BEAUTY QUOTES V

quotations about beauty

An immortal instinct, deep within the spirit of man, is thus, plainly, a sense of the Beautiful. This it is which administers to his delight in the manifold forms, and sounds, and odors, and sentiments, amid which he exists. And just as the lily is repeated in the lake, or the eyes of Amaryllis in the mirror, so is the mere oral or written repetition of these forms, and sounds, and colors, and odors, and sentiments, a duplicate source of delight. But this mere repetition is not poetry. He who shall simply sing, with however glowing enthusiasm, or with however vivid a truth of description, of the sights, and sounds, and odors, and colors, and sentiments, which greet him in common with all mankind--he, I say, has yet failed to prove his divine title. There is still a something in the distance which he has been unable to attain. We have still a thirst unquenchable, to allay which he has not shown us the crystal springs. This thirst belongs to the immortality of Man. It is at once a consequence and an indication of his perennial existence. It is the desire of the moth for the star. It is no mere appreciation of the Beauty before us, but a wild effort to reach the Beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of the glories beyond the grave, we struggle, by multiform combinations among the things and thoughts of Time, to attain a portion of that Loveliness whose very elements, perhaps, appertain to eternity alone.

EDGAR ALLAN POE

"The Poetic Principle"


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

VIRGINIA WOOLF

"Montaigne," The Common Reader


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


Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist--a master ... can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is ... and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be ... and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart ... no matter what the merciless hours have done to her.

ROBERT A. HEINLEIN

Stranger in a Strange Land


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

WILLIAM B. TAPPAN

"Beauty in the Grave"


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


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 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 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"


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

MARK AKENSIDE

The Pleasures of Imagination


Beauty requires contrast.

JOHN GARDNER

Grendel


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


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

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought


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"


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


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

MORDECAI RICHLER

Son of a Smaller Hero


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 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


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"