quotations about beauty
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
The perfection of her face created a sense of emptiness--like a house with no curtains in the window.
JEFF ABBOTT
Black Jack Point
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
Affect not to despise beauty: no one is freed from its dominion;
But regard it not a pearl of price--it is fleeting as the bow in the clouds.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
Beauty when most unclothed is clothed best.
PHINEAS FLETCHER
Sicelides
I am corrupted to the bone with the beauty of this forsaken world.
J. M. COETZEE
In the Heart of the Country
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
Trust a girl of sixteen for knowing well if she is pretty; concerning her plainness she may be ignorant.
ELIZABETH GASKELL
Mary Barton
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
An essential quality of beauty is aloofness.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
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
At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman.
ALBERT CAMUS
The Myth of Sisyphus