This face is a dog’s snout sniffing for garbage, snakes nest in that mouth, I hear the sibilant threat.
—Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist, American, Poet, Essayist, Journalist
Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
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
After a certain number of years our faces become our biographies. We get to be responsible for our faces.
—Cynthia Ozick (b.1928) American Novelist, Short-story Writer, Essayist
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 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
I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that.
—Lauren Bacall (1924–2014) American Film Actress
The faces which have charmed us the most escape us the soonest.
—Walter Scott (1771–1832) Scottish Novelist, Poet, Playwright, Lawyer
It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many million faces, there should be none alike.
—Thomas Browne (1605–82) English Author, Physician
The faces of most American women over thirty are relief maps of petulant and bewildered unhappiness.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American 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
Time engraves our faces with all the tears we have not shed.
—Natalie Clifford Barney (1876–1972) American Playwright, Poet, Novelist
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
My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
—W. H. Auden (1907–73) British-born American Poet, Dramatist
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
It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
If you have a job without aggravations, you don’t have a job.
—Malcolm S. Forbes (1919–1990) American Publisher, Businessperson
The features of our face are hardly more than gestures which force of habit made permanent. Nature, like the destruction of Pompeii, like the metamorphosis of a nymph into a tree, has arrested us in an accustomed movement.
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922) French Novelist
If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) American Head of State
God had given you one face, and you make yourself another.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
Her face was her chaperone.
—Rupert Hughes (1872–1956) American Historian, Novelist, Film Director, Composer
The face is the index of the mind.
—Common Proverb
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
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
When matters are desperate we must put on a desperate face.
—Robert Burns (1759–96) Scottish Poet, Songwriter
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
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 face is too slight a foundation for happiness.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) English Aristocrat, Poet, Novelist, Writer
Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
A strange and somewhat impassive physiognomy is often, perhaps, an advantage to an orator, or leader of any sort, because it helps to fix the eye and fascinate the mind.
—Charles Cooley (1864–1929) American Sociologist
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
He had a face like a blessing.
—Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish 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 never forget a face, but in your case I’ll make an exception.
—Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American Actor, Comedian, Singer
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
Every man over forty is responsible for his face.
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) American Head of State
The tartness of his face sours ripe grapes.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
People remain what they are, even when their faces fall to pieces.
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German Poet, Playwright, Theater Personality
I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least…
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass;
I find letters from God dropped in the street, and everyone is signed by God’s name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know
that whereso’er I go
Others will punctually come forever and ever.
—Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist, American, Poet, Essayist, Journalist
Every European visitor to the United States is struck by the comparative rarity of what he would call a face, by the frequency of men and women who look like elderly babies. If he stays in the States for any length of time, he will learn that this cannot be put down to a lack of sensibility—the American feels the joys and sufferings of human life as keenly as anybody else. The only plausible explanation I can find lies in his different attitude to the past. To have a face, in the European sense of the word, it would seem that one must not only enjoy and suffer but also desire to preserve the memory of even the most humiliating and unpleasant experiences of the past.
—W. H. Auden (1907–73) British-born American Poet, Dramatist
The eyes those silent tongues of love.
—Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish Novelist
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