BEAUTY QUOTES IX

quotations about beauty


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Much that is beautiful must be discarded
So that we may resemble a taller
Impression of ourselves.

JOHN ASHBERY
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"Illustration"


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Sculptors, poets, painters, musicians--they're the traditional purveyors of Beauty. But it can as easily be created by a gardener, a farmer, a plumber, a careworker.

CHARLES DE LINT

The Onion Girl


Beauty means this to one person, perhaps, and that to another. And yet when any one of us has seen or heard or read that which to him is beautiful, he has known an emotion which is in every case the same in kind, if not in degree; an emotion precious and uplifting. A choirboy's voice, a ship in sail, an opening flower, a town at night, the song of the blackbird, a lovely poem, leaf shadows, a child's grace, the starry skies, a cathedral, apple trees in spring, a thorough-bred horse, sheep-bells on a hill, a rippling stream, a butterfly, the crescent moon -- the thousand sights or sounds or words that evoke in us the thought of beauty -- these are the drops of rain that keep the human spirit from death by drought. They are a stealing and a silent refreshment that we perhaps do not think about but which goes on all the time....It would surprise any of us if we realized how much store we unconsciously set by beauty, and how little savour there would be left in life if it were withdrawn. It is the smile on the earth's face, open to all, and needs but the eyes to see, the mood to understand.

JOHN GALSWORTHY

Candelabra


You think God will never forgive you, but the only God is beauty and beauty always forgives. It forgives with its infinite indifference.

GLEN DUNCAN

The Last Werewolf


What is love at first sight but a proof of the powerful but silent language of physiognomy?

MARY CLEMMER AMES

attributed, Edge-tools of Speech


So audacious has Beauty become in these latter days, so proudly she walks abroad, making so superb an appeal to the desire of the eye, thighed like Artemis, and bosomed like Aphrodite, or at whiles a fairy creature of ivory and gossamer and fragrance, with a look in her eyes of secret gardens; and so much is the wide world at her feet, and one with her in the vanity of her fairness--that I sometimes fear an impending dies irae, when the dormant spirit of Puritanism will reassert itself, and some stern priests thunder from the pulpit of worldly vanities and the wrath to come.

RICHARD LE GALLIENNE

"The Persecutions of Beauty", Vanishing Roads and Other Essays


The Nature of Beauty is in the relation of means to an end; the means, the possibilities of stimulation in the motor, visual, auditory, and purely ideal fields; the end, a moment of perfection, of self-complete unity of experience, of favourable stimulation with repose. Beauty is not perfection; but the beauty of an object lies in its permanent possibility of creating the perfect moment. The experience of this moment, the union of stimulation and repose, constitutes the unique aesthetic emotion.

ETHEL PUFFER HOWES

The Psychology of Beauty


Beauty is objectified pleasure.

GEORGE SANTAYANA

The Sense of Beauty


The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries out in terror before being defeated.

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

"Le Confiteor de l'artiste," Le Spleen de Paris


Beautiful people lived in a different world, had different relations with people. From the beginning they were raised for love.

ELIF BATUMAN

The Idiot


The spirit in man has been created in accordance with the image of beauty, so that whenever it either hears or sees anything beautiful, it may have a propensity towards it, and seek for communion with it.

MUHAMMAD AL-GHAZALI

The Alchemy of Happiness


Beauty in woman is that potent alchemy which transforms men into asses.

ABRAHAM MILLER

Unmoral Maxims


Ask me where beauty is, I'll say
'Tis in sweet maiden's witchery;
Amid the beams of her flashing eye
When pleasure's cup is sparkling high,
And new-born love's first artless glances
Illume her brow,
And joy within her young heart dances
For the first vow;
When she knows not of blighting care,
And all is bright, and fresh, and fair;
And fancy's banner is unfurled,
Tinting with rose her future world;
Nor cloud, nor mist dims in her eye
The sunshine of life's morning sky,
That, with such gay and golden beams,
Colours her happy youth with dreams.

C. B. LANGSTON

"Where Is Beauty?"


When I entreated Life to make me wise,
It drew aside Love's broidered veil of lies;
And perilous Beauty, undivined before,
Beckoned me from the mazes of his eyes.

ELSA BARKER

"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love


Beauty for the most part, consists in objects of sight; but it is also received through the ears, by the skilful composition of words, and the consonant proportion of sounds; for in every species of harmony, beauty is to be found.

PLOTINUS

"Concerning the Beautiful"


Beauty is Nature's coin, must not be hoarded,
But must be current, and the good thereof
Consists in mutual and partaken bliss.

JOHN MILTON

Comus


Beauty acts as a cause to produce love, because the being, the attributes and the works of God possess beauty, and every one loves that which is beautiful.

MUHAMMAD AL-GHAZALI

The Alchemy of Happiness


In every man's heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty.

CHRISTOPHER MORLEY

Travels in Philadelphia


The yoke of beauty is easy to bear
Since I need not lay it down.

KARLE WILSON BAKER

"The Marching Mountains", Burning Bush


Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.

PETRARCH

De Remedies