The countenance
Is more eloquent than the tongue. [ Lavater ]
With countenance demure, and modest grace. [ Spenser ]
A countenance more in sorrow than in anger. [ William Shakespeare, Hamlet ]
The countenance is the portrait of the soul. [ Cicero ]
Your thoughts close and your countenance loose. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]
A gift with a kind countenance is a double present. [ Proverb ]
It is difficult not to betray guilt by the countenance. [ Ovid ]
An unforgiving eye, and a damned disinheriting countenance. [ R. B. Sheridan ]
It is pride in fashion, that puts humility out of countenance. [ Proverb ]
Out of clothes out of countenance, out of countenance out of wit. [ Ben Jonson ]
Alas! how difficult it is to prevent the countenance from betraying guilt. [ Ovid ]
The countenance is the portrait of the soul, and the eyes mark its intentions. [ Cicero ]
It is a sin against hospitality to open your doors, and shut up your countenance. [ Proverb ]
A noble heart, like the sun, showeth its greatest countenance in its lowest estate. [ Sir P. Sidney ]
God gave man an upright countenance to survey the heavens, and to look upward to the stars. [ Ovid ]
Beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies. [ Milton ]
Child of mortality, whence comest thou? Why is thy countenance sad, and why are thine eyes red with weeping? [ Anna Letitia Barbauld ]
Dissembling profiteth nothing; a feigned countenance, and slightly forged externally, deceiveth but very few. [ Seneca ]
We conceive, I think, more nobly of the weak presence of Paul than of the fair and ruddy countenance of David. [ John Ruskin ]
Perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out of countenance, and make a seeming impossibility give way. [ Jeremy Collier ]
Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is the countenance of all science. [ Wordsworth ]
There is in every human countenance either a history or a prophecy, which must sadden, or at least soften, every reflecting observer. [ Coleridge ]
A beautiful smile is to the female countenance what the sunbeam is to the landscape; it embellishes an inferior face and redeems an ugly one. [ Lavater ]
Evil is a far more cunning and persevering propagandist than good, for it has no inward strength, and is driven to seek countenance and sympathy. [ Lowell ]
Let men say, we be men of good government; being governed, as the sea is, by our noble and chaste mistress the moon, under whose countenance we steal. [ William Shakespeare ]
The lightsome countenance of a friend giveth such an inward decking to the house where it iodgeth, as proudest palaces have cause to envy the gilding. [ Sir Philip Sidney ]
Look in the face of the person to whom you are speaking, if you wish to know his real sentiments; for he can command his words more easily than his countenance. [ Chesterfield ]
How sweet it would be to live in society if the countenance always reflected the disposition, if decency were virtue, and if our maxims were our rules of action. [ J. J. Rousseau ]
The intellect of man sits enthroned visibly upon his forehead and in his eye, and the heart of man is written on his countenance; but the soul reveals itself in the voice only. [ Longfellow ]
The truly great and good in affliction bear a countenance more princely than they are wont, for it is the temper of the highest hearts, like the palm tree, to strive most upwards when it is most burdened. [ S. P. Sidney ]
Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men or animals. Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; others again are plain, honest and upright, like the broad-faced sunflower and hollyhock. [ Henry Ward Beecher ]
Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because they are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty out-values all the utilities of the world. These gay natures contrast with the sombre countenance of ordinary nature; they are like music heard out of a workhouse. [ Berz ]
The eye is continually influenced by what it cannot detect; nay, it is not going too far to say that it is most influenced by what it detects least. Let the painter define, if he can, the variations of lines on which depend the change of expression in the human countenance. [ Ruskin ]
Good-nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit, and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty. It shows virtue in the fairest light; takes off in some measure from the deformity of vice; and makes even folly and impertinence supportable. [ Addison ]
Pale, Pallid, or Wan? All these terms denote an absence of color, but vary in degree, pallid rising upon pale, and wan upon pallid. Paleness in the countenance may be temporary, but pallidness and wanness are caused by sickness, hunger, or fatigue, and are of longer duration. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]
A book becomes a mirror, with the author's face shining over it. Talent only gives an imperfect image, - the broken glimmer of a countenance. But the features of genius remain unruffled. Time guards the shadow. Beauty, the spiritual Venus, - whose children are the Tassos, the Spensers, the Bacons, - breathes the magic of her love, and fixes the face forever. [ Willmott ]
Custom is a violent and treacherous school mistress. She, by little and little, slyly and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority; but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or the power so much as to lift up our eyes. [ Montaigne ]
We see a world of pains taken and the best years of life spent in collecting a set of thoughts in a college for the conduct of life, and after all the man so qualified shall hesitate in his speech to a good suit of clothes, and want commonsense before an agreeable woman. Hence it is that wisdom, valour, justice and learning cannot keep a man in countenance that is possessed with these excellencies, if he wants that inferior art of life and behaviour called good-breeding. [ Steele ]