quotations about beauty
It is one of the arts of a great beauty to heighten the effect of her charms by affecting to be sweetly unconscious of them.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The criterion of true beauty is, that it increases on examination; of false, that it lessens. There is something therefore in true beauty that corresponds with right reason, and is not merely a creature of fancy.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
LEO TOLSTOY
The Kreutzer Sonata
If we consider all the hypotheses, which have been formed either by philosophy or common reason, to explain the difference betwixt beauty and deformity, we shall find that all of them resolve into this, that beauty is such an order and construction of parts, as either by the primary constitution of our nature, by custom, or by caprice, is fitted to give a pleasure and satisfaction to the soul. This is the distinguishing character of beauty, and forms all the difference betwixt it and deformity, whose natural tendency is to produce uneasiness.
DAVID HUME
A Treatise of Human Nature
Beauty just keeps coming into the world and passing away, coming in and passing away. You can't blame beauty. Beauty doesn't know what else to do.
GLEN DUNCAN
By Blood We Live
Beauty requires contrast.
JOHN GARDNER
Grendel
The absence of flaw in beauty is itself a flaw.
HAVELOCK ELLIS
Impressions and Comments
When we are young, the beauty of women has a supreme attraction beyond all other possessions or qualities; and there are self-evident reasons why it should be so. It is only as we grow older that we know the value of brains, and, while still admiring beauty--as indeed who does not?--admire it as one passing by on the other side--as a grace to look at, but not to hold, unless accompanied by something more lasting.
ELIZA LYNN LINTON
The Girl of the Period and Other Social Essays
Beauty and Genius must be kept afar if one would avoid becoming their slave.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
The queen whose beauty does the gaze transfix,
Adorns herself with pallid crucifix.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"The Quest for God"
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"
When beauty fires the blood, how love exalts the mind!
JOHN DRYDEN
Cymon and Iphigenia
Old as I am, for ladies' love unfit,
The power of beauty I remember yet.
JOHN DRYDEN
Cymon and Iphigenia
I must tell you that we artists cannot tread the path of Beauty without Eros keeping company with us and appointing himself as our guide.
THOMAS MANN
Death in Venice
It's amazing how lovely common things become, if one only knows how to look at them.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Marjorie's Three Gifts
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"
If you dear little girls would only learn what real beauty is, and not pinch and starve and bleach yourselves out so, you'd save an immense deal of time and money and pain. A happy soul in a healthy body makes the best sort of beauty for man or woman.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Eight Cousins
The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one's own -- even more, one's own, for that has been put in our care and we are responsible for its well-being.
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
Ship of Fools
E'en Beauty mourns in her decaying bower,
That Time upon her angel brow should set
His crooked autograph, and mar the jet
Of glossy locks. Lo! how her chaplet green,
The hoar frost and the canker worm destroy.
Decay's dull film obscures those matchless eyes.
ISAAC MCLELLAN
"Musings"
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"