) seemed to like him none the less because he lost no occasion, public or private, of commending wedlock. For the doctrine ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... my inevitable duty to speak of the existing conditions of Art with plainness enough to guard the youths whose judgments I am entrusted to form, from being misled, either by their own naturally vivid interest in what represents, however unworthily, the scenes and persons of their own day, or by the cunningly devised, and, without doubt, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... of her sisters' pretensions. Almost the first burst of that noble tide of passion, which runs through the play, is in the remonstrance of Kent to his royal master on the injustice of his sentence against his youngest daughter—'Be Kent unmannerly, when Lear is mad!' This manly plainness which draws down on him the displeasure of the unadvised king is worthy of the fidelity with which he adheres to his fallen fortunes. The true character of the two eldest daughters, Regan and Gonerill (they are so thoroughly hateful that we do ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... one corner the boarded-up stairs leading to the higher floors bulked largely. Two or three dark prints—one a portrait of Calvin—with a framed copy of the Geneva catechism, and a small shelf of books, took something from the plainness and added something to the comfort of the apartment, which boasted besides a couple of old oaken dressers, highly polished and gleaming, with long rows of pewter ware. Two doors stood opposite the entrance and appeared ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... Hamilton, went over to the party of his popish mother. He exposed their sophistries, and fearlessly rebuked their defection, even after they had gained for the time the supremacy in Edinburgh. Others might truckle to them or quail before them, but that palsied old man, with all his former plainness and much of his former fire, persevered in denouncing their treachery and discrediting their proposals. Threatenings were uttered against his life if he persisted in his course; protection seems to have been refused him by the ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... to write, are apt to sacrifice all other good qualities of beauty, regularity and grace, for the quality of legibility, or plainness. With some older persons this legibility is considered of very little consequence, and is obscured by all manner of meaningless flourishes, in which the writer takes pride. In the estimation of the business man, writing ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... account of the losses you have suffered through your beneficence to the Harrels, and the explanatory one of the calumnies you have sustained from your kindness to the Belfields, I related with the plainness which alone I thought necessary to make them felt. I then told the high honour I had received, in meeting with no other repulse to my proposal, than was owing to an inability to accede to it; and informed my mother of the condescending powers with which you had ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... really happy if, despising the vastness of the city, which they excite against themselves by their vices, they were to live in imitation of some of the priests in the provinces, whom the most rigid abstinence in eating and drinking, and plainness of apparel, and eyes always cast on the ground, recommend to the everlasting Deity and his true worshippers as pure and sober-minded men. This is a sufficient digression on this subject: let us now return to ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... to the occasion. "His plainness is lost in what Mr. Logger calls his power of countenance," said she. "And I'm sure he has a fine eye, and the ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... endure The passing day; 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— Let them parade among ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... fulfilment of the wonderful apparatus of retribution, reward, and discipline, intended to educate us as members of God's eternal family. Because from the little which we now understand we cannot infer with plainness and certainty the precise means and method by which we can discriminate our friends in heaven need be no obstacle to believing the fact itself; for there are millions of undoubted truths whose conditions and ways of operation we can ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... Jack Bendish as a plain little devil, but as a rule the devilry was more conspicuous than the plainness. She was a tall and extremely slight woman, her features insignificant and her complexion sallow, but her figure indecorously beautiful under its close French draperies. And yet if she had let Lawrence ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... 