A Quote by W. H. Auden

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

Quote Topics

Books Clever Cooking Cooks Crave Critics Crude Ever Listen Made Plain Provincial Still Subtle Those Various Whose

Quote Author

W. H. Auden
English - Poet
February 21, 1907 - September 29, 1973

I am in fact a Hobbit in all but size. I like gardens, trees, and unmechanized farmlands; I smoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking; I like, and even dare to wear in these dull days, ornamental waistcoats. I am fond of mushrooms (out of a field); have a very simple sense of humor (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome); I go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much.

J. R. R. Tolkien

A plain sock by itself is terribly boring, but it could score points by having a clever stitch pattern, or maybe by being made out of a very beautiful yarn that's an enchantment to work with. (Sadly, it is still infuriatingly true that being beautiful without being clever is almost worth more points than being clever without being beautiful, but such are the rules of life and knitting-they are cruel, but there anyway).

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

In many ways, I've chosen to be plain, almost too plain, too self-effacing. Like, if I record a vocal and I don't like the way it sounds, I would have them turn it up and take the reverb off it to make it as plain as possible.

Ben Folds

A word about 'plain English.' The phrase certainly shouldn't connote drab and dreary language. Actually, plain English is typically quite interesting to read. It's robust and direct-the opposite of gaudy, pretentious language. You achieve plain English when you use the simplest, most straightforward way of expressing an idea. You can still choose interesting words. But you'll avoid fancy ones that have everyday replacements meaning precisely the same thing.

Bryan A. Garner

God may be subtle, but he isn't plain mean.

Albert Einstein

I think I'm plain. I'm normal. I'm plain. I try not to stand out. I don't wear colors.

Cathy Moriarty

No one in this world, so far as I know--and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me--has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has any one ever lost public office thereby. The mistake that is made always runs the other way. Because the plain people are able to speak and understand, and even, in many cases, to read and write, it is assumed that they have ideas in their heads, and an appetite for more. This assumption is folly. They dislike ideas, for ideas make them uncomfortable.

H. L. Mencken

Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities.

Mark Twain

To make yourself understood you have to think plain and write plain.

William Feather

For all the books in his possession, he still failed to read the stories written plain as day in the faces of the people around him.

Emma Donoghue

What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straghtforward men.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

You are not so good a Christian when you are neglecting a plain duty as when you are performing it. And joining the church is a plain duty for all who mean to be Christians.

Washington Gladden

Everything has been created twice once on a mental plain and once on a physical plain.

Bob Proctor

The picture. A great plain, comprising the entire Jerusalem district, where is the supreme Commander-in-Chief of the forces of good, Christ our Lord: another plain near Babylon, where Lucifer is, at the head of the enemy.