Diamonds are best plain set. [ Rolle ]
Plain as a nose in a man's face. [ Rabelais ]
Plain dealing is easiest and best. [ Jane Porter ]
Make every bargain clear and plain,
That none may afterwards complain. [ Proverb ]
Light flashes in the gloomiest sky,
And music in the dullest plain. [ Keble ]
I have a dog of Blenheim birth.
With fine long ears and full of mirth;
And sometimes, running over the plain,
He tumbles on his nose:
But quickly jumping up again
Like lightning on he goes! [ Ruskin ]
Thy plain and open nature sees mankind
But in appearance, not what they are. [ Froude ]
A poor pleader may do in a plain cause. [ Proverb ]
Dull, conceited hashes,
Confuse their brains in college classes;
They gang in stirks, and come oot asses,
Plain truth to speak. [ Burns ]
What makes all doctrines plain and clear?
About two hundred pounds a year.
And that which was proved true before,
Prove false again? two hundred more. [ Butler ]
So plain is the distinction of our words,
That many have supposed it a spirit
That answers. [ Webster ]
To rock and river, plain and wood,
I cry, Ye are my kin. While I, O Earth!
Am but an atom of thee, and a breath,
Passing unseen and unrecorded, like
The tiny throb here in my temple's pulse. [ Philip J. Bailey ]
'Tis in books the chief
Of all perfections to be plain and brief. [ Butler ]
It rose, that chanted mournful strain,
Like some lone spirit's over the plain;
'Twas musical, but sadly sweet,
Such as when winds and harp-strings meet,
And take a long unmeasured tone,
To mortal minstrelsy unknown. [ Byron ]
There are no tricks in plain simple faith. [ Shakespeare ]
Be plain in dress, and sober in your diet;
In short, my deary, kiss me! and be quiet. [ Lady M. W. Montagu ]
To win the secret of a weed's plain heart. [ Lowell ]
Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set. [ Bacon ]
The hungry stomach rarely scorns plain fare. [ Horace ]
'Tis not the many oaths that makes the truth.
But the plain single vow that is vowed true. [ William Shakespeare ]
Abundance without discretion is plain penury. [ Matteo Gribaldi ]
Love is a child that talks in broken language,
Yet then he speaks most plain. [ Dryden ]
When peace and mercy, vanished from the plain,
Sprung on the viewless winds to heaven again,
All, all forsook the friendless guilty mind;
But Hope, the charmer, lingered still behind. [ Thomas Campbell ]
Plain dealing is dead, and died without issue. [ Proverb ]
Say that she rail; why then I'll tell her plain.
She sings as sweetly as a nightingale;
Say that she frown; I'll say she looks as clear
As morning roses, newly washed with dew;
Say she be mute and will not speak a word,
Then I'll commend her volubility
And say she uttereth piercing eloquence. [ William Shakespeare ]
Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief. [ William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost, Act V. Sc. 2 ]
Lo! darkness bends down like a mother of grief
On the limitless plain, and the fall of her hair
It has mantled a world. [ Joaquin Miller ]
Things all are big with jest; nothing that's plain
But may be witty, if thou hast the vein ...
Many affecting wit beyond their power,
Have got to be a dear fool for an hour. [ George Herbert ]
Gentility without ability is worse than plain begging. [ Scotch Proverb ]
Honesty and plain dealing puts knavery out of the bias. [ Proverb ]
Neither marry nor buy an old beast; the reason is plain. [ Proverb ]
A few strong instincts and a few plain rules suffice us. [ Emerson, from Wordsworth ]
Facts are plain spoken; hopes and figures are its aversion. [ Addison ]
Crying is the refuge of plain women but the ruin of pretty ones. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]
Prejudice, which sees what it pleases, cannot see what is plain. [ Aubrey de Vere ]
Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
He delights in horses, and dogs, and the grass of the sunny plain. [ Horace ]
The hoof, in its four-footed galloping, shakes the crumbling plain. [ An onomatopoetic line from Virgil ]
Plain dealing is a jewel, but they that wear it are out of fashion. [ Proverb ]
Flattery sits in the parlour, when plain dealing is kicked out of doors. [ Proverb ]
In plain truth, it is not want, but rather abundance, that creates avarice. [ Montaigne ]
To speak but little becomes a woman: and she is best adorned who is in plain attire. [ Democritus ]
Great is the soul, and plain. It is no flatterer, it is no follower; it never appeals from itself. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]
When a man has no design but to speak plain truth, he may say a great deal in a very narrow compass. [ Steele ]
There is no objection to plain women being Puritans ; it is the only excuse they have for being plain. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]
Tombs are the clothes of the dead; a grave is but a plain suit, and a rich monument is one embroidered. [ Thomas Fuller ]
The way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty, and to some one else if she is plain. [ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest ]
The way to wealth is as plain as the road to market. It depends chiefly on two words, - industry and frugality. [ Franklin ]
No girl who is well bred, kind, and modest is ever offensively plain; all real deformity means want of manners or of heart. [ John Ruskin ]
Goodman Fact is allowed by everybody to be a plain-spoken person, and a man of very few words; tropes and figures are his aversion. [ Addison ]
Many a beggar at the crossway, or gray-haired shepherd on the plain, hath more of the end of all wealth than hundreds who multiply the means. [ Tupper ]
A chine of honest bacon would please my appetite more than all the marrowpuddings, for I like them better plain, having a very vulgar stomach. [ Dryden ]
No woman, plain or pretty, has any commonsense at all. Common-sense is the privilege of our sex and we men are so self-sacrificing that we never use it. [ Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband ]
That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona. [ Johnson ]
Plain women are always jealous of their husbands, beautiful women never are; they have no time, they are always so occupied in being jealous of other people's husbands. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]
Good-humor will sometimes conquer ill-humor, but ill-humor will conquer it oftener; and for this plain reason, good-humor must operate on generosity, ill-humor on meanness. [ Greville ]
There are few things more singular than the blindness which, in matters of the highest importance to ourselves, often hides the truth that is plain as noon to all other eyes. [ Rev. Dr. Croly ]
Most men take least notice of what is plain, as if that was of no use; but puzzle their thoughts to be themselves in those vast depths and abysses which no human understanding can fathom. [ Bishop Sherlock ]
Next to clothes being fine, they should be well made, and worn easily; for a man is only the less genteel for a fine coat, if, in wearing it, he shows a regard for it, and is not as easy in it as if it was a plain one. [ Chesterfield ]
Persuasion, Sect, or Denomination? Persuasion, the definition of which should be plain to every one who speaks English, is often ludicrously used in the sense of sect or denomination; as, He is of the Methodist persuasion
. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]
Fine declamation does not consist in flowery periods, delicate allusions of musical cadences, but in a plain, open, loose style, where the periods are long and obvious, where the same thought is often exhibited in several points of view. [ Goldsmith ]
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 ]
History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality. A man who moralizes is usually a hypocrite, and a woman who moralizes is invariably plain. There is nothing in the world as unbecoming to a woman as a Nonconformist conscience. [ Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere's Fan ]
It were happy if we studied nature more in natural things; and acted according to nature, whose rules are few, plain, and most reasonable. Let us begin where she begins, go her pace, and close always where she ends, and we cannot miss of being good naturalists. [ William Penn ]
Men of quality never appear more amiable than when their dress is plain. Their birth, rank, title and its appendages are at best invidious; and as they do not need the assistance of dress, so, by their disclaiming the advantage of it, they make their superiority sit more easy. [ Shenstone ]
The summit charms us, the steps to it do not; with the heights before our eyes, we like to linger in the plain. It is only a part of art that can be taught; but the artist needs the whole. He who is only half instructed speaks much and is always wrong; who knows it wholly is content with acting and speaks seldom or late. [ Goethe ]
It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them. Generally, also, a downright fact may be told in a plain way; and we want downright facts at present more than anything else. [ Ruskin ]
I would rather have a young fellow too much than too little dressed; the excess on that side will wear off, with a little age and reflection; but if he is negligent at twenty, he will be a sloven at forty, and stink at fifty years old. Dress yourself fine where others are fine, and plain where others are plain; but take care always that your clothes are well made and fit you, for otherwise they will give you a very awkward air. [ Chesterfield ]
When I gaze into the stars, they look down upon me with pity from their serene and silent spaces, like eyes glistening with tears over the little lot of man. Thousands of generations, all as noisy as our own, have been swallowed up by time, and there remains no record of them any more. Yet Arcturus and Orion, Sirius and Pleiades, are still shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the shepherd first noted them in the plain of Shinar! [ Carlyle ]
When I behold a fashionable table set out in all its magnificence, I fancy that I see gouts and dropsies, fevers and lethargies, with other innumerable distempers lying in ambuscade among the dishes. Nature delights in the most plain and simple diet. Every animal but man keeps to one dish. Herbs are the food of this species, fish of that, and flesh of a third. Man falls upon everything that comes in his way; not the smallest fruit or excrescence of the earth, scarce a berry or a mushroom can escape him. [ Addison ]
No woman is a genius: women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. They represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals. There are only two kinds of women, the plain and the colored. The plain women are very useful. If you want to gain a reputation for respectability you have merely to take them down to supper. The other women are very charming. They commit one mistake, however. They paint in order to try to look young. Our grandmothers painted in order to try to talk brilliantly. Rouge and esprit used to go together. That has all gone out now. As long as a woman can look ten years younger than her own daughter she is perfectly satisfied. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]