BEAUTY QUOTES VI

quotations about beauty

A lump rises in our throat at the sight of beauty from an implicit knowledge that the happiness it hints at is the exception.

ALAIN DE BOTTON

The Architecture of Happiness


The kind of beauty I want is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within--strength, courage, dignity.

RUBY DEE

Woman's Day Magazine, Sep. 1, 2009


Beauty walks in bravest dress,
And, fed with April's mellow showers,
The earth laughs out with sweet May-flowers,
That flush for very happiness.

GERALD MASSEY

"The Ballad of Babe Christabel"


Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it.

SIGMUND FREUD

Civilization and Its Discontents


The criterion of true beauty is, that it increases on examination; of false, that it lessens. There is something therefore in true beauty that corresponds with right reason, and is not merely a creature of fancy.

FULKE GREVILLE

Maxims


The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one's own -- even more, one's own, for that has been put in our care and we are responsible for its well-being.

KATHERINE ANNE PORTER

Ship of Fools


Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good.

GEORGE SANTAYANA

The Sense of Beauty


The pageant of a former hour,
Is Beauty in the Grave.

WILLIAM B. TAPPAN

"Beauty in the Grave"


Unexpected intrusions of beauty. That is what life is.

SAUL BELLOW

Herzog


Beauty, like male ballet dancers, makes some men afraid.

MORDECAI RICHLER

Son of a Smaller Hero


A fair face without a fair soul is like a glass eye that shines and sees nothing.

JOHN STUART BLACKIE

The Day-book of John Stuart Blackie

Tags: John Stuart Blackie


One cannot grow beauty in the soil of hate and pain.

RICK REMENDER

Uncanny X-Force, Nov. 2011


At the unprovable cosmological fringes beauty swings it. Now mathematical models are like supermodels: They have grace, symmetry, elegance. It's hardly surprising. Modernity having done away with Absolute Moral Values and Objective Reality, there's only beauty left. What theory won't we espouse if it's beautiful? What atrocity won't we excuse?

GLEN DUNCAN

The Last Werewolf


Ne'er boast; for beauty is a dream that fades.

THEOCRITUS

"A Countryman's Wooing"


Remember that there are two kinds of beauty: one of the soul and the other of the body. That of the soul displays its radiance in intelligence, in chastity, in good conduct, in generosity, and in good breeding, and all these qualities may exist in an ugly man. And when we focus our attention upon that beauty, not upon the physical, love generally arises with great violence and intensity. I am well aware that I am not handsome, but I also know that I am not deformed, and it is enough for a man of worth not to be a monster for him to be dearly loved, provided he has those spiritual endowments I have spoken of.

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES

Don Quixote


The Beautiful is a manifestation of secret laws of nature, which, without its presence, would never have been revealed.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe


Beauty is almost no longer possible if it is not a lie.

R. D. LAING

introduction, The Politics of Experience


Much that is said about beauty and its importance in our lives ignores the minimal beauty of an unpretentious street, a nice pair of shoes or a tasteful piece of wrapping paper, as though those things belonged to a different order of value from a church by Bramante or a Shakespeare sonnet. Yet these minimal beauties are far more important to our daily lives, and far more intricately involved in our own rational decisions, than the great works of art which (if we are lucky) occupy our leisure hours. They are part of the context in which we live our lives, and our desire for harmony, fittingness and civility is both expressed and confirmed in them. Moreover, the great works of architecture often depend for their beauty on the humble context that these lesser beauties provide.

ROGER SCRUTON

Beauty


Beauty may be said to be God's trademark in creation.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


Beauty is a simple passion,
but, oh my friends, in the end
you will dance the fire dance in iron shoes.

ANNE SEXTON

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs