Quotes about face page 3
“All idealism is mendacity in the face of what is necessary.”
Friedrich Nietzsche book Ecce homo
Source: Ecce Homo, chapter Why I Am So Clever
Robert Downey Jr. (1965) American actor
Source: "Playing Iron Man was hard and I dug deep: Robert Downey Jr" https://www.hindustantimes.com/hollywood/playing-iron-man-was-hard-and-i-dug-deep-robert-downey-jr/story-OOv6pvyDb8ojxc1r78g89K.html (13 December 2020)
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
Source: 1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)
Context: So with John Brown and Harper's Ferry. They charge it upon the Republican party and ignominiously fail in all attempts to substantiate the charge. Yet they go on with their bushwhacking, the pack in full cry after John Brown.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister
Source: Diary entry while in Aix (c. 16 August 1824), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume I. 1804–1859 (1929), pp. 52-53
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer
Interview With Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on the New Russia and Ukraine (May 1994)
“The leader has to show the face his team needs to see.”
Mike Krzyzewski (1947) American basketball player and coach
“You look at the hands, not at the face, if you want to stay out of trouble.”
Franco Battiato (1945) Italian singer-songwriter, composer, and filmmaker
Source: da Strani giorni
“The human face is, after all, nothing more nor less than a mask.”
Agatha Christie book Sad Cypress
Source: Sad Cypress
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
Kristin Cast book Awakened
Source: Awakened
“… I'm looking for the face I had, before the world was made…”
W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright
Erving Goffman (1922–1982) Sociologist, writer, academic
Erving Goffman (1967: 10), as cited in: Trevino (2003,, p. 37).
1950s-1960s
“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States
"As Much Truth As One Can Bear" in The New York Times Book Review (14 January 1962); republished in The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings (2011), edited by Randall Kenan<!-- , also quoted in Wisdom for the Soul : Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) by Larry Chang, p. 114 -->
Context: Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced. … Most of us are about as eager to change as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.
“Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed.”
Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
Ravi Zacharias (1946) Indian philosopher
2000s
Source: [Jesus Among Other Gods: The Absolute Claims of the Christian Message, 2002, 9780849943270, 90]
“How shall Integrity face Oppression?”
W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer
The Ordeal of Mansart (1957) [Kraus-Thomson, 1976, ], p. 275
Context: How shall Integrity face Oppression? What shall Honesty do in the face of Deception, Decency in the face of Insult, Self-Defense before Blows? How shall Desert and Accomplishment meet Despising, Detraction, and Lies? What shall Virtue do to meet Brute Force? There are so many answers and so contradictory; and such differences for those on the one hand who meet questions similar to this once a year or once a decade, and those who face them hourly and daily.
“I think I need to face what I could have been in order to understand and accept what I am.”
Cecelia Ahern book Love, Rosie
Variant: I think I need to face
what I could have been in order to understand and accept what I am.
Source: Where Rainbows End
“It's strange how pain marks our faces, and makes us look like family.”
Stephen King book The Green Mile
Source: The Green Mile
Hubert Selby Jr. book Last Exit to Brooklyn
Last Exit to Brooklyn (1964)
Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)
Speech to the House of Commons (8 June 1982) http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1982/60882a.htm <br class="br">1980s, First term of office (1981–1985) <br class="br">Context: From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than thirty years to establish their legitimacy. But none — not one regime — has yet been able to risk free elections. Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.... If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.... Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated.
“How can I go forward when I don't know which way I'm facing?”
John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter
Lyrics, Imagine (1971 album)
Variant: How can I give love when I don't know what it is I'm giving?
"How?" (song)
“Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter?”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer
“Facts are like cows. If you look them in the face long enough, they generally run away.”
Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) English crime writer, playwright, essayist and Christian writer
“you see the magic in a fairy tale, you can face the future”
Danielle Steel (1947) American author of romance novels
Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)
Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter
Source: Smile, You're Traveling: Black Coffee Blues Part 3
“The worst thing about loneliness is that it brings one face to face with oneself.”
Mary Balogh (1944) Welsh-Canadian novelist
Source: No Man's Mistress
Ezra Taft Benson (1899–1994) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Variant: Nothing will surprise us more than when we get to heaven and see the Father and realize how well we know Him and how familiar His face is to us.
“The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.”
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
Said in conversation with Mrs. Alan Wood; quoted in Alan Wood's Bertrand Russell, the Passionate Sceptic (Allen and Unwin, 1957), pp. 236-7
1950s
“Sometimes you can’t let go of the past without facing it again.”
Gail Tsukiyama The Samurai's Garden
Source: The Samurai's Garden
“A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist
Source: Journal of a Solitude
“There are no bad pictures; that's just how your face looks sometimes.”
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
“Let a smile be your umbrella, and you'll end up with a face full of rain.”
George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian
“Funny, when you finally faced reality, it was amazing how clearly you could see things.”
Mary Higgins Clark book Loves Music, Loves to Dance
Source: Loves Music, Loves to Dance
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
The New York Times (1960), as cited in The Beacon Book of Quotations by Women (1992) by Rosalie Maggio, p. 156
John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet
then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
"When I have fears that I may cease to be" (1817)
Source: The Complete Poems
Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author
Source: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
2004, Democratic National Convention speech (July 2004)
Context: In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope? I'm not talking about blind optimism here... No, I'm talking about something more substantial. It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker's son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too. Hope in the face of difficulty, hope in the face of uncertainty, the audacity of hope: In the end, that is God's greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation, a belief in things not seen, a belief that there are better days ahead.
Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author
Source: Journal entry (14 October 1922), published in The Journal of Katherine Mansfield (1927)
Sara Gruen book Water for Elephants
Source: Water for Elephants
Walter Benjamin book Theses on the Philosophy of History
Source: Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), IX
“Facing it — always facing it — that's the way to get through.”
Joseph Conrad book Typhoon
Typhoon (1902), Ch. 5
“When you can't save yourself or your heart, it helps to be able to save face.”
Sarah Dessen book What Happened to Goodbye
What Happened To Goodbye (2011)
Source: What Happened to Goodbye
“She went crazy with a calm face,
justifiably so.”
Douglas Coupland (1961) Canadian novelist, short story writer, playwright, and graphic designer
“I don't want no better book than what your face is.”
Mark Twain book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
“You only live twice:
Once when you are born
And once when you look death in the face.”
Ian Fleming book You Only Live Twice
Source: You Only Live Twice (1964), Ch. 11 : Anatomy Class
W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright
When You Are Old http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1756/, st. 1–3 <br class="br">The Rose (1893) <br class="br">Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats <br class="br">Context: p>When you are old and gray and full of sleep,<br>And nodding by the fire, take down this book,<br>And slowly read, and dream of the soft look<br>Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;How many loved your moments of glad grace,<br>And loved your beauty with love false or true,<br>But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,<br>And loved the sorrows of your changing face.And bending down beside the glowing bars,<br>Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled<br>And paced upon the mountains overhead<br>And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.</p
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.”
Jonathan Swift book The Battle of the Books
The Battle of the Books, preface (1704)
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
In a letter to Ada Leverson [Sphinx] recorded in her book Letters To The Sphinx From Oscar Wilde and Reminiscences of the Author (1930)
Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)