I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that.
—Lauren Bacall (1924–2014) American Film Actress
Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. The very simplicity and nakedness of man’s life in the primitive ages imply this advantage, at least, that they left him still but a sojourner in nature. To be awake is to be alive. Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. Every man is a builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man’s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
The face is the index of the mind.
—Common Proverb
There is in every human countenance, either a history or a prophecy, which must sadden, or at least soften, every reflecting observer.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
The faces which have charmed us the most escape us the soonest.
—Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish Novelist, Poet, Playwright, Lawyer
All men’s faces are true, whatsoever their hands are.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
We can see nothing whatever of the soul unless it is visible in the expression of the countenance; one might call the faces at a large assembly of people a history of the human soul written in a kind of Chinese ideograms.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
I am the family face; flesh perishes, I live on, projecting trait and trace through time to times anon, and leaping from place to place over oblivion.
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English Novelist, Poet
He had a face like a blessing.
—Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish Novelist
Alas after a certain age, every man is responsible for his own face.
—Albert Camus (1913–60) Algerian-born French Philosopher, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist, Author
A face is too slight a foundation for happiness.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) English Aristocrat, Poet, Novelist, Writer
The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of features. It reflects neither character nor soul, nor what we call the self. The face is only the serial number of a specimen.
—Milan Kundera (b.1929) Czech Novelist
Your face is a book, where men may read strange matters.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
What is a face, really? Its own photo? Its make-up? Or is it a face as painted by such or such painter? That which is in front? Inside? Behind? And the rest? Doesn’t everyone look at himself in his own particular way? Deformations simply do not exist.
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Artist
If you have a job without aggravations, you don’t have a job.
—Malcolm S. Forbes (1919–1990) American Publisher, Businessperson
The tartness of his face sours ripe grapes.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
Tom’s great yellow bronze mask all draped upon an iron framework. An inhibited, nerve-drawn; dropped face—as if hung on a scaffold of heavy private brooding; and thought.
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
It has to be displayed, this face, on a more or less horizontal plane. Imagine a man wearing a mask, and imagine that the elastic which holds the mask on has just broken, so that the man (rather than let the mask slip off) has to tilt his head back and balance the mask on his real face. This is the kind of tyranny which Lawson’s face exerts over the rest of his body as he cruises along the corridors. He doesn’t look down his nose at you, he looks along his nose.
—James Fenton (b.1949) English Poet, Journalist
A woman who could always love would never grow old; and the love of mother and wife would often give or preserve many charms if it were not too often combined with parental and conjugal anger. There remains in the faces of women who are naturally serene and peaceful, and of those rendered so by religion, an after-spring, and later an after-summer, the reflex of their most beautiful bloom.
—Jean Paul (1763–1825) German Novelist, Humorist
As the language of the face is universal, so ’tis very comprehensive; ’tis the shorthand of the mind, and crowds a great deal in a little room.
—Jeremy Collier (1650–1726) Anglican Church Historian, Clergyman
Every man over forty is responsible for his face.
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) American Head of State
It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ileum?
—Christopher Marlowe (1564–93) English Playwright, Poet, Translator
A good face they say, is a letter of recommendation. O Nature, Nature, why art thou so dishonest, as ever to send men with these false recommendations into the World!
—Henry Fielding (1707–54) English Novelist, Dramatist
A man finds room in the few square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors; for the expression of all his history, and his wants.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
I never forget a face, but in your case I’ll make an exception.
—Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American Actor, Comedian, Singer
God had given you one face, and you make yourself another.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
Look in the face of the person to whom you are speaking if you wish to know his real sentiments, for he can command his words more easily than his countenance.
—Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) English Statesman, Man of Letters
A man’s face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man’s thoughts and aspirations.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher