Plainness Quotes

“Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! - I have as much soul as you, - and full as much heart! And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you!”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty, and to someone else if she is plain.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“When a woman is plain, people say, 'What beautiful eyes you have, beautiful hair.”
― Anton Chekhov, Uncle Vanya

“She watched the glass, a plain woman, changing all to the delightful illusion of beauty. There was still time: for her ugliness was destined to bloom late, hidden first by the unformed gawkiness of youth, budding to plainness in young womanhood and now flowering to slow maturity in her early forties, it still awaited the subtle garishness which only decay could bring to fruition: a garishness which, when arrived at, would preclude all efforts at the mirror game.”
― Brian Moore, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne

“And do I ask, wherefore my heart
Falters, oppressed with unknown needs?
Why some inexplicable smart
All movement of my life impedes?
Alas! in living Nature’s stead,
Where God His human creature set,
In smoke and mould the fleshless dead
And bones of beasts surround me yet!”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust

“O full and splendid Moon, whom I
Have, from this desk, seen climb the sky
So many a midnight,—would thy glow
For the last time beheld my woe!
Ever thine eye, most mournful friend,
O'er books and papers saw me bend;
But would that I, on mountains grand,
Amid thy blessed light could stand,
With spirits through mountain-caverns hover,
Float in thy twilight the meadows over,
And, freed from the fumes of lore that swathe me,
To health in thy dewy fountains bathe me!

Ah, me! this dungeon still I see.
This drear, accursed masonry,
Where even the welcome daylight strains
But duskly through the painted panes.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust

“I can’t relate to your razzle-dazzle, your wish
for voluptuous when my symphony is spanx.”
― Kelli Russell Agodon, Hourglass Museum

“Simple is pretty because it is plain; simple is effective because it gives an understandable clear message; simple is genius because it gains our admiration with a minimum effort!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“We are, by our human natures, foolish. We engage in all manner of nonsense and create all sorts of problems for ourselves—some of them quite serious. There may be times in our lives when we find our world crumbling around us and see that we are losing that which we value most. In these circumstances, when the voices of our forthright friends are urgent, it would be more prudent to consider their warnings than complain about the tone of their voices or assert that they are not diplomatic. Real friends serve us best when they call out dangers that we cannot perceive. Plainspoken friends, particularly those who may have experienced the things we now suffer, may see and understand more than we can see and understand ourselves. It would be wise to listen to their counsel, even—perhaps especially—when our first instinct is to insist that our circumstances are different, that they do not understand us, or that they have hurt our feelings. Forthright friends are rare. If you have such friends, listen humbly and keep them close: you have discovered treasure.”
― Jean-Michel Hansen

“Women tend to imagine man’s romanticism as an on-off switch within their reach.”
― B.S. Murthy, Glaring Shadow - A Stream of Consciousness Novel