Top 100 Plain Quotes
#1. The chief imagination of Christendom,
Dante Alighieri, so utterly found himself
That he has made that hollow face of his
More plain to the mind's eye than any face
But that of Christ.
William Butler Yeats
#2. Be subtle, various, ornamental, clever, And do not listen to those critics ever Whose crude provincial gullets crave in books Plain cooking made still plainer by plain cooks.
W. H. Auden
#3. The genius of the American system is that through freedom we have created extraordinary results from plain old ordinary people.
Phil Gramm
#4. A perception is not a story, and no amount of sensitivity can make a story-writer out of you if you just plain don't have a gift for telling a story.
Flannery O'Connor
#5. Crying is for plain women. Pretty women go shopping.
Oscar Wilde
#6. Really. It's plain for anyone to see that he cares for you. His eyes rarely leave you and he's terribly attentive. I'm positive he's in love with you, Terri.
Lynsay Sands
#7. Hard work ain't so easy, strength training is just plain old hard work and it ain't easy.
Mike Berry
#8. There's a way you political folks have of coming round and round a plain right thing
Harriet Beecher Stowe
#10. The big spells," Mg. Thane answered, his expression plain but his bright eyes smiling. Did he know how much those eyes gave away?
Charlie N. Holmberg
#11. It is the obvious which is so difficult to see most of the time. People say 'It's as plain as the nose on your face.' But how much of the nose on your face can you see, unless someone holds a mirror up to you?
Isaac Asimov
#12. The duty of man is not a wilderness of turnpike gates, through which he is to pass by tickets from one to the other. It is plain and simple, and consists but of two points
his duty God, which every man must feel; and, with respect to his neighbor, to do as he would be done by.
Thomas Paine
#13. The opposite of a plain truth, Neils Bohr liked to repeat, is a plain falsehood. But the opposite of a deep truth is another deep truth.
Rebecca Goldstein
#14. Like psychoanalysis, constitutional jurisprudence has become a game without rules. By defying the plain meaning of words, ignoring context and history, and using a little ingenuity, you can make the Constitution mean anything you like.
Joseph Sobran
#15. In the end, Ted Kennedy was a politician, plain and simple. Yet he embodied how politics and public service can be successfully intertwined. You can't be a good public servant without being a good politician. Kennedy was both.
Chuck Todd
#16. Diplomacy is the art of telling plain truths without giving offense.
Winston Churchill
#17. Our government should speak a common language with the American people - plain English.
Alan Siegel
#18. It is no exaggeration to describe plain English as a fundamental tool of government.
Margaret Thatcher
#19. Many people are embarrassed to create in public. It feels unseemly to them, like kissing in plain view ... Make a spectacle of yourself.
Eric Maisel
#20. You - you strange - you almost unearthly thing! - I love as my own flesh. You - poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are - I entreat to accept me as a husband.
Charlotte Bronte
#21. In breaking news, the sky. The earth. Life. Existence as an unchanging plain with horizons of birth and death in the faint distance.
Joseph Fink
#22. I could have blamed it on the intoxication of youth.
Others might find fault on just intoxication.
My parents would say that it was an act of plain stupidity.
Reality would point out that it was Thursday night at college and the youth are prone to err.
Mara Joaquin
#23. large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer
Charles Dickens
#24. Do not lose heart. We were made for these times ... For years we have been learning, practicing, been in training for ... and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes
#25. Though a hundred crooked paths may conduct to a temporary success, the one plain and straight path of public and private virtue can alone lead to a pure and lasting fame and the blessings of posterity.
Edward Everett
#26. I am very careful about what I eat, and I exercise pretty much every day, whether it be rock-climbing, running, Muay Thai, yoga, horse riding, stand-up paddleboarding, or plain and simple working out.
Sebastian Roche
#27. I don't give up. That makes me incredibly resilient or maybe stupid or just plain stubborn. Whichever ...
Destiny Booze
#28. The perception of meaning, as I see it, more specifically boils down to becoming aware of a possibility against the background of reality or, to express it in plain words, to becoming aware of what can be done about a given situation.
Viktor E. Frankl
#29. In all my life I never met anyone so frivolous as you two, so crazy and unbusinesslike. I tell you in plain Russian your property is going to be sold and you don't seem to understand what I say.
Anton Chekhov
#30. The way to wealth is as plain as the way to market. It depends chiefly on two words, industry and frugality: that is, waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both. Without industry and frugality nothing will do, and with them everything.
Benjamin Franklin
#31. By the plain form of my delirium I will blast the obstruction of every form around me into something barely called shadow. I sail. I swim to you. I know the water.
Steve Erickson
#32. But as I remember it, he looked alternately bored and preoccupied throughout the meal, as if, while one part of him was drinking Bordeaux and cutting his food into bite-sized morsels, the other half was engaged with shepherding a herd of goats across a bone-dry plain.
Nicole Krauss
#33. Dying before you pay someone back is just plain rude.
Sara Wolf
#34. I never realized that life could be as difficult for a beautiful woman as it is for a plain one," he said.
"Life can be difficult for everyone," she replied.
"Misery makes no distinction between prince and pauper.
Patricia Grasso
#35. I am a Ford, not a Lincoln. My addresses will never be as eloquent as Mr. Lincoln's. But I will do my very best to equal his brevity and his plain speaking.
Gerald R. Ford
#36. But that was the thing about life. Sometimes it's boring, and nothing happens. Sometimes everything happens at once. And sometimes it's just plain stupid.
Joe Kimball
#37. Many people confuse a Dom personality with a Dom's position of authority. The two are not exactly the same or interchangeable. A true Dom dominates. Plain and simple. And by dominate, we mean does what it takes to get a job done. Even if that means submit.
Lucian Bane
#38. About the only thing we have left that actually discriminates in favor of the plain people is the stork.
Kin Hubbard
#39. The average, healthy, well-adjusted adult gets up at seven-thirty in the morning feeling just plain terrible.
Jean Kerr
#40. The staunch, old soakers, on the other hand men who, if put on tap, would have yielded a red alcoholic liquor, by way of blood usually confined themselves to plain brandy-and-water, gin, or West India rum; and,
Nathaniel Hawthorne
#41. Buy other authors' books when you go to their events. Even if you aren't going to read it. Even if you are going to give it away. Even if you aren't interested. Not just for the author but for the bookstore. It's karma and just plain good manners.
M.J. Rose
#42. Speak simple, speak plain, speak clear, otherwise you may not be understood! The objective of a speech is to be understood! Let your message be obvious, as obvious as the message of the wind for the sailboat!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#43. Molecular genetics, our latest wonder, has taught us to spell out the connectivity of the tree of life in such palpable detail that we may say in plain words, "This riddle of life has been solved."
Max Delbruck
#44. There is no more pressure on my rudder, he once remarked. Plain sailing, no drag on other people either. A bit of dancing now and then, that's fine. I still see those girls, but I pretend they're paintings. Or advertisements. But that was only later.
Cees Nooteboom
#45. To her amazement,Ellie breaks into an ear-to-ear smile.Oddly enough, it's this moment I realize that despite her husky voice and Parisian attire,she's sort of...plain. But friendly-looking.
That still doesn't mean I like her.
Stephanie Perkins
#46. The problem with people who have power is that they start thinking more about what it takes to keep that power than they do about what's right or wrong or just plain a bad idea.
Mira Grant
#47. People don't tend to hassle me because when I've got a hat on, I look like a banker. I'm just a plain guy.
Kevin Spacey
#48. while modernity is not Christianity, modernity is the product of a Christian civilization. Lately the defects of modernity have been made plain to us while its virtues have been taken for granted.
John Mark Reynolds
#49. The year was 1922, and the Curies had transformed plain earth into something rare and unimagined. A secret of the universe has been revealed, and a restless world dreamed of transformation. [p. 205]
Kim Edwards
#50. See, some people, they're sticky like Velcro. You're sticky. Your problems stick to you like fuzzballs from the laundry; you take them everywhere with you and people can see them plain as day. Ty, he's like spandex. Nothing sticks to him, and he's shiny on the outside
Abigail Roux
#51. Noam Chomsky skittles and skithers all over the political landscape to distract the reader's attention from the plain truth.
Sidney Hook
#52. Were I as base as is the lowly plain, And you, my Love, as high as heaven above, Yet should the thoughts of me, your humble swain,.
Joshua Sylvester
#53. The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.
Kate Chopin
#54. Sometimes, I can see the future stretched out in front of me - just as plain as day. The future hanging over there at the edge of my days. Just waiting for me.
Lorraine Hansberry
#55. Utopia has a way of hiding in plain sight.
David Hopper
#56. He arrived tentatively at his own idea, that melancholy arose from natural, sometimes beneficent forces. Talking about it in plain human terms was his first step toward claiming his own ground as a person who, through no fault of his own, needed help.
Joshua Wolf Shenk
#57. Brendon's big hands slid under her skirt and took hold of the plain white cotton panties she had to dig through her entire suitcase to find.
Shelly Laurenston
#58. Oh, sweet thy current by town and by tower, The green sunny vale and the dark linden bower; Thy waves as they dimple smile back on the plain, And Rhine, ancient river, thou'rt German again!
Horace Binney Wallace
#59. The plain truth is that the period I study is the 16th century, and they were absolutely obsessed with witches and spiritual beings.
Deborah Harkness
#60. Republicans support opening the floodgates to special interest money and suppressing the right to vote. It's just plain wrong.
Nancy Pelosi
#61. I stopped dieting on plain, boring, unsatisfying food and started eating rich, delicious meals full of flavor and, yes ... fat. I got skinny on fat and realized I would never have to diet again.
Suzanne Somers
#62. Dorrigo glimpsed a complex mud of intimacies normally invisible to the world - the shared sleep, scents, sounds, the habits endearing and frustrating, the pleasures and sadnesses, small and large - the plain mortar that finally renders two as one. Her hair was pulled back
Richard Flanagan
#63. Although Salinger had long since cut me out of his life completely and made it plain that he had nothing but contempt for me, the thought of becoming the object of his wrath was more than I felt ready to take on.
Joyce Maynard
#64. Mostly I was just plain freaked. Not mentally tottering, I think a human mind that's moderately well-adjusted can absorb a lot of strangeness before it actually totters, but freaked, yes.
Stephen King
#65. The art of hiding in plain sight used to be second nature, and now it has become the whole of him
Helen Dunmore
#66. This mug of mine is as plain as a barn door. Why should people pay 35 cents to look at it?
Spencer Tracy
#67. I had grown into a worrier, a girl on constant guard for catastrophes large and small, for the disappointments I now sensed were hidden all around us right in plain sight.
Karen Thompson Walker
#68. George Orwell's contention was that it is a sure sign of trouble when things can no longer be called by their right names and described in plain, forthright speech.
Christopher Lasch
#69. The older I get the more mixed up life seems. When you're little, it's all so plain. It's all laid out like a game ready to play. You think you know exactly how it's going to go. But things happen ...
Maud Hart Lovelace
#70. You could see a man talking to himself as just plain crazy, or read about the criminal on the front page of the daily paper and ponder the corruption of the human heart, without having to think about whether the criminal or lunatic said something about your own fate.
Barack Obama
#71. For an artist to go and play in a country that occupies other people's land and oppresses them, the way Israel does, is plain wrong. They should say no.
Roger Waters
#72. He didn't notice me at first. They never do. That's one of the things about being plain - you often get ignored.
Samantha Warren
#73. There's nothing like the discipline of having to work on a cold film set on the Danubian plain in Bulgaria. Boy, does it get cold.
John Rhys-Davies
#74. The honesty of her plain skin was striking without foundation.
Abby Slovin
#75. I considered; my life was so wretched it must be changed, or I must die. After a season of darkness and struggling, light broke and relief fell. My cramped existence all at once spread out to a plain without bounds ...
Charlotte Bronte
#76. The bed sheet brigade is bad enough, but the real threat to Americans and human rights today is the plain clothes Klux in the halls of government and certain black-robed Klux on court benches.
Stetson Kennedy
#77. Some experience of popular lecturing had convinced me that the necessity of making things plain to uninstructed people, was one of the very best means of clearing up the obscure corners in one's own mind.
Thomas Huxley
#78. If the God of Christianity exists, the evidence for His existence is abundant and plain so that it is both unscientific and sinful not to believe in Him.
Cornelius Van Til
#79. Strictly speaking, there is but one real evil: I mean acute pain. All other complaints are so considerably diminished by time that it is plain the grief is owing to our passion, since the sensation of it vanishes when that is over.
Mary Wortley Montagu
#80. The plain white vinegar sold in gallon jugs in stores is particularly unsuitable for a health treatment, since it is made from petroleum and is completely synthetic.
Kim DeWalt
#81. We can hardly pride ourselves on being the world's preeminent democracy, after all, if the large numbers of citizens spend half their waking hours in what amounts, in plain terms, to a dictatorship.
Barbara Ehrenreich
#83. That's another one of Sandor's rules for hiding in plain sight: always appear to be weaker than I actually am. Never push it.
Pittacus Lore
#84. There is one plain rule of life. Try thyself unweariedly till thou findest the highest thing thou art capable of doing, faculties and outward circumstances being both duly considered, and then do it.
John Stuart Mill
#85. Putting it in plain terms, the general public must be reduced to its traditional apathy and obedience, and driven from the arena of political debate and action, if democracy is to survive.
Noam Chomsky
#86. He felt sorry for me. He wanted a plain country woman and that's what he married, and then he held it against me the rest of my life like I was supposed to change and surprise him somehow.
Marsha Norman
#87. A revelation is to be received as coming from God, not because of its internal excellence, or because we judge it to be worthy of God; but because God has declared it to be His in as plain and undeniable a manner as He has declared creation and providence to be His.
William Law
#88. To the Public, for the indulgent ear it has inclined to a plain tale with few pretensions.
Charlotte Bronte
#89. You spend so much time wondering who you are, don't you think? You flounder about, searching for your identity, when most of the time it is plain as the nose on your face. You struggle with questions of purpose and need, and forget that the answers are found mostly inside yourselves.
Terry Brooks
#90. I raise my eyebrows. "You're going to settle for plain old vanilla?" He cocks his head to one side. "Nothing plain or old about vanilla-it's a very intriguing flavor," he breathes.
E.L. James
#91. Any musician who says he is playing better either on tea, the needle, or when he is juiced, is a plain, straight liar. When I get too much to drink, I can't even finger well, let alone play decent ideas ... You can miss the most important years of your life, the years of possible creation.
Charlie Parker
#92. Manners are especially the need of the plain. The pretty can get away with anything.
Evelyn Waugh
#93. The rap on Obama has been that he is a little too cool and aloof. The rap on Romney may be that he is just plain callous.
David Horsey
#94. Life is just a plain bloody mess, that's all. And people are fools.
Athol Fugard
#95. Her profile as well as her stature and bearing seemed to gain the more dignity from her plain garments, which by the side of provincial fashion gave her the impressiveness of a fine quotation from the Bible, - or from one of our elder poets, - in a paragraph of to-day's newspaper.
George Eliot
#96. Next week I shall ask the Congress of the United States to act, to make a commitment it has not fully made this century, to the proposition that" - he had gone formal, but now he reverted to plain language - "race has no place in American life or law.
Ken Follett
#97. Some good, some so-so, and lots plain bad: that's how a book of poems is made, my Friend.
Martial
#98. The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.
Alan W. Watts
#99. Amateurs are not afraid to make mistakes or look ridiculous in public. They're in love, so they don't hesitate to do work that others think of as silly or just plain stupid.
Austin Kleon
#100. Common observation and a plain understanding is the source of all art.
Joshua Reynolds
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
