quotations about beauty
Beauty requires contrast.
JOHN GARDNER
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Grendel
Beauty, like male ballet dancers, makes some men afraid.
MORDECAI RICHLER
Son of a Smaller Hero
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"
At the unprovable cosmological fringes beauty swings it. Now mathematical models are like supermodels: They have grace, symmetry, elegance. It's hardly surprising. Modernity having done away with Absolute Moral Values and Objective Reality, there's only beauty left. What theory won't we espouse if it's beautiful? What atrocity won't we excuse?
GLEN DUNCAN
The Last Werewolf
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
A fair face without a fair soul is like a glass eye that shines and sees nothing.
JOHN STUART BLACKIE
The Day-book of John Stuart Blackie
Ne'er boast; for beauty is a dream that fades.
THEOCRITUS
"A Countryman's Wooing"
Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it.
CONFUCIUS
Beauty is almost no longer possible if it is not a lie.
R. D. LAING
introduction, The Politics of Experience
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
Unexpected intrusions of beauty. That is what life is.
SAUL BELLOW
Herzog
All we have, it seems to me, is the beauty of art and nature and life, and the love which that beauty inspires.
EDWARD ABBEY
"Fire Lookout: Numa Ridge", The Journey Home
When beauty fires the blood, how love exalts the mind!
JOHN DRYDEN
Cymon and Iphigenia
Remember that there are two kinds of beauty: one of the soul and the other of the body. That of the soul displays its radiance in intelligence, in chastity, in good conduct, in generosity, and in good breeding, and all these qualities may exist in an ugly man. And when we focus our attention upon that beauty, not upon the physical, love generally arises with great violence and intensity. I am well aware that I am not handsome, but I also know that I am not deformed, and it is enough for a man of worth not to be a monster for him to be dearly loved, provided he has those spiritual endowments I have spoken of.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
One cannot grow beauty in the soil of hate and pain.
RICK REMENDER
Uncanny X-Force, Nov. 2011
Beauty is a simple passion,
but, oh my friends, in the end
you will dance the fire dance in iron shoes.
ANNE SEXTON
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
For one to admire a woman merely for her beauty, is to love the building for its exterior; but to love one for the greatness of her soul, is to appreciate the tenement for its intrinsic value.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
Much that is said about beauty and its importance in our lives ignores the minimal beauty of an unpretentious street, a nice pair of shoes or a tasteful piece of wrapping paper, as though those things belonged to a different order of value from a church by Bramante or a Shakespeare sonnet. Yet these minimal beauties are far more important to our daily lives, and far more intricately involved in our own rational decisions, than the great works of art which (if we are lucky) occupy our leisure hours. They are part of the context in which we live our lives, and our desire for harmony, fittingness and civility is both expressed and confirmed in them. Moreover, the great works of architecture often depend for their beauty on the humble context that these lesser beauties provide.
ROGER SCRUTON
Beauty
The pageant of a former hour,
Is Beauty in the Grave.
WILLIAM B. TAPPAN
"Beauty in the Grave"
Beauty can never really understand itself.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe