A Quote by George Eliot

Plainness has its peculiar temptations and vices quite as much as beauty.

George Eliot

Quote Topics

Beauty Much Peculiar Plainness Quite Temptations Vices

Quote Author

George Eliot
British - Novelist
November 22, 1819 - December 22, 1880

Of all vices take heed of drunkenness; other vices are but fruits of disordered affections--this disorders, nay, banishes reason; other vices but impair the soul--this demolishes her two chief faculties, the understanding and the will; other vices make their own way--this makes way for all vices; he that is a drunkard is qualified for all vice.

Francis Quarles

Do not try to find a place free from temptations and troubles. Rather, seek a peace that endures even when you are beset by various temptations and tried by much adversity.

Thomas a Kempis

If Beauty is excuse enough for Being, it sure takes Plainness then to feel the real necessity for—Doing.

Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

Accentuated plainness and accentuated vice ought to bring about harmony. Beauty lies in harmony, in style, whether it be the harmony of ugliness or beauty, vice or virtue.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

Who has not experienced how, on near acquaintance, plainness becomes beautified, and beauty loses its charm, exactly according to the quality of the heart and mind? And from this cause am I of opinion that the want of outward beauty never disquiets a noble nature or will be regarded as a misfortune. It never can prevent people from being amiable and beloved in the highest degree.

Fredrika Bremer

The dangers of apparent self-sufficiency explain why Our Lord regards the vices of the feckless and dissipated so much more leniently than the vices that lead to worldly success.

C. S. Lewis

In truth, it requires not only a large intellect, but a large heart, to judge with becoming charity of the peculiar temptations of riches.

Shirley Bassey

Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.

Donna Tartt

Be neat, Philothea; let nothing be negligent about you. It is a kind of contempt of those with whom we converse, to frequent their company in uncomely apparel; but, at the same time, avoid all affectation, vanity, curiosity, or levity in your dress. Keep yourself always, as much as possible, on the side of plainness and modesty, which, without doubt, is the greatest ornament of beauty, and the best excuse for the want of it.

Saint Francis de Sales

You are quite the beauty. If no one has ever told you that before, know that right now. You are quite the beauty.

Anis Mojgani

To do justice to the figure of Kafka in its purity and its peculiar beauty one must never lose sight of one thing: it is the purity and beauty of a failure.

Walter Benjamin

If anti-Semitism is a variety of racism, it is a most peculiar variety, with many unique characteristics. In my view as a historian, it is so peculiar that it deserves to be placed in a quite different category. I would call it an intellectual disease, a disease of the mind, extremely infectious and massively destructive.

Paul Johnson

Above all you must illumine your own soul with its profundities and its shallows, and its vanities and its generosities, and say what your beauty means to you or your plainness, and what is your relation to the ever-changing and turning world.