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Plain   /pleɪn/   Listen
Plain

adjective
(compar. plainer; superl. plainest)
1.
Clearly revealed to the mind or the senses or judgment.  Synonyms: apparent, evident, manifest, patent, unmistakable.  "Evident hostility" , "Manifest disapproval" , "Patent advantages" , "Made his meaning plain" , "It is plain that he is no reactionary" , "In plain view"
2.
Not elaborate or elaborated; simple.  "Stuck to the plain facts" , "A plain blue suit" , "A plain rectangular brick building"
3.
Lacking patterns especially in color.  Synonym: unpatterned.
4.
Not mixed with extraneous elements.  Synonyms: sheer, unmingled, unmixed.  "Sheer wine" , "Not an unmixed blessing"
5.
Free from any effort to soften to disguise.  Synonym: unvarnished.  "The unvarnished candor of old people and children"
6.
Lacking embellishment or ornamentation.  Synonyms: bare, spare, unembellished, unornamented.  "Unembellished white walls" , "Functional architecture featuring stark unornamented concrete"
7.
Lacking in physical beauty or proportion.  Synonym: homely.  "Several of the buildings were downright homely" , "A plain girl with a freckled face"



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"Plain" Quotes from Famous Books



... should certainly not try. The only thing I will say about myself is, that I very much regret not having made known that you were married to me when plain honesty required it. Now, I look upon it as something over and done with, as far as I am concerned. I shall ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... a chair. Left to herself, she looked around the plain little room. Her eyes took in the pitiful details—the uneven boards of the floor, the sagging ceiling, the cracked window panes. How sharply the room contrasted with her own, and yet this was the room of Rose—with eyes like hers. A girl who had thoughts ...
— Gloria and Treeless Street • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... Christmas," Ted continued to soliloquize, as those who travel or ride on mountain or plain in solitude often get ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor

... of fact which Bunyan establishes from the sacred Scriptures, but he was, as to lettered lore, an unlearned man; at all events, no man could say of him that 'much learning has made thee mad.' Bunyan's is the plain common-sense scriptural account of this building; but he differs greatly from almost all our learned commentators—they imagining that this house was near the temple of Jerusalem. The Assembly of Divines, in their valuable annotations, suggest that it was so called 'because great store of trees, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... murderer, standin' there by th' two poor men he'd killed. At first it scared him. I can't remember everythin' about that awful day, but I can see Lem Lindsay's face as she screamed at him, just as plain this minute as I seed it then. I'll never forget that look if I ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... miles, we came to Pelican Creek, a broad grayish stream, having, notwithstanding its swift current, a look of being meant by Nature for stagnation. As we followed this unwholesome-looking water eastward we crossed some quaking, ill-smelling morasses, and at last rode out on a spacious plain, with Mounts Langford, Doane and Stevenson far to the south-east, and Mount Sheridan almost south-west of us. The first three are bold peaks, while about them lie lesser hills numberless and nameless. The day seemed absolutely clear, yet the mountains ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... lapel of the fellow's vest, which he had turned back. A nickeled badge was pinned upon it. "He's no thief; he's a detective—a plain-clothes man!" ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... of the square were occupied by plain brick buildings, three storeys high, which evidently constituted the ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... of a long wood, that we might take shelter therein, if there should be occasion $ and my eyes were the best part of the way behind me; but neither hearing nor seeing anything to annoy us, and finding by the declivity of the ground we should soon be in some plain or bottom, and have a chance of water for us all, and pasture for our muletto, which was now become one of us, we would not halt till we found a bottom to the hill, which in half an hour more we came to, and in some minutes after to a rivulet of fine clear water, where we resolved to spend ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock

... t' paper of a neet, Thou lets a vast o' words flow off thy tongue; Thou's gotten facts an' figures, plain as t' leet, An' argiments to ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman

... bow of the vessel, and thus be a signal to a vessel coming in an opposite direction. When the helm was amidships, the light was shown straight ahead, and could not be moved until the helm was shifted. The direction in which the vessel was going could not by any possibility be mistaken, and it was plain that if the lights from two ships crossed each other, then there was danger. If the lights were clear of each other, then the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 514, November 7, 1885 • Various

... magazine. On the other hand, there are authors whose books, compared with those of the popular favorites, do not sell, and yet they are eagerly sought for by editors; they are paid the highest prices, and nothing that they offer is refused. These are literary artists; and it ought to be plain from what I am saying that in belles-lettres, at least, most of the best literature now first sees the light in the magazines, and most of the second best appears first in book form. The old-fashioned people who flatter themselves upon their distinction in not reading magazine fiction, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... this he dreamed not. He would sit him down Thinking to work his problems as of old, And find the star he thought so plain a blur, The columned figures labyrinthine wilds Without my comment, blind and senseless scrawls That vexed him with their riddles; he would strive And struggle for a while, and then his eye Would lose its light, and over ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... its terrible reality. At length a hope, that seemed to up-spring from the depth of his despair, shed a faint light over the chaotic darkness that reigned within. "The information may be exaggerated," was his mental solving, "for it is plain that the writer, in penning it, was actuated by no feelings of good-will, and there may yet exist a hope of Anges's escape." With this idea, he opened another epistle, which he had received, but not yet read. It was from an elderly gentleman, who had always held Agnes in the deepest esteem, ...
— Woman As She Should Be - or, Agnes Wiltshire • Mary E. Herbert

... give him a chance to put in a word, but he sat silent. It was plain that he didn't intend to help out her ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... petty sparks. She was less indiscreet in her thoughts than in her acts, as is the way with the reflective daughter of impulse; though she had fine mental distinctions: what she could offer to do 'spirit to spirit,' for instance, held nothing to her mind of the intimacy of calling the gentleman plain Tom in mere contemplation of him. Her friend and champion was a volunteer, far from a mercenary, and he deserved the reward, if she could bestow it unalarmed. They were to meet in Egypt. Meanwhile England loomed the home of hostile forces ready to shock, had she been a visible planet, and ready ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... seated. The latter complied with the invitation, and began to say something in regard to the unpleasant duty which had devolved upon him, but Justice Field promptly replied: "Not so, not so; you are but doing your plain duty, and I mine in submitting to arrest. It is the first duty of judges to obey ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham

... have different ideas on the subject," he said sneeringly; "but that does not matter to me at the moment. My paid servant has absconded from my service, and I have come to get him. That is plain ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke

... so long as the fine open autumn weather, lasted, to making excursions in search of back-country huts. There are no roads or finger posts or guides of any sort in those distant places. When we inquired what was the name of "Mills" shepherd (the masters are always plain Smith or Jones, and the shepherds Mr.——, in the colonies) the answer was generally very vague. "Wiry Bill, we mostly calls 'im; but I think I've heerd say his rightful name was Mr. Pellet, mum. ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker

... set down as a plain, unvarnished, Teutonic lie that fuel has become so scarce in the States that minstrel shows will soon be abolished by Federal order because of a ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces

... a good many years ago an old gentleman from Rondout-on-the-Hudson—then plain Rondout—was walking up Broadway seeing the sights. He had not been in New York in ten or twelve years, and although he was an old gentleman who always had a cask of good ale in his cellar in the winter-time, yet he had never tasted the strange German beverage called lager-beer, which he had ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner

... stood. On a beautiful morning in summer, Fleur-de-Marie was allowing her glances to wander over the splendid landscape, which extended far away in the distance. Her hair was dressed, but she wore a morning dress of thin material, white, with narrow blue stripes; a large handkerchief of plain cambric falling upon her shoulders, left visible the two ends and the knot of a little silk cravat, of the same blue as the girdle of her dress. Seated in a large, high-backed elbow chair made of carved ebony and ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... especially of the castle, might have been a work of time; but he tempted, by the appearance of weakness, the Sultan Mahmud and his wazir to descend into the plain, with ten thousand cuirassiers, forty thousand of his foot-guards, and one hundred and twenty elephants, whose tusks are said to have been armed with sharp and poisoned daggers. Against these monsters, or rather against the imagination ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... my bruises sufficiently and picked myself up, I led them to Fred's place of concealment. His feet and legs were in plain sight, for, ostrich-like, he seemed to have imagined that if his head alone were covered, he was perfectly safe. Pat grasped him by the ankle, and despite of ...
— An Arrow in a Sunbeam - and Other Tales • Various

... an amount of information be obtained as will not only induce, but enable the Board of Trade immediately to frame some plain, practical measure, the enforcement of which would tend to lighten the appalling yearly death-list from shipwreck? The plan I would suggest is that the Board of Trade should prepare a chart of the British and Irish coasts, on which every lifeboat, rocket-apparatus, ...
— Saved by the Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... astonishing. A deep emerald hue will be imparted to the grass, and the frequent cuttings required will soon produce a turf that yields to the foot like a Persian rug. Any one who has walked over the plain at West Point can understand the value of these regular autumnal top-dressings. If the stable-manure can be composted and left till thoroughly decayed, fine and friable, all the better. If stable-manure ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe

... eclipsing for an instant everything else reflected in the little mirror. He shifted its position accordingly. But having to form his judgment of the change from that indirect view, he did not realise that his own feet and a portion of his legs were now in plain and startling view ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad

... in the usual way in the morning, but the pictures were so small that Tom could not make out the features or forms of the men. And it was plain that at least three men had been ...
— Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera - or, Thrilling Adventures while taking Moving Pictures • Victor Appleton

... woman by the day, put out washing, and bought bread at the bakehouse. All this time, Mrs. Argenter had her white skirts and her ruffled underclothing to be done up. "What could she do? She hadn't any plain things, and she couldn't get new, ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... in her hair and thrust through her huge earring-holes. The husband on the contrary changed to view like a kaleidoscope. Whatever pretty thing my wife might have given to Nei Takauti—a string of beads, a ribbon, a piece of bright fabric—appeared the next evening on the person of Nan Tok'. It was plain he was a clothes-horse; that he wore livery; that, in a word, he was his wife's wife. They reversed the parts, indeed, down to the least particular; it was the husband who showed himself the ministering angel in the hour ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... practical man must be right; we imply that he is right, since we call him practical, and I have to deplore, therefore, the fact that Frank on several occasions fell into a superstitious way of looking at things. The proof is only too plain from his own diary—not that he interprets the little events which he records, but that he takes such extreme pains to write them down—events, too, that are, to all sensibly-minded people, ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... had a hunch. I'll bet that by the time I get married to Strathie there'll be nothing left but republics, and no titles at tall. His people came over with Henry the Conqueror and his title will last just long enough for me to reach for it, and then—woof! Wouldn't it be just my luck to become plain Mrs. Strathdene after all I've had to go through! Honestly, m'mah, don't I ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... not studied the law in books, like you, and perhaps for that very reason I know better than you what is just and what is not. And I want to ask you a plain question: How is the law going to give me back my children and make up to me for the ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux

... the military processes, are so predominant as to almost monopolise "that part of ethics." The science of government, the plain wholesome business of managing a community for its own good; doing its work, advancing its prosperity, improving its morals—this is frankly understood and accepted as A Fight from start to finish. ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... science teaching should insure, is a grip on the scientific method and an illuminating insight into the forces of nature, and we are simply attempting to see whether the economic applications will make this grip firmer or weaker, and this insight clearer or more obscure. I trust that this point is plain, for it illustrates what I have just said regarding the danger of following a popular demand. We need no experiment to prove that economic science is more useful in the narrow sense than is pure ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley

... Sophy avoided her eye, and looked crestfallen, and when afterwards she gave a mute inquiring address, shook her head impatiently. It was plain that she had failed, and was too much pained and shamed by his poorness of spirit to be able as yet to ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the British nobleman with some curiosity. Evidently Lord Bedford was no dude. His suit was of rough cloth and ill-fitting. He was barely five feet six inches in height, with features decidedly plain, but with an absence of pretension that was creditable to him, considering that he was really what he purported to be. Stuyvesant walked by his side, nearly a head taller, and of more distinguished bearing, though of plebeian extraction. His manner was exceedingly ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger

... give you but little help; but I will tell you all I know. If I were to try to put into words the things I had to encounter before I could come near her, you would not understand what I meant. Nor do I understand the things myself. They seem quite plain to me at the time, but very cloudy when I come back. But I did succeed in getting one glimpse of her. She was fast asleep. She seemed to have suffered much, for her face was very thin, and as patient ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald

... "The splendor, glory, and power vanished, and all was changed to a fearful picture. I saw myself in a plain, dark dress, in a deserted, lonely room, with iron-barred windows, and a small iron door closed in the dreary white walls—it was a prison! And I heard whispered around me: 'Woe to you, fallen and dethroned one! You have wasted ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach

... depth of the basin, gave to their situation a melancholy gloom passing the duskiness of the hour. On the other hand, the light rested bright and gloriously on the snowy peak of Velan, still many thousand feet above them, though in plain, and apparently, in near view; while rich touches of the setting sun were gleaming on several of the brown, natural battlements of the Alps, which, worn with eternal exposure to the storms, still lay in sublime confusion at a ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... true that in the act of recognition she prescribed a condition which she had no power or authority to impose—that Texas should not annex herself to any other power—but this could not detract in any degree from the recognition which Mexico then made of her actual independence. Upon this plain statement of facts, it is absurd for Mexico to allege as a pretext for commencing hostilities against the United States that Texas is still a part of ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Polk • James Polk

... were running along the road now, grouping together under the poplar-trees, heads turned to the plain. Some teamsters pushed an empty wagon out beyond the line of trees and overturned it; others stood up in their wagons, reins gathered, long whips swinging. The wounded moaned incessantly; some sat up in the straw, heads turned also towards ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers

... space, His strength in mountains, His purity in snow-clad peaks and translucent air, His energy in rolling ocean-billows, His beauty in tumbling mountain-torrent, in smooth, clear lake, in cool, deep forest and in sunlit plain, His fearlessness in the hero, His patience in the saint, His tenderness in mother-love, His protecting care in father and in king, His wisdom in the philosopher, His knowledge in the scientist, His healing power in the physician, His justice in the judge, His wealth ...
— Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries • Annie Besant

... Juniper, but I've both heard and seen about you a great deal more than I like; so let me warn you again, I must have a plain, straightforward statement. What have you done with my money, and how can you justify your abandoning ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson

... of that which is consolatory while we are here, and of that which in plain reason ought to render us contented to stay no longer. You, Leontion, would make others better; and better they certainly will be, when their hostilities languish in an empty field, and their rancour is tired ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash ...
— A Wonderful Night; An Interpretation Of Christmas • James H. Snowden

... ascended the river, and having obstinately refused to accompany them on this, strengthens the supposition that he was well aware of the formidable danger, which awaited them, but in which it is plain he had ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... of Jesus' message and ministry which found such a welcome acceptance in the hearts of plain, ordinary men and women? What were those truths so simple that the ignorant and uncultured could understand them, yet so potent that once they began to ferment their possessors became known as men who had turned the world upside down? I think we can put them down under two heads which will ...
— Hidden from the Prudent - The 7th William Penn Lecture, May 8, 1921 • Paul Jones

... the laboratory table a plain envelope and a quarter sheet of paper on which were printed, except for his own name instead of mine, an almost exact replica of the note which I ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve

... least. The surprise made the others I had been dining seem statues from the stone age, and only Mr. Graves' fork failed to hang fire. His appetite is as strong as his nerves and Delia Hawes looked at his composure with the relief plain in her eyes. Henrietta's smile in the judge's direction was doubtful. But they were not all my lovers and why that ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess

... the scale of reasoning life 'tis plain, There must be, somwhere, such a rank as man. Till hymen brought his lov-delighted hour, There dwelt no joy in Eden's rosy bower. The head reclined, the loosened hair, The limbs relaxed, the mournful air:— See, he looks ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham

... mighty and fabulous plain, half buried in sand he came upon a great Sphinx, looming in the starlight. He watched her face and knew that the tone enveloped him no longer. Why it had ceased set him to wondering not unmixed with fear. The dawn filtered over the head of the Sphinx, and there were ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... "it's a very clever invention. If such a thing had really happened in my poultry-run I admit I should have been proud and interested to tell people about it. But I'd rather stick to fact, even if it is plain fact." All the same his mind dwelt wistfully on the story of the Seventh Pullet. He could picture himself telling it in the train amid the absorbed interest of his fellow-passengers. Unconsciously all sorts of little details and improvements began ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki

... we proposed to stop a day, lay through Argentan on the Orne, a pretty town on a height commanding a fine view of plain and forest; the country is little remarkable the whole way, but cultivated and pretty. At Seez the fine, delicate, elevated spires of the Cathedral mark the situation of the town long before and after it is reached; but, besides that, it possesses no attractions sufficient ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... and through stony lanes, which opened on a sandy plain; we rested at Beer Hassan, till our luggage came up. There were fourteen mules and three horses, besides several donkeys for the moukeries. Having taken some coffee we proceeded on our way. The scenery ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore

... and reflect on the words with which you will stir the souls of the people to-morrow morning; but know one thing—Truth has many forms, and her aspects are as manifold as those of the Godhead. As the sun does not travel over a level plain or by a straight path—as the stars follow a circuitous course, which we compare with the windings of the snake Mehen,—so the elect, who look out over time and space, and on whom the conduct of human life ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... of the Babylonian Jews happened just before or just after St. Peter wrote his epistle from Babylon, we cannot tell. But it is plain, I think, that either this matter or what led to it was in his mind. It seems most likely that it had happened a little before, and that he wrote to the Jews in the north-east of Asia Minor, to warn them against giving way to the same ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... northward was a brilliantly illuminated, level, and slightly drifted snow-plain, our imperial highway, presenting a spectacle grand and sublime; and we were truly grateful and inwardly prayed that this condition would last indefinitely. Without incident or accident, we marched on for fifteen hours, pacing off mile after mile in ...
— A Negro Explorer at the North Pole • Matthew A. Henson

... proceeded to investigate more carefully the luminous orb. But he failed to trace any of the lineaments, supposed to resemble a human face, that mark the lunar surface; he failed to decipher any indications of hill and plain; nor could he make out the aureole of light which emanates from what astronomers have designated Mount Tycho. "It is not ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne

... and firm you were, like the breast of a quail; and I mind me how the shine of your cheeks was like the glimmer of an apple after you've rubbed it with a bit of cloth. Well, there you stood in some sort of smooth, plain, clingin' gown, a little bit loose and tumblin' at the throat, and your pretty foot with a brown slipper pushed out, just savin' you from bein' prim. That's why the men liked you—you didn't carry a sermon ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... in picturing the physical appearance of the mysterious interior. Some thought it a vast level plain, where the few and sluggish rivers were lost in shallow lakes, to disappear by evaporation; others again, believed it to be an immense bed of sand where no rivers formed, and the thirsty sands absorbed the scanty rainfall; and many imagined an inland sea connected with the ocean by subterranean ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc

... girl herself. Indeed, it tore Cally's heart to seem to oppose her lover, pleading so strongly and sweetly for her against herself. Yet she had several times been tempted to interrupt him, so clear did it seem to her that he did not understand even now all that she had supposed was fully plain to him ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... the hare on the hillside as well as in the plain," replied Seyton: "we will drive ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARY STUART—1587 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... it . . . the habit of honesty of thought, not native to Marise's heart, but planted there by her relation with Neale's stark, plain integrity. Feeding unchecked on its own food, during the long years of her marriage it had grown insensibly stronger and stronger, till now, tyrant and master, with the irresistible strength of conscious power, it could quell ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... of oldest and most significant land routes in Europe; Moravian Gate is a traditional military corridor between the North European Plain and the ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... had tampered with the dynamo, and the result was that the ship must complete her voyage without electric lights and—far more important—without the use of the wireless. Sam Hall started to blurt a comment on this, but a glance from Hovey silenced him. It was plain that the bos'n would risk no conversation from his blunt sailors while Harrigan was in earshot. The Irishman hurried through his breakfast and took his bucket and scrubbing brush toward the bridge, for he had many questions to ask McTee. He had scarcely left the forecastle ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand

... ever sail up the Hudson?" Tom asked him. "All the trails up the steep mountains are as plain as day from the river. If you want to discover a trail get a bird's-eye view. Don't you know that aviators discover trails that even hunters never knew about before? If the kidnappers went up that mountain, they probably went an easy ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... of the valley (which is quite level, and paved throughout with flat tiles), extends a continuous row of sixty little houses. These, having their backs on the hills, must look, of course, to the centre of the plain, which is just sixty yards from the front door of each dwelling. Every house has a small garden before it, with a circular path, a sun-dial, and twenty-four cabbages. The buildings themselves are so precisely alike, that one can in no manner be distinguished ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... Master Alwyn?" asked a charming voice; and Alwyn for the first time perceived the young form of Sibyll, by the embrasure of a window, from which might be seen in the court below a gay group of lords and courtiers, with the plain, dark dress of Hastings, contrasting their gaudy surcoats, glittering with cloth-of-gold. Alwyn's tongue clove to his mouth; all he had to say was forgotten in a ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... glad. The young journeyman thought, "With this thou hast enough for thy whole life," and went joyously about the world and never troubled himself at all whether an inn was good or bad, or if anything was to be found in it or not. When it suited him he did not enter an inn at all, but either on the plain, in a wood, a meadow, or wherever he fancied, he took his little table off his back, set it down before him, and said, "Cover thyself," and then everything appeared that his heart desired. At length he took it into his head to go back to his father, ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... don't you come and shake off this silly gloom? To tell you the plain truth, Oddity, your mind really requires opening, and there is nothing like travelling for that. You are, I am afraid, not a well-informed quadruped. I insist upon your embarking with us to-night, and we'll make a rat of ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.

... fifth. But these little things were part of the great difficulty of making an harmonious whole by changing, cutting out and inserting. When Ford and John Murray's reader asked him for his life they probably meant a plain statement of a few "important facts," such facts as there could hardly be two opinions about, such facts as fill the ordinary biography or "Who's Who." Borrow knew well enough that these facts either produce no effect in the reader's mind or ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... the longed-for triumph-mark; The spent sea sighs as one that grieves in sleep. The unveiled moon along the rippling plain Casts many a keen, cold, shifting silvery spark, Wild as the pulses of strange joy, that leap Even in the quick ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone

... How the plain resounded with cheers! For now the Army led by a single run, and Tyrrell was safe ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock

... slope support the sides of the edifice. Rocks and wild shrubs are strewn over the incline. Half-way up the slope are a few houses, which show above the white line of the wall and are dominated by the brown church; thus some bright colours are interspersed between the two plain tints. ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert

... the 23d of February, a supreme effort carried the troops across the Horseshoe Plain, breast-deep in water, and out upon high ground two miles from Vincennes. By this time many of the men were so weakened that they could drag themselves along only with assistance. But buffalo meat and corn were confiscated from the canoes of some passing squaws, and soon the troops were ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg

... fell out to the furtherance of the gospel. Emulations, indeed, are not among the works of the Spirit. In the strenuous labors of the two divided denominations, greatly exceeding what had gone before, it is plain that sometimes Christ was preached of envy and strife. Nevertheless Christ was preached, with great and salutary results; and therein do we rejoice, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... the most effective of our urban elaborations we must go back to the first of city builders of whom we have knowledge. The Assyrians made terraces, nature teaching them. On the level plain building ground was raised forty feet for effect. Like all artists of precivilization, the Assyrians placed adornment before convenience, as appeared in Nineveh on the Tigris and Babylon on the Euphrates. At Thebes and Palmyra it was the same, their palaces of alabaster, if one chooses to ...
— Some Cities and San Francisco and Resurgam • Hubert Howe Bancroft

... regions filled by hostile troops; at their own request the general ventured to lead the infantry also into the river, and although the water reached up to the shoulders of the men, it was crossed without accident. It was high time. If the narrow plain, which separated the town of Ilerda from the mountains enclosing the Ebro were once traversed and the army of the Pompeians entered the mountains, their retreat to the Ebro could no longer be prevented. Already they had, notwithstanding the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... sense we live and move and have our being in the realm of spiritual forces. "Our life is hid with Christ in God." That assertion is no mere mystic phase, but a plain and direct assertion of an absolute spiritual truth. Our real life, all our significant action, is in the invisible realm, and the manifestation in the physical sphere is simply the results and effects of which the processes and causes are all in the ethereal world. Prayer, ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting

... this verse is to show the utility and necessity of acts. Without acting no one, however clever, can earn any fruit. Both the vernacular translators give ridiculous versions of this plain aphorism. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... Most men of Jo's age were standing before their mirror of a Saturday night, whistling blithely and abstractedly while they discarded a blue polka-dot for a maroon tie, whipped off the maroon for a shot-silk, and at the last moment decided against the shot-silk in favor of a plain black-and-white, because she had once said she preferred quiet ties. Jo, when he should have been preening his ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... questionable virtue. In lessening our own value, we lessen our own responsibility, and our responsibility is tremendous. One life can make the difference of a cathedral spire in a town of low-built huts or of a snow mountain in an ugly plain. I am sure of it—and so are you. So is everybody who thinks about it. But people do not think. It is sometimes much more convenient to believe that one is too insignificant to have any responsibility. But to my mind there is not a vagabond in the street who is not directly helping on our national ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie

... determined by the town there shall be erected, unless the town at the annual meeting agrees upon some suitable substitute therefor, a substantial post of not less than eight feet in height, near the upper end of which shall be placed a board or boards, with plain inscription thereon, directing travellers to the next town or towns and informing ...
— The Road and the Roadside • Burton Willis Potter

... relieved from. Out of six Sovereigns, exercising incongruous rights or usurpations on this unhappy island, we pray to be relieved of three. The Berlin Treaty was not our choice; but if we are to have it at all, let us have it plain. Let us have the text, and nothing but the text. Let the three Consuls who have no position under the treaty cease from troubling, cease from raising war and making peace, from passing illegal regulations in the face of day, and from secretly blackmailing the Samoan Government into renunciations ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... on both sides of a sheet. In writing a business letter, if the letter requires more than one page, use plain sheets of the same size and quality without the letterhead. These additional sheets should be numbered at the top. The name or initials of the firm or person to whom the letter is going should also appear at the top of the sheets. This letter should never run over to a second sheet ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther

... rapidity; and in the fall and winter seasons, they will be fat for market with the food they gather from the otherwise worthless soil over which they run. Rocky, bushy, and evergreen grounds, either hill, dale, or plain, are good for them, wherever the soils are dry and friable. The rabbit is a gross feeder, living well on what many grazing animals reject, and gnawing down all kinds of bushes, briars, ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen

... themselves. By obliterating Pao-ch'ai's supernatural beauty, by reducing to ashes Tai-yue's spiritual perception, and by destroying and extinguishing my affectionate preferences, the beautiful in the inner chambers as well as the plain will then, at length, be put on the same footing. And as they will keep advice to themselves, there will be no fear of any disagreement. By obliterating her supernatural beauty, I shall then have no incentive for any violent affection; by dissolving her spiritual perception, I will have no ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... majority of the seedlings in all five beds were mongrelised in the most complicated manner, some taking more after one variety, and some after another. The effects of the Kohl-rabi were particularly plain in the enlarged stems of many of the seedlings. Altogether 233 plants were raised, of which 155 were mongrelised in the plainest manner, and of the remaining 78 not half were absolutely pure. I repeated the experiment by planting ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin

... gowns with tight bodices were generally adopted; the women wore over them a tight jacket, reaching to a little below the hips, often trimmed with fur when the gown was richly ornamented, and itself richly ornamented when the gown was plain. They also began to plait the hair, which fell down by the side of the face to the neck, and they profusely decorated it with pearls or gold or silver ornaments. Jeanne, Queen of Navarre, wife of ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... jest of mariner, disturbed the stillness. All in the near view was clothed in midnight loveliness, and all in the distance bespoke the solemnity of nature at peace. The city and the Lagunes, the gulf and the dreamy Alps, the interminable plain of Lombardy, and the blue void of heaven, lay alike in a common and ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper

... degree of dramatic action. "A pastoral," says Alexander Pope, "is an imitation of the action of a shepherd, or one considered under that character. The form of this imitation is dramatic or narrative, or mixed of both; the fable simple, the manners not too polite nor too rustic; the thoughts are plain, yet admit a little quickness and passion, but that short and flowing; the expression humble, yet as pure as the language will afford; neat but not florid; easy ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter

... that Santa Fe should be took along to Hart's funeral, and not hung till everybody got back to town again. Joe was a serious-minded man, and he said the moral effect of running things that way would pan out a lot richer than if they just had a plain hanging before the funeral ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier

... swiftly, and now and then when Philip caught a glimpse of his face he saw in it a despair as great as his own. The trail led along the backbone of a huge ridge, and then twisted down into a broad plain; and across this they traveled, one after the other, two moving, silent shadows in a desolation that seemed without end. Beyond the plain there rose another ridge, and half an hour after they had struck the top of it Pierre halted, and pointed off into the ghostly ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood

... the Gonzaghi. Thus it seems that the needy nobleman had preserved a scrap of his heraldic trophies till the last, although he had to patch his one pain of breeches in bed at Rome. It may be added, as characteristic of Bernardo's misfortunes, that even the plain marble sarcophagus, inscribed with the words Ossa Bernardi Tassi which Duke Guglielmo erected to his memory in S. Egidio at Mantua, was removed in compliance with a papal edict ordering that monuments at a certain height above ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... queer- looking thing behind was some local efflorescence. So he resumed his dalliance with the herbaceous border, and was never more surprised in his life than when it turned out to be a boy and a butterfly-net. Green muslin, then, but a plain piece of cane for the stick. None of your collapsible fishing-rods—"suitable for a Purple Emperor." Leave those to the ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne

... hewn from the solid rock!—and Garry tried to see it and all that it held at one glance. He grasped the extent of the stone vault, a hundred feet across; the distant walls were plain ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various

... what's more, you wouldn't have hurt a soul. The place was dead empty—not so much as a cur to sit on the sidewalk—and the only hint of life was the laughing and banjo-playing indoors. You could hear that plain enough. Every second house in the place was a saloon, and every saloon seemed to have a billiard-table and a banjo player. I never heard anything like it. I should say, if you divided the population into four parts, that two of these were playing billiards, one tum-tumming ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... she. 'There she is out this bitter cold morning, and—and—' She didn't finish, but she meant the child. For we were both looking out, and we saw, as plain as we ever saw anything in our lives, Mrs. Abby Bird walking off over the white snow-path with that child holding fast to her hand, nestling close to her as if she had ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

... contemptuously. 'There goes the razor again! Take the plain, human construction of what happens. Ask yourself what the vulgar man would do, and do likewise; that's the ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... hard honest scientific study; sore travail, which God hath given to the sons of men, to be exercised therewith; and a further code of ethics, not claimed as directly handed down from Heaven, but proven by plain facts of common experience. We do not need to imitate or parody the authoritative utterance of any priesthood; we want an exposition which a bright child can understand ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... think it is pretty plain that Piedro the Cunning has not managed quite so well as Francisco ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth

... moon is full, there is a large, dark, oval spot on it to the left, as you face it, and close to the east rim, almost halfway up; this is the Plain of Grimaldi; it is about twice the size of the whole State of New Jersey; but it is proof of a pair of excellent eyes if you ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... art; it was the beginning of a kind of democratic movement against the stern domination of such things as were privileged in shape and colour. A thousand things, ugly or unimaginative in themselves, a plain face, a sallow complexion, an awkward gesture, a dull arrangement of lines, could be made delightful and suggestive. A wet yard, a pail and mop, and a servant washing fish under a pump could become, in the hands of Peter de Hoogh, and thanks to the ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... Church, he was of her opinion. After approving the term transubstantiation, he adds[599], "And because what is spiritual among the Jews is called real, the terms really, substantially, and essentially, are used in the Protestant Confessions, and by their Doctors." It is plain from what he subjoins, that he sought rather to unite different sentiments by means of equivocal expressions, than by an exact Creed, which might be susceptible of only one sense. "We must not condemn, says he, those who assure us that the Eucharist ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny

... rock the track was plain again; it had been well worn once, though neither foot nor hoof much had been along it for many a year. It takes a good while to wear out a track ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... woods they went, over mound and hollow, across frozen swamp and plain, through brush and break, until near noon, when they halted for rest and refreshment. While Walter cut firewood, Robin and Roy cleared away the snow, using their snow-shoes as shovels, and prepared ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne

... invasion and the present periodic visits of Kurdish shepherds to the pastures of the upper Tigris.[789] Here we have the same contrast of geographic conditions as in Italy and India, a wide, populous alluvial plain occupying the continental section of the peninsula, and a less attractive highland or mountainous region in the outlying ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... what would have happened those clear Sabbath mornings had some one punctuated the sermon with a wild scream, or interrupted the long prayer with a loud Amen! And so most striking to me, as I approached the village and the little plain church perched aloft, was the air of intense excitement that possessed that mass of black folk. A sort of suppressed terror hung in the air and seemed to seize us,—a pythian madness, a demoniac possession, that lent terrible ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... It is plain that, in addition to the larger cabin space and the smaller cabins,—"staterooms," nowadays,—common to ships of the MAY-FLOWER'S size and class, the large number of her passengers, and especially of women and children, made it necessary to construct other cabins between ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... Mounted Police as well as the sombre black of the English Church and the Presbyterian clergymen, added much to the whirling colour scheme, as well as to the joy of the occasion. But look where I would I could not find "Son-in-law," and though the blushing Athabasca was often in the dance, it was plain to see her lover was not there, for even the handsome policemen, though they paid her marked attention, gave no sign, either of them, of being the lucky one. In the number of partners, Oo-koo-hoo's granddaughter ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming

... execution of Ney. A few chance passers, in the early morning of the 7th of December 1815, saw a small body of troops waiting by the wall of the garden of the Luxemburg. A fiacre drove up, out of which got Marshal Ney in plain clothes, himself surprised by the everyday aspect of the place. Then, when the officer of the firing party (for such the spectators now knew it to be) saw whom it was he was to fire on, he became, it is said, perfectly petrified; and a peer, one of the judges of Ney, the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... Mr Liversedge. "If I drive them away by preaching error, I shall answer to God for their souls. But if men choose to go because they find truth unpalatable, I have no responsibility for them. The Lord has not given me those souls; that is plain. If He have given them to another sower of seed, by all means let them go to him as ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt

... their officers, Colonel Alexander Gal, proved himself a very distinguished leader. Corps after corps were organised and sent to aid General Bem. "It was a terrible time; the men had to fight the enemy in the plain while our old men and women defended their homesteads against the jealous ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... bridal tour, I presume," he continued, as they approached the bench where Basil had left Isabel. She had now the company of a plain, middle-aged woman, whose attire hesitatingly expressed some inward festivity, and had a certain reluctant fashionableness. "Well, this is my third bridal tour to Niagara, and my wife 's been here once ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... fencing in other countries has not been as extensive as in the western United States. While it has been used on a comparatively large scale in Argentina and Australia, both these countries use a much larger quantity of plain wire fence, and in Argentina there is an important consumption of high-carbon oval fence wire of great strength, which apparently forms the only kind of fence that meets the conditions in a ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... open plain. Rather more than a mile away a dozen or more riders were loping along the trail of ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... it stretched out illimitably, a plain of many-colored marble, where thousands of worshippers might kneel together, and shadowless angels tread among them without brushing their heavenly garments against those earthly ones. The roof! the dome! Rich, gorgeous, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... plain spoken; but you need not be alarmed about our safety. I have not lived among these Red Skins for eight years or more, without knowing their habits and tricks," answered Mr McDonald. "However, by all means, ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston

... Plain are the melancholy facts of what we do see. Following that pitiful conception of labor as a curse, comes the very old and androcentric habit of despising it as belonging to women, ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... could not answer at the moment. There were many reasons why she should not continue to live her present unsatisfying life, and yet she did not know how to tell her friend. They were all plain enough to her, but some of them she could not put in words for the hearing of Janet, even. She had been saying to herself, all along, that it was natural, and not wrong for her to grow tired of her useless, aimless life, and to long for earnest, bracing ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson

... five-and-twenty or so, with a thoughtful face and deep-set eyes, of a rather dark complexion, as if he came from the south; his manner was grave, and he was soberly dressed in a black velvet coat with purple silk facings, and wore a plain broad collar of linen instead of the fashionable lace; he was a man of middle height and well made, and he moved easily. In his left hand he carried a musical instrument ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford

... their son to read. The closed door in Father Paul's life was unlocked now, and his son entered and understood, wondering why he had been so blind that he had not seen it all before. The writing on the wall had certainly been plain enough. And he smiled to remember the readiness with which he had believed the plausible story ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous

... our left, after doubling the bend, was a large marshy plain protected by a dyke, behind which sharpshooters were thought to be lurking. Commander Macomb ordered the marines of the squadron to land, and under command of Acting Ensign Fesset, of the Wyalusing, to move along the bank, behind the levee, and look out for the ...
— Reminiscences of Two Years in the United States Navy • John M. Batten

... fellow, who was always on the stairs morning and night, went up to pay something on account. It stares one in the face. They were seen together at the Ambigu Theatre—the young wench and her old tom cat. Upon my word of honor, they're living together, it's quite plain." ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola

... part of the peninsula of Yucatan had been for generations ruled in peace by a confederation of several tribes, whose capital city was Mayapan, ten leagues south of where Merida now stands, and whose ruins still cover many hundred acres of the plain. Somewhere about the year 1440 there was a general revolt of the eastern provinces; Mayapan itself was assaulted and destroyed, and the Peninsula was divided among a ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... Ascott's suggestion—which really is my own idea—I have decided not to build all those Rhine castles, which useless notion, if I am not mistaken, originated with you. I don't want to disfigure my beautiful wilderness. Mrs. Ascott and I had a very plain talk with Hamil and we forced him to agree with us that the less he did to improve my place the better for the place. He seemed to take it good-humouredly. He left yesterday to look over Mrs. Ascott's place and plan for her a formal garden and Trianon at Pride's ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... cottages. She believed she had seen such at Deerbrook. The old woman replied by saying, she believed Margaret might have understood some few things among the many the poor sick creature had been saying. Not one, Margaret declared; but it was so plain that she was not believed, that she had little doubt of Hester's watch having been harboured in this very house, if it was not ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau

... The plain unvarnished tale of the travel in Midian, undertaken by the second Expedition, which, like the first, owes all to the liberality and the foresight of his Highness Ismail I., Khediv of Egypt, forms the subject of these volumes. During ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... was obliged, when the enemy began to move upon him, to alter his plans and move towards the hills on his left. At the foot of these his army was drawn up in a long line, with the artillery on the heights beyond, where it would sweep the extensive plain of Breitenfeld in his front. Over this plain the Swedes and Saxons advanced in two columns, towards a small stream named the Lober, which ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris

... him so far as to anticipate in 1875 what are now known as "flaming arcs," the exceedingly bright and generally orange or rose-colored lights which have been introduced within the last few years, and are now so frequently seen in streets and public places. While the arcs with plain carbons are bluish-white, those with carbons containing calcium fluoride ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin

... occupied by the mouths of the Rhone, and spread in a triangle from Avignon as the apex, to Cette in the west, and Fos in the east. This rubble, washed down from the Alps, forms the substratum of the immense plain that inclines at a very slight angle into the Mediterranean, and extends for a considerable distance below the sea. Not only did the Rhone bring down these boulders, but also the Durance, which enters the ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould

... the interior of Servia are plain houses, with white-washed walls, deal desks, shelves, and presses, but having been recently built, have generally a respectable appearance. The Chancery of State and Senate house are also quite new constructions, close to the palace; but in the country, ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... would do. He had been a humble suitor for Adrianna for years, but her mother had not approved, and Adrianna, who was dutiful, had repulsed him delicately and rather sadly. He was the only lover whom she had ever had, and she felt sorry and grateful; she was a plain, awkward girl, and had a patient recognition ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

... enter there. None in heaven ever transgress again: families are reunited and dwell together in harmony: they possessed a bodily form, the senses and the remembrance of earthly life; but no white man ever enters heaven. Thus they said. He looked and saw an inclosure upon a plain, just without the entrance of heaven. Within it was a fort. Here he saw the 'destroyer of villages,' walking to and fro within the inclosure. His countenance indicated a great and good man. They said to Handsomelake, 'The man you see is the only pale face that ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson

... financial standards. The colleges sustain democratic ideals and methods by discouraging costly luxury, and encouraging simplicity of living without making life bare of all that is elevating and refining. They believe that "plain living and high thinking" is the way to call out the talent hedged about by financial difficulties, as well as to spur those gifted with fortune to higher aims and nobler efforts. The student who has the promise of a large inheritance has intimate social ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker

... had laid everything out for her in the bedroom; the filmy new nightgown over a chair, the blue satin mules underneath, her plain toilet-things on a dressing-table, and over another chair the exquisite ivory crepe negligee with its floating rose ribbons. She took a hasty bath—there was so much hot water that she was quite reconciled for a moment to being a check-booked and wolf hounded Mrs. Harrington—and slid straight ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer

... taste in residence is plain: No palaces his heart rejoice: A cottage in a lane (Park Lane ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley

... knew it, and, it was a mater of the greatest pride with her, these charms. I was very much captivated by her splendid appearance and could not keep my eyes from her. Next day Mrs. John Staton, a country neighbor of my aunts, came in to make a visit, She was very plain, wore a calico dress, waist-apron, and she was knitting a sock. After she left aunt said to me: "Carry, you did not seem to like Mrs. Staton's society as you did Mrs. Porter's; but one sentence of Mrs. Staton's is worth all Mrs. Porter said. Mrs. Porter lives ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... captains were quite too lax in this, presuming on the power of their nation and remembering the liberties enjoyed under reciprocity, while too forgetful of the stern letter of the treaty which the Canadians were executing against them. It was plain on the other hand that however wrongly Canadian subalterns may at times have acted, both the Canadian and the British Government intended to keep within the letter of the law, while forcing us to fish off their coasts at as ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... was still new we heard on our near left the sound of heavy shell firing; of which, however, the men took no more notice than if they had been manoeuvring on Salisbury Plain. They marched on as stolidly and cheerily as ever, chatting and laughing as they marched. But presently there broke upon our ears the familiar sound of the pom-pom, which months ago at the Modder had so shaken ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry

... man—"are said to be part of an ancient volcano. I don't know whether that theory is true! It would be interesting to examine whether the summits have been ground down in places by ice, and whether there are traces of volcanic action at different geological epochs; the plain, I suppose, has been under the sea at no very distant period. It is also interesting to notice, as we can up here, how the situation of the town is explained by the river affording easier shipping on a coast poor in natural harbours; moreover, this ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee

... the red building stands out before the eyes of Aristid Kuvalda, so plain, so massive, and clinging so strongly to the earth, that it seems to be sucking away all its life. It appears to be laughing coldly at the Captain with its gaping walls. The sun pours its rays on them as generously as it does on the miserable ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky

... man, whose dictum is considered law in the world of fashion in which you move and reign, with an assured social position, a handsome fortune, and a popularity that would have obtained for you the hand of any beautiful or wealthy woman whom you sought, have deliberately chosen to make me, a poor, plain, brown-faced little school-teacher, your wife. Not because you wanted me, not because you thought or cared about me, one way or the other, but simply because, in a time of urgent necessity, I was literally the only available woman near you. ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.

... gave him the cause of this his justification, makes the case more plain, by declaring "That there is, besides this certainty of evidence, a certainty of adherence." In which having most excellently demonstrated what the certainty of adherence is, he makes this comfortable use of it, "Comfortable," ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton

... of the society, both public and private, no flattery nor any undue influence is used, but the most plain and explicit statements of its faith and principles are laid before the inquirer, so that the whole ground may be comprehended, as far as possible, by every ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... plain to us that the Confederacy was tottering to its fall, and we were only troubled by occasional misgivings that we might in some way be caught and crushed under the toppling ruins. It did not seem possible that with the cruel tenacity with which the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... are taught in Masonry; on this theme we contemplate, and by its dictates endeavor to regulate our conduct; hence, while influenced by this principle, hypocrisy and deceit are unknown among us, sincerity and plain dealing distinguish us, and the heart and tongue join in promoting each other's welfare, and rejoicing in each other's prosperity. Union is that kind of friendship which ought to appear conspicuous in every Mason's conduct. It is ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan

... limit themselves to whiskey and Radnor, or whiskey and Magi water. There are as many kinds of bubbling, gurgling, mineral waters in the caverns of the Mausoleum Club as ever sparkled from the rocks of Homeric Greece. And when you have once grown used to them, it is as impossible to go back to plain water as it is to live again in the forgotten house in a side street that you inhabited long ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock

... of Thracian origin, who in the earliest historical times occupied the plain of the Maris (Maros), in the region now known as Transylvania. Thyrsi is supposed to be a Scythian form of Trausoi (Trausi), a Thracian tribe mentioned by Stephanus of Byzantium. They are described by Herodotus (iv. 104) as of luxurious habits, wearing gold ornaments (the district ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... we shall fail in our attempt, because the soda and the sulphuric acid attract each other by a force which is superior, and (by way of supposition) is represented by the number 8; while the lime tends to unite with this acid by an affinity equal only to the number 6. It is plain, therefore, that the sulphat of soda will not be decomposed, since a force equal to 8 cannot be overcome by a force equal only ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet

... lying in a churchyard; nor was my horse to be seen, but I heard him soon after neigh somewhere above me. On looking upwards, I beheld him hanging by his bridle to the weather-cock of the steeple. Matters were now very plain to me; the village had been covered with snow overnight: a sudden change of weather had taken place: I had sunk down to the churchyard whilst asleep, gently, and in the same proportion as the snow had melted away; and what in the dark I had taken to be a stump of a little tree appearing ...
— Stories to Read or Tell from Fairy Tales and Folklore • Laure Claire Foucher

... nature so differs from that of every one else? Can he so have accustomed his system to poisons, that, as with the King of Pontus, they are ineffectual to help or to harm him? His constitution must be iron! The vitality of a dozen men is in him, or he'd have been dead a month ago. Well, it's plain he's no worse, if he's no better. Drugs are useless, and he must be left to nature and his amazing constitution. This stupor, this utter death of all the faculties and senses for so long a time, is wonderful. ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg

... at the gate! O heavens! Spake you not these words plain: 'Sirrah knock me here, rap me here, knock me well, and knock me soundly'? And come you now with ...
— The Taming of the Shrew • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... wa'n't enough measles to go through the Dennett family, so they didn't start in on 'em. There, I ain't going to finish the stalk; I'm going to draw in a little here and there all over the rug, while I'm in the sperit of plannin' it, and then it will be plain work of matching colors ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin

... half the period in the mobilization of the great armies. They were occupied for the second half of the period in the advance across the Rhine of German numbers greatly superior to the Allies, and also through the plain of Northern Belgium. The operation, as calculated by the German General Staff, was delayed by but a very few days—one might almost say hours—by the hastily improvised resistance of Liege, and the imperfect defence of their country ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc

... Sommers looked at her searchingly, curious to find where this power lay. Her face had grown white and set. The features and the figure were those of a large woman. Her hair, bronzed in the sunlight as he remembered, was dark in the gloom of this room. The plain, symmetrical arrangement of the hair above the large brow and features made her seem older than she was. The deep-set eyes, the quivering lips, and the thin nostrils gave life to the passive, restrained face. The passions of her life lay just ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick



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