Mien Quotes

“For truth has such a face and such a mien As to be lov'd needs only to be seen.”

“How blindly the world reads a man's mien! That I wear a smile does not mean I am in my comfort zone. I am only telling my challenges that I can't be distracted from the beautiful ending of my story.”

“When I was girl by Nilus stream I watched the deserts stars arise; My lover, he who dreamed the Sphinx, Learned all his dreaming from eyes. I bore in Greece a burning name, And I have been in Italy Madonna to a painter-lad, And mistress to a Medici. And have you heard (and I have heard) Of puzzled men with decorous mien, Who judged - the wench knew far too much - And burnt her on the Salem green?”

“Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might have seen in this beautiful woman, so picturesque in her attire and mien, and with the infant at her bosom, an object to remind him of the image of Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious painters have vied with one another to represent; something which should remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, of that sacred image of sinless motherhood, whose infant was to redeem the world. Here, there was the taint of of deepest sin in the most sacred of quality of human life, working such effect, that the world was only the darker for this woman's beauty, and the more lost for the infant that she had borne.”

“Everything was gone, the garden of wind and light, the Chrysalis, the Mother and her sister-crones, the rowan tree, everything. I was in a grove–no, it was a triad of trees: apple, oak, hazel. And at my feet something that smacked of familiar miens, a stone half buried in a pitch of heather. A stone bearing my name and a date I could hardly remember.A moment passed, another and in those moments I stood numb with gluey feet at the foot of my own grave. For the first time since I’d come to the Faeran Valley, I was alone. And the silence was deafening.”

“We communed together a moment, one with the other—I was deeply fascinated. At our first encounter I am sure I had a nebulous presentiment that I would one day go to it in spite of my hesitation, in spite of all the efforts put forth to hold me back,—and the emotion that overwhelmed me in the presence of the sea was not only one of fear, but I felt also an inexpressible sadness, and I seemed to feel the anguish of desolation, bereavement and exile. With downcast mien, and with hair blown about by the wind, I turned and ran home. I was in the extreme haste to be with my mother; I wished to embrace her and to cling close to her; I desired to be with her so that she might console me for the thousand indefinite, anticipated sorrows that surged through my heart at the sight of those green waters, so vast and so deep.”

“A homely face does not guarantee a homely character. Appearance is the body, character is the spirit, and the soul bears the most vital qualities.”