BEAUTY QUOTES V

quotations about beauty

Beauty is only two finger’s-breadth from goodness.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

"Montaigne," The Common Reader


Oft as by chance, a little while apart
The pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn,
Sweet Beauty, opening on the impoverished heart,
Beams like a jewel on the breast of dawn.

ALAN SEEGER

"Sonnet VIII"


The absence of flaw in beauty is itself a flaw.

HAVELOCK ELLIS

Impressions and Comments


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


Beauty had this penalty -- it came too readily, came too completely. It stilled life -- froze it. One forgot the little agitations; the flush, the pallor, some queer distortion, some light or shadow, which made the face unrecognisable for a moment and yet added a quality one saw for ever after. It was simpler to smooth that all out under the cover of beauty.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

To the Lighthouse


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"


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


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


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

WILLIAM B. TAPPAN

"Beauty in the Grave"


Were we to aim in every case at the kind of supreme beauty exemplified by Sta Maria della Salute, we should end with aesthetic overload. The clamorous masterpieces, jostling for attention side by side, would lose their distinctiveness, and the beauty of each of them would be at war with the beauty of the rest.

ROGER SCRUTON

Beauty


Beauty has the more ardent, but worth the more discriminating lovers.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought


It has been said that the beauties of the mind are valuable because they are more lasting than those of the body; but I do not remember to have heard it said that the beauties of the mind are valuable because they make those of the body more lasting.

FULKE GREVILLE

Maxims


There should be, methinks, as little merit in loving a woman for her beauty, as in loving a man for his prosperity; both being equally subject to change.

ALEXANDER POPE

"Thoughts on Various Subjects"


Thus was beauty sent from heaven--the lovely mistress of truth and good in this dark world.

MARK AKENSIDE

The Pleasures of Imagination


Ah, ah, thy beauty! like a beast it bites,
Stings like an adder, like an arrow smites.
Ah sweet, and sweet again, and seven times sweet,
The paces and the pauses of thy feet!
Ah sweeter than all sleep or summer air
The fallen fillets fragrant from thine hair!
Yea, though their alien kisses do me wrong,
Sweeter thy lips than mine with all their song;
Thy shoulders whiter than a fleece of white,
And flower-sweet fingers, good to bruise or bite
As honeycomb of the inmost honey-cells,
With almond-shaped and roseleaf-coloured shells
And blood like purple blossoms at the tips
Quivering; and pain made perfect in thy lips
For my sake when I hurt thee; O that I
Durst crush thee out of life with love, and die,
Die of thy pain and my delight, and be
Mixed with thy blood and molten into thee!

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

"Anactoria"


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


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

MORDECAI RICHLER

Son of a Smaller Hero


It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But ... it is better to be good than to be ugly.

OSCAR WILDE

The Picture of Dorian Gray


Our world oft turns in gloom, and Life both many a perilous way,
Yet there's no path so desolate and thorny, cold and gray,
But Beauty like a beacon burns above the dark of strife,
And like an Alchemist aye turns all things to golden life.

GERALD MASSEY

"The Chivalry of Labour Exhorted to the Worship of Beauty"


Beauty is but a lease from nature.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims