Early Friends believed that it was important to avoid fanciness in dress, speech, and material possessions, because those things tend to distract one from waiting on God’s personal guidance. They also tend to cause a person to focus on himself more than on his fellow human beings, in violation of Jesus’ teaching to "love thy neighbor as thyself". This emphasis on "plainness", as it was called, made the Friends in certain times and places easily recognizable to the society around them, particularly by their plain dress in the 18th and 19th centuries.