quotations about beauty
Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate
With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon
Of human thought or form, where art thou gone?
Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?
Ask why the sunlight not for ever
Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain-river,
Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,
Why fear and dream and death and birth
Cast on the daylight of this earth
Such gloom, why man has such a scope
For love and hate, despondency and hope?
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
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"Hymn to Intellectual Beauty"
Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Duino Elegies
I am corrupted to the bone with the beauty of this forsaken world.
J. M. COETZEE
In the Heart of the Country
But beauty of all kinds gives us a peculiar delight and satisfaction; as deformity produces pain, upon whatever subject it may be placed, and whether surveyed in an animate or inanimate object. If the beauty or deformity, therefore, be placed upon our own bodies, this pleasure or uneasiness must be converted into pride or humility, as having in this case all the circumstances requisite to produce a perfect transition of impressions and ideas. These opposite sensations are related to the opposite passions. The beauty or deformity is closely related to self, the object of both these passions. No wonder, then our own beauty becomes an object of pride, and deformity of humility.
DAVID HUME
A Treatise of Human Nature
Choosing beauty over content (or choosing beauty as content) is always an act of sedition. If we accept the cant of official culture, we must believe that the beauty we steal from any man-made thing is stolen from its more virtuous and metaphysical backstory, wherein "real" beauty is said to reside.
DAVE HICKEY
The Invisible Dragon
The queen banishes Snow White because of her beauty. But the dwarves help Snow White because they're smitten by that very beauty. It teaches kids an important lesson: Nothing matters except for your looks.
CRAIG FERGUSON
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Jun. 1, 2012
Beauty's voice speaks gently: it creeps only into the most awakened souls.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Beauty is when your outside intrigues people and your inside makes them stay.
ANONYMOUS
Your voice would have silenced merle and thrush,
And the rose outbloomed would have blushed to blush,
And Summer, seeing you, paused, and known
That the glow of your beauty outshone its own.
ALFRED AUSTIN
"My Winter Rose", Lyrical Poems
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The Conduct of Life
Trust a girl of sixteen for knowing well if she is pretty; concerning her plainness she may be ignorant.
ELIZABETH GASKELL
Mary Barton
You cannot pluck roses without fear of thorns
Nor enjoy a fair wife without danger of horns.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1734
Beauty in a woman is a moving thing,
Yet sometimes just the patient lack of it
Will pierce the heart to deeper poignancies,
And, melting, draw a note of tenderness
That not the fairest woman could evoke!
DONALD EVANS
"Shrines of Unloveliness"
It is part and parcel of every man's life to develop beauty in himself. All perfect things have in them an element of beauty.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
If I conceive of a woman so transcendingly beautiful that upon her beauty no improvement can be made, I do not conceive of the principle itself of beauty, but only of its incarnation. In the woman, and through her, I perceive that by virtue of which she becomes beautiful. When I see a beautiful woman, I see in her a more beautiful woman still; for in every person we find some fault, and by eliminating the fault, we attain nearer to perfection. But in and through that more beautiful woman still, I perceive that which gives the character of beauty. But this principle can never be perceived directly in itself; it can be perceived only when manifesting itself in some person or thing, and even then only as transcending.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
The Doctrine of Life
The beauty of a lovely woman is like music ... the rounded neck, the dimpled arm, move us by something more than their prettiness--by their close kinship with all we have known of tenderness and peace.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
[Beauty is] a delicate bait with a deadly hook; a sweet panther with a devouring paunch, a sour poison in a silver pot.
JOHN LYLY
Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit
The idea of beauty is the fundamental idea of everything. In the world we see only distortions of the fundamental idea, but art, by imagination, may lift itself to the height of this idea. Art is therefore akin to creation.
LEO TOLSTOY
What Is Art?
The angel Beauty walks her radiant way:
O, follow her! She never leads astray.
ALBERT LAIGHTON
"Beauty"