quotations about beauty
Now one begins to see why Beauty is necessarily the bugbear, more or less, of all religions, or, as I prefer to regard them, "organized moralities"; for Beauty is neither moral nor immoral, being as she is a purely spiritual force, with no relations to man's little schemes of being good and making money and being knighted and so forth. For those who have eyes to see, she is the supreme spiritual vision vouchsafed to us upon the earth--and, as that, she is necessarily the supreme danger to that materialistic use and wont by which alone a materialistic society remains possible. For this reason our young men and maidens--particularly our young men--must be guarded against her, for her beauty sets us adream, prevents our doing our day's work, makes us forget the soulless occupations in which we wither away our lives.
RICHARD LE GALLIENNE
"The Persecutions of Beauty", Vanishing Roads and Other Essays
To how many girls has a great beauty been of no other use but to make them expect a large fortune!
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Women", Les Caractères
In images, beauty is the agency that causes visual pleasure in the beholder, and, since pleasure is the true occasion for looking at anything, any theory of images that is not grounded in the pleasure of the beholder begs the question of art's efficacy and dooms itself to inconsequence.
DAVE HICKEY
The Invisible Dragon
I find beauty in unusual things, like hanging your head out the window or sitting on a fire escape.
SCARLETT JOHANSSON
Seventeen Magazine, May 2007
What do I care if you are good?
Be beautiful! and be sad!
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
Flowers of Evil
Beauty, n. The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
AMBROSE BIERCE
The Devil's Dictionary
Whatever it is that pulls the pin, that hurls you past the boundaries of your own life into a brief and total beauty, even for a moment, it is enough.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Gut Symmetries
A beautiful object, whether it be a picture of a living organism or any whole composed of parts, must not only have an orderly arrangement of parts, but most also be of a certain magnitude; for beauty depends on magnitude and order.
ARISTOTLE
Poetics
Let but a single flash of reality -- the glimpse of a woman from afar or from behind -- enable us to project the image of Beauty before our eyes, and we imagine that we have recognised it, our hearts beat, and we will always remain half-persuaded that it was She, provided that the woman has vanished: it is only if we manage to overtake her that we realise our mistake.
MARCEL PROUST
Within a Budding Grove
While beauty made its own rules, it also created its own problems and disappointments.
MIA TYLER
Creating Myself
After you turn on, don't spend the rest of your life contemplating the inner wonders. Begin immediately expressing your revelation in acts of beauty.
TIMOTHY LEARY
Your Brain Is God
How many varied scenes this world displays
To fill the heart with joy, the lips with praise!
Go where we may and Beauty follows too,
With radiant smiles, and shapes forever new.
ALBERT LAIGHTON
"Beauty"
Anyone who takes the time to be kind is beautiful.
ANONYMOUS
Small is the worth
Of beauty from the light retired:
Bid her come forth,
Suffer herself to be desired,
And not blush so to be admired.
EDMUND WALLER
Go
When I go to the beauty parlor, I always use the emergency entrance.
PHYLLIS DILLER
The 2,548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said
Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The Conduct of Life
For beauty being the best of all we know
Sums up the unsearchable and secret aims
Of nature.
ROBERT BRIDGES
The Growth of Love
Some women are born beautiful, others achieve beauty, and still others are on good terms with the society editors.
ROBERT ELLIOTT GONZALES
Poems and Paragraphs
If you admire yourself in the mirror, let it be in fear and not delight, because the only thing that beauty will bring to you is terror of losing it.
AMéLIE NOTHOMB
Fear and Trembling
A woman's beauty does not belong to her alone. It is part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it.
J.M. COETZEE
Disgrace