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 be your duty to receive from us the advice, counsel, and reproof, which ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... though they had been split much too far back in the head by a rude hatchet—the tops of all the teeth having apparently been lopped off by the same clumsy blow. They laugh too, with a demoniacal "Ha! ha! ha!" as if they rejoiced in their excessive plainness, and knew that we—you and I, reader—are regarding them with disgust, not unmingled ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... Mummer's Wife. But 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 practice ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... considerable shrewdness, as well as of a high idea of the proprieties of his rank, wrote her a long letter of remonstrance; imputing with great truth the failings, which he pointed out with sufficient plainness, to a facility of disposition which made her indulgent to the manoeuvres of those whom she admitted to her friendship, but who did not deserve such an honor. He even spoke of the society which she had gathered round her, as calculated to prevent him ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... recalled the console tables of old gilt, the brocaded couch, and the gilded chairs which no one dared to sit upon; and I confess that I preferred this habitable cottage-room. There was something satisfying in its plainness; a sense of something honest and intimately right; a suggestion of solid worth and homely ease. My spirits had already been restored by my decision; they were now invigorated to the point of joy, for I saw the concrete emblems, as it were, of the beauty ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... with Miss Ramsden, a hardheaded old maiden lady in a plain brown silk gown, with enough rings, chains and brooches to show that her plainness of dress is a matter of principle, not of poverty. She comes into the room very determinedly: the two men, perplexed and downcast, following her. Ann rises and goes eagerly to meet her. Tanner retreats to the wall between the busts and pretends to study the pictures. Ramsden goes to his table as ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... eighteenth century tradition of plainness is the most prominent characteristic of Hazlitt's prose. But his plainness is not precisely of the blunt type associated with Swift and Arbuthnot. It is modified by the Gallic tone of easy familiarity, by the ideal deemed appropriate for dignified converse among educated people of the world. ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... 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, a sort of a "Blaenor," who occupied one of these chairs, ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... later," smiled the young detective, with that strange softening of his features which made one at times forget his extreme plainness. "I'm sure you will not consider the time lost if I ask you to consider the comparison I am about to make, if only as ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... Oxfordshire, which is not far from Thame; and addressed some verses to Francis Lord Norreys, Earl of Berkshire, from which I quote one or two stanzas, and in the last of which there is an allusion to the [plainness of ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 19, Saturday, March 9, 1850 • Various
... this will love the shade," she said to herself. "For all her plainness this is no ordinary girl, and I mean to draw her out presently. What a brow she has, and what a light came into her eyes when she looked ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... 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 ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... giving an air of firmness and stability to the whole structure. 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 ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... spirit and the function of the Put-Through Clan in a town, is to embody truth so baldly and with such a shameless plainness that no matter how hard they try, people cannot ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... retorted the spy, thrown off his guard by the daring plainness of the language in which she had ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... A large convenient place, and notwithstanding the plainness of the profession rather elegant. The congregation is very flourishing, rich, and peaceable. Chandler tells us, to the everlasting honour of the Quakers, that they are the only christian sect who have never exercised the cruel weapon ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... literary circles. Many persons who met him have told how he impressed them; but the most interesting account is that of Walter Scott, then a youth of sixteen. He says of Burns: "His person was strong and robust; his manner rustic, not clownish; a sort of dignified plainness and simplicity. His countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits. . . There was a strong expression of sense and shrewdness in all his lineaments; the eye alone, I think, indicated the poetical character and temperament. It was large, and of a dark cast, which glowed (I ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... accompany him; and so well was he acquainted with his plainness and sincerity, that though he expected his return with eagerness, he no sooner heard him upon the stairs, than fearing to know his opinion, he hastily snatched up his hat, and rushed vehemently out of the ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... would separate himself not only from the Clevelands, the Denhams, and the Drydens, whom he did not account as poets at all, but even from the Spenserians. Thus, instead of severe, he became rigid, and his plainness is ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... speedier redress in writing, where all comes under the last examination of the eyes. First, mind it well, then pen it, then examine it, then amend it, and you may be in the better hope of doing reasonably well. Under this virtue may come plainness, which is not to be curious in the order as to answer a letter, as if you were to answer to interrogatories. As to the first, first; and to the second, secondly, &c. but both in method to use (as ladies do in their attire) a diligent kind of ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... 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 been ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... be unduly hurried while the veldt was a bare russet-coloured dust-swept plain. Mr. Chamberlain and the British public waited week after week for an answer. But there was a limit to their patience, and it was reached on August 26, when the Colonial Secretary showed, with a plainness of speech which is as unusual as it is welcome in diplomacy, that the question could not be hung up for ever. 'The sands are running down in the glass,' said he. 'If they run out we shall not hold ourselves limited by that which we have already offered, but, having ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... state upon him, he did it with all dignity; there was no sparing of expense, no scant of attendants, no lack of guards—boldly and bravely were his arrangements formed; for he wisely knew that plainness and simplicity, although they may be understood and appreciated by the high-minded, are held in contempt by the low and the uneducated, because imagined to be within their own attainment. Had Cincinnatus ruled in England, he would never have abandoned a kingdom for a ploughshare; such an act ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... without an unnecessary word. We see this French influence in the Royal Society,[173] which had for one of its objects the reform of English prose by getting rid of its "swellings of style," and which bound all its members to use "a close, naked, natural way of speaking ... as near to mathematical plainness as they can." Dryden accepted this excellent rule for his prose, and adopted the heroic couplet, as the next best thing, for the greater part of his poetry. As he ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... different: that I had never failed to receive a civil reply to my questions—often communicating the information requested: and that I could not help suspecting that their failure to receive similar answers arose, in part at least, if not entirely, to the plainness, not to say the bluntness, of their manner in making their inquiries. The correctness of this charge, however, they sturdily denied, asserting that their manner of asking for information was good enough for those to whom they addressed themselves. Unable to convince them by words ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells
... James I. are evident from the peculiarity of the style; the period at which it was composed; and by those particular passages stamped with all the individuality of the king himself. The style is remarkable for its profuse sprinkling of Scottish and French words, where the Doric plainness of the one, and the intelligent expression of the other, offer curious instances of the influence of manners over language; the diction of the royal author is a striking evidence of the intermixture of the two ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... fickleness, he—to his shame be it chronicled—having practically forgotten the woe-begone damsel's very existence within eighteen short hours after his adventure in knight-errantry. Her tear-ravaged and untidy plainness had, in that brief time, been exorcised from memory by a more potent interest, that of Beauty on her imperial throne. Setting forth the facts in their due order, it befell ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... relations. I believe they are of great assistance in getting rid of superfluous capital, wish I had some! It was after the legacy that women discovered my attractions. They found that there was something superb in my plainness (before, they said ugliness), something after the style of the late Victor Emanuel, something infinitely more striking than mere ordinary beauty. At least so Harding told me his sister said, and she had the reputation ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... Monk and Monkery. He was a vociferous personage and prodigal of his words. He added to all his sins this one, that he did not know when to go. He had no tact, only talk. Irritated at last beyond endurance, my normal suavity forsook me, and I spoke with brutal plainness. Of course he was wroth, and pressed for an explanation. In a weak moment I yielded. "To begin with," said I, "Luther, strictly speaking, was not a monk at all!" [Footnote: He belonged to the order ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... caricature of his profession, a figure to be copied for the curate of burlesque, so accurately did he reproduce the common signs of the ascetic school. His face would have been womanish in its plainness but for the gravity that had grown upon it, only occasionally dispersed by a smile of scholarliness and sweetness which had the effect of being permitted, conceded. He had the long thin nose which looked as if for preference it would be ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... and this command he was to pass on to the second, and the second to the third, and so on till the last. [5] And while they saw to this he went in to Cyaxares himself, wearing his simple Persian dress without a trace of pomp. Cyaxares was well pleased at his celerity, but troubled by the plainness of his attire, and said to him, "What is the meaning of this, Cyrus? How could you show yourself in this guise to the Indians? I wished you to appear in splendour: it would have done me honour for my sister's son to ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... out in all the teachings of the New Testament, with an emphasis and a plainness which no candid and unprejudiced mind can fail to understand. Jesus Christ has incorporated it into his sermon on the mount in many particulars, wherein he insists upon our social duties, while ...
— The Religious Duty of Obedience to Law • Ichabod S. Spencer
... George, you've been a damned good master to me, and I've been a damned good servant to you; we've been proud of each other from the first; but if you'll excuse my plainness, Mr. George, I never liked ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was tall and stately, with a gentle dignity. Her dress was simple to plainness, and might have been called shabby had it been less beautifully neat. It was of unrelieved black, and she wore a conventional widow's bonnet, with floating ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... Friends endeavour by example and precept to train up their children, servants, and all under their core, in a religions life and conversation, consistent with our Christian profession, in the frequent reading of the holy scriptures, and in plainness ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... sustained a rather short thick neck, now exposed in extreme decollete style, as if to aid the unsuccessful elongation of nature. Her sallow complexion was dark, almost bistre, and the strongly marked irregular features were only redeemed from positive plainness by the large fiery black eyes, whose beauty was somewhat marred by the intrusive boldness of their expression. Bowing to some one opposite, her very full lips parted smilingly over a set of sound strong teeth, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... C[hancellor] of the E[xchequer], and laid on him terribly.... Legge answered Beckford very rationally and coolly. Lord K. spoke long. Sir F. D[ashwood] maintained the German war was most pernicious.... Lord B[arrington] at last got up and spoke half an hour with great plainness and temper, explained many hidden things relating to these accounts in favour of the late K., and told two or three conversations which had passed between the K. and himself relative to these expenses, which cast great honour upon the K.'s ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... 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
... consequences," and that he would acquiesce in one more sacrifice, severe as it might be, to the desires and interests of his country. With the letter Madison sent a draft of an address, and in reference to it remarked: "You will readily observe that, in executing it, I have aimed at that plainness and modesty of language which you had in view, and which indeed are so peculiarly becoming the character and the occasion; and that I had little more to do, as to the matter, than to follow the just and comprehensive outline which you had sketched. I flatter myself, ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... who 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 comers while ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... little girls and one little boy. One of the teachers brought them out and remained in order to take them back again. The big gray house looked cheerful and more attractive than usual, for flowers were Mrs. MacDonald's great pleasure and they were everywhere, making up for the plainness of the furnishings, for Mrs. MacDonald did not believe in showiness. Her house was thoroughly comfortable ...
— A Dear Little Girl at School • Amy E. Blanchard
... was, if there had been the slightest touch of the feminine about him. There was not. Yet in spite of his good looks and astonishing colouring, Meg was right in her consciousness that for women there was more magnetic attraction in Mike's mobile plainness, in his sensitive, irregular features. When the two men were talking together, the senses and eyes of women would be drawn to the ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... In the first place, she was never misunderstood; in the second, however ironical and severe he might be to others and Ellen knew he could be both when there was occasion he never was either to her. With great plainness always, but with an equally happy choice of time and manner, he either said or looked what he wished her to understand. This happened, indeed, only about comparative trifles; to have seriously displeased him Ellen would have thought the last great evil that ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... in,' I 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 ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... skull-cap. The latter was drawn tightly down upon his head, so as to make his ears protrude in an unnatural manner on either side, a custom which had earned for his party the title of 'prickeared,' so often applied to them by their opponents. His attire was of studious plainness and sombre in colour, consisting of his black mantle, dark velvet breeches, and silk hosen, with velvet bows upon his shoes instead of the silver buckles then in vogue. A broad chain of gold around his neck formed the badge of his office. In front of ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... 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 ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... confidence. Violet during the time never took her eyes from her friend's face, but remained silent as though waiting for an answer. She had been very explicit as to her feelings. Would Laura Kennedy be equally explicit? She was too clever to forget that such plainness of speech would be, must be more difficult to Lady Laura than to herself. Lady Laura was a married woman; but she felt that her friend would have been wrong to search for secrets, unless she were ready to tell her own. It was probably some such feeling ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... had 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 solitary and unheeded ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... 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 ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... indirect approval of Government, is another thing, and demands wholly different qualities. These are moral, not intellectual; practical, not special gifts—gifts of a very plain and almost universal order. Such are, firstly, social sympathies and sense of justice; then openness and plainness of character; lastly, habits of action, and a practical knowledge of social misery. These are the qualities which fit men to be the arbiters or ultimate source (though certainly not the instruments) of political ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... the distinct, earnest tones of this juvenile Joan of Arc were very sweet and charming. During her discourse, which was frequently interrupted, Miss Dickinson maintained her presence of mind, and uttered her radical sentiments with augmented resolution and plainness. Those who did not sympathize with her remarks, provocative as they were of numerous unmanly interruptions, were softened by her simplicity and solemnity. 'We are told,' said she, 'to maintain constitutions because they are constitutions, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... spread through Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. The attractiveness of the teachings of wandering Anabaptist preachers long continued unabated, and their regularly organized congregations or communities, because of their thrift, honesty, and plainness of life, survived and flourished, wherever they could obtain even the barest and ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney
... 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— Mr. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... for young ladies:—All the attraction they can ever possess by means of dress, will be derived from three sources, viz. Plainness, Neatness, and Appropriateness. In whatever they deviate from these cardinal points, they will to the same degree make themselves ridiculous—weaken their influence, and lose the good opinion of those they are the most anxious to win. I beg these truths ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... to say he'd come, but she had so curious a way with her that he still less could say he wouldn't, and in a moment had taken refuge in something that was neither. "Are you married?"—he put it to her with that plainness, though it had seemed before he said it to do more for him than ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... handsome also; in fact, much better looking than his son, with his iron-grey hair, his clear-cut features, somewhat marred in effect by a certain shiftiness of the mouth, and his large dark eyes. Morris had those dark eyes also—they redeemed his face from plainness, for otherwise it showed no beauty, the features being too irregular, the brow too prominent, and the mouth too large. Yet it could boast what, in the case of a man at any rate, is better than beauty—spirituality, and a certain sympathetic charm. It was not the face which ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... of her eyes was sad, almost mournful. As she grew older and happier, this settled into a gentle serenity, only changed as we have described, by that thrilling smile, which actually transfigured her. You forgot her plainness then, forgot her humble garments, her dull complexion, and wondered what power had, for the moment, rendered ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... tragic actresses—Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Oldfield, Mrs. Cibber, Mrs. Siddons and Miss O'Neill. Otway was buried in the churchyard of St. Clement Danes, but a tablet to his fame is in Trotton church, which is of unusual plainness, not unlike an ecclesiastical barn. Here also is the earliest known brass to a woman—Margaret de Camoys, who lived ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... back the original, which I must accompany with my warm thanks, both for that, and your better favor, the "Messiah," which, I assure you, I have read thro' with great pleasure; the verses have great sweetness and a New Testament-plainness about them which affected ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... their day. At a time when many of the older orders of monks were falling from their first rigid simplicity — falling into those habits of extravagance which in days to come caused their fall and ultimate suppression — the Cistercians still held to their early regime of austere simplicity and plainness of life; and though no longer absolutely secluding themselves from the sight or sound of their fellow men, or living in complete solitude, they were still men of austere life and self-denying habits, and retained the reputation for sanctity of life that was being lost in other ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... in a Church building that was plain in its interior, the plainness being emphasized, and at times rendered unsightly, by reason of the removal of the statues and pictures which in pre-Reformation times had decorated the walls and pillars. The building was, however, as required by the Book of Discipline, rendered ...
— Presbyterian Worship - Its Spirit, Method and History • Robert Johnston
... endowments, and so temperate and regular had been his habits, that time had scarcely left a trace on his manly brow; and his fair and well-moulded features had almost the freshness of youth. And notwithstanding the unpretending simplicity of his deportment, and the extreme plainness of his dress, the large arm-chair, in which he now reclined, furnished probably by some considerate matron of the neighborhood for his special convenience, could not have found, in the broad land, an occupant who would have filled it with more native dignity, or one better fitted ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... 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 here are more conscious of things; they invent, they act, they answer ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... a scene that scarce could exist in the imagination of a European, and of its attendant distresses he could have no idea.—These are very happily and minutely painted by our descriptive poet. What sublime simplicity of expression! what nervous plainness in the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... without effect—your property should grow rapidly indeed, in order to keep pace with the increasing and incessant demands which are made upon it. We can borrow no more, and the knowledge of that fact alone, ought to set a limit to your extravagance. Excuse this plainness, my Lord, it is well meant and void of ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... singularly noble memory of private life. Few who did not know Arnold could have been prepared for the revelation of a nature so true, so amiable, so dutiful. In every relation of private life he is shown to have been a man of exceptional constancy and plainness. The letters are mainly home letters; but a few friendships also yielded up their hoard, and thus the circle of private life is made complete. Every one must take delight in the mental association with Arnold in the scenes of his existence, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... he broken up those prophecies and promises that to this day lie as under lock and key, and that cannot be opened until they be fulfilled. Now the church of God shall read with great plainness the depths of providence, and the turnings and windings of all God's dark and intricate dispensations, through which she hath waded in the cloudy and dark day: now, I say, they shall see there was a harmony in them, and that, if ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... dressed with equal simplicity, for silken garments are worn in Morocco only by musicians, boy-dancers and other hermaphrodite fry. With his ceremonial raiment the Sultan had put off his air of superhuman majesty, and the expression of his round pale face corresponded with the plainness of his dress. The favourites fluttered about him, respectful but by no means awestruck, and the youngest began to play with the little Prince. We could well believe the report that his was the happiest harem in Morocco, as well as the ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton
... 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 gilding its summer green, and the bracken stood palm-like in purple ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... your garb and outward clothing A reserved plainness use; By their neatness more distinguish'd Than the ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... inhabitants, making them not only support his numerous army, but laid on them besides many unnecessary imposts, which he divided among his soldiers, so that they were all cloathed in gold and silver, and every private man had the appearance of a general, the king himself still preferring his usual plainness; but he loved, he said, to see the Saxon riches upon ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... of this line will be seen in the context, which, for plainness as well as curiosity, I quote from a metrical version of the first book of the poem,[51] entitled, "The Sphere of Marcus Manilius made an English Poem, by Edward Sherburne," which was dedicated to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... is 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. ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... exercise in considering the question with him in detail. I acknowledge that M. Bayle (for it is easy to see that I speak of him) has on his side all the advantages except that of the root of the matter, but I hope that truth (which he acknowledges himself to be on our side) by its very plainness, and provided it be fittingly set forth, will prevail over all the ornaments of eloquence and erudition. My hope for success therein is all the greater because it is the cause of God I plead, and because one of the maxims here upheld states that God's help is never lacking for those that lack not ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... for hinges on which to hang their doors, for dressings in some of their state apartments, in cornices or sculptured friezes on the external walls of their buildings; and even then its employment suggested rather that of a band of embroidery carefully disposed on some garment to relieve the plainness of the material. Crude brick, burnt brick, enamelled brick, but always and everywhere brick was the principal element in their construction. The soil of the marshes or of the plains, separated from the pebbles and foreign substances which it contained, mixed with grass or chopped straw, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... won't have poor Mr. Gurgoyle made fun of,' said Mrs. Featherstone, but with a considerable return of amiability. 'People always tell me that with all his plainness he's the most amusing young man in town, though I confess I never could see any ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... Stephen saw. And yet the very plainness of the man's appearance only added to his curiosity. Who was this stranger? His words, his action, too, had been remarkable. The art of administering a rebuke like that was not given to many men. It was perfectly quiet, perfectly final. And then, when it was over, he ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Dalmain's whole bearing altered. 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
... will do this if you will tell him how and when this same Captain Credence with his crimson colours first led the van in your salvation. You will tell him this with more and more depth and more and more plainness as year after year he reads his Holy War, and better and better understands it, till he has had it all fulfilled in himself as a pickt captain and good soldier of Jesus Christ. You will tell him about yourself, till, at this forlorn hope in his own life, and at that sounded advance, in some ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... said Joel, not at all dashed by her plainness, "I'll be good then—when I'm a big man; don't you suppose, Polly," as a new idea struck him, "that Mr. Henderson ever ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney
... have 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 clarity ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... there was a great deal in what he said. And upon the whole I find him a most exact and methodicall man, and of great industry: and very glad that he thought fit to show me all this; though I cannot easily guess the reason why he should do it to me, unless from the plainness that he sees I use to him in telling him how much the King may suffer for our want of understanding ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... head twice; he was dazed a little. He seemed to hear yet so plainly the clatter and bangs of the iron slice flying about his ears that he tightened his grip to prove to himself he had it there safely in his hand. He was vaguely amazed at the plainness with which down there he could hear the gale raging. Its howls and shrieks seemed to take on, in the emptiness of the bunker, something of the human character, of human rage and pain—being not vast but infinitely poignant. And there were, with every roll, thumps, too—profound, ponderous ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... unadorned; on his vizor waved no plume. But there was something in his carriage and mien, and the singular beauty of his coal-black steed, which appeared to indicate a higher rank than the absence of page and squire, and the plainness of his accoutrements, would have denoted to a careless eye. He rode very slowly; and his steed, with the licence of a spoiled favourite, often halted lazily in his sultry path, as a tuft of herbage, or the bough of some overhanging ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... possible, and taking care not to tread on loose stones, or sticks, that would break and betray their presence, the four began stalking the lion. That they were coming closer to the beast was evidenced by the increasing plainness of ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... object to the book on account of the plainness of the language used; but, my friends, I have endeavored to tell the truth, and to do this on such a subject, does not admit of the use of delicate language. A mild hint at such a fact, clothed in flowery language, would only serve to give a vague impression, and would fall far ...
— From the Ball-Room to Hell • T. A. Faulkner
... author of this 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 Hawaiians looked upon this ophthalmic redness as ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... like spirit of eloquent plainness, to denounce the violation of that beneficent change which both Washington and Jefferson had devised for the red man of the forest, and had assured to him by solemn treaties pledging the faith of the nation, and by laws interdicting ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... tall, stately blonde, with a 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 tint, and her lovely ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... curious in the matter of books, sat quietly down in a corner to examine it; and on the middle page, under the head "Family Record," he found, in a large, bold hand, the date of the birth of "Lillie Ellis" in figures of the most uncompromising plainness; and thence, with one flash of his well-trained arithmetical sense, came the perception that, instead of being twenty years old, she was in fact twenty-seven,—and that of course she had ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the 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 body of ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... a possibility. It arises when we shrink from that plainness of speech which is, after all, friendship's best service. Is it not better to offend, even to wound deeply, than to speak only the smoother things, however kindly the intent, and, so speaking, fail to ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... that we owe all that mysterious 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, ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... saw the shadowy faces, with increased frequency, also with greater plainness. Whether this was due to my soul having become more attuned to its surroundings, I cannot tell—probably it was so. But, however this may be, I am assured now, only of the fact that I became steadily more conscious of a new mystery about me, telling me that I had, indeed, penetrated within ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... through the streets of Rome, had been making comparisons by no means to the favour of Carthage. The greater simplicity of dress, the absence of the luxury which was so unbridled at Carthage, the plainness of the architecture of the houses, the free and manly bearing of the citizens, all impressed him. Rough as was the crowd who jeered and hooted him and his companions, there was a power and a vigour among them which was altogether lacking at home. Under the influence of excitement the populace there ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... 526} manifestation; plainness &c. adj.; plain speaking; expression; showing &c. v.; exposition, demonstration; exhibition, production; display, show; showing off; premonstration|. exhibit[Thing shown]. indication &c. (calling attention to) 457. publicity &c. 531; disclosure &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... This book has freshness and plainness combined with thoroughness, and must commend itself to young students and teachers. 1 ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
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