quotations about beauty
Beauty's voice speaks gently: it creeps only into the most awakened souls.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
It is foolish to wish for beauty. Sensible people never either desire it for themselves or care about it in others. If the mind be but well cultivated, and the heart well disposed, no one ever cares for the exterior.
ANNE BRONTE
Agnes Grey
In the contemplation of beauty we are raised above ourselves, the passions are silenced and we are happy in the recognition of a good that we do not seek to possess.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The Sense of Beauty
To speak of beauty is to enter another and more exalted realm--a realm sufficiently apart from our everyday concerns as to be mentioned only with a certain hesitation. People who are always in praise and pursuit of the beautiful are an embarrassment, like people who make a constant display of their religious faith. Somehow, we feel such things should be kept for our exalted moments, and not paraded in company, or allowed to spill out over dinner.
ROGER SCRUTON
Beauty
And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.
PLATO
The Symposium
While all is new, all is beautiful. That is a well-known song. Yes, and the next day the air changes into another one equally well known.
OCTAVE MIRBEAU
The Diary of a Chambermaid
The fairest cheek hath oftentimes a soul
Leprous as sin itself.
THOMAS DEKKER
Old Fortunatus
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
The perfection of her face created a sense of emptiness--like a house with no curtains in the window.
JEFF ABBOTT
Black Jack Point
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?
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, when it first discloses the mellowing touches of age, affects us painfully. It is like the tints of sunset, or the beauty of autumn--a melancholy beauty--beauty in decline--upon which we cannot gaze without a feeling of sadness--of sadness that it is passing away.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
I am corrupted to the bone with the beauty of this forsaken world.
J. M. COETZEE
In the Heart of the Country
Beauty is a symbol of goodness; the admiration we feel for it is a symbol of the reverence inspired by the moral law.
ERMANNO BENCIVENGA
Exercises in Constructive Imagination
[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 angel Beauty walks her radiant way:
O, follow her! She never leads astray.
ALBERT LAIGHTON
"Beauty"
Beauty is something we can affirm and intend to have more of. What happens then is our perceptual ability, no matter where we are, expands in that direction.
JAMES REDFIELD
Beliefnet interview, "The Evolution Revolution"
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
Beauty when most unclothed is clothed best.
PHINEAS FLETCHER
Sicelides
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