Time engraves our faces with all the tears we have not shed.
—Natalie Clifford Barney (1876–1972) American Playwright, Poet, Novelist
The faces of most American women over thirty are relief maps of petulant and bewildered unhappiness.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American Novelist
A man’s face is his autobiography. A woman’s face is her work of fiction.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
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
Clowns wear a face that’s painted intentionally on them so they appear to be happy or sad. What kind of mask are you wearing today?
—Unknown
The human face is the organic seat of beauty. It is the register of value in development, a record of Experience, whose legitimate office is to perfect the life, a legible language to those who will study it, of the majestic mistress, the soul.
—Eliza Farnham (1815–64) American Reformer, Writer
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
A beautiful face is a silent commendation.
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
All men’s faces are true, whatsoever their hands are.
—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
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
Our masks, always in peril of smearing or cracking, in need of continuous check in the mirror or silverware, keep us in thrall to ourselves, concerned with our surfaces.
—Carolyn Kizer (1925–2014) American Poet, Essayist, Translator
It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
Truth makes the face of that person shine who speaks and owns it.
—Robert South (1634–1716) English Theologian, Preacher
The tartness of his face sours ripe grapes.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
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 cheek is apter than the tongue to tell an errand.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
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
Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
Her face was her chaperone.
—Rupert Hughes (1872–1956) American Historian, Novelist, Film Director, Composer
Your face is a book, where men may read strange matters.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
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
The eyes those silent tongues of love.
—Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish Novelist
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
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
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
If you have a job without aggravations, you don’t have a job.
—Malcolm S. Forbes (1919–1990) American Publisher, Businessperson
There are faces so fluid with expression, so flushed and rippled by the play of thought, that we can hardly find what the mere features really are.—When the delicious beauty of lineaments loses its power, it is because a more delicious beauty has appeared—that an interior and durable form has been disclosed.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
The face is the index of the mind.
—Common Proverb