quotations about beauty
To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain for the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.
JANE AUSTEN
Northanger Abbey
Beauty can afford to laugh at distinctions: it is itself the greatest distinction.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Beauty is Nature's coin, must not be hoarded,
But must be current, and the good thereof
Consists in mutual and partaken bliss.
JOHN MILTON
Comus
The beauty that men seek is half a dream--
Where'er we wander, yet it lies afar;
It touches with its wand a setting star,
It stirs the ripple of an ebbing stream.
And though we run beyond the dawning gleam,
Or kneel to worship at an altar bright,
We may not know the soul of its delight,
Or more than marvel at its palest beam.
KENNETH RAND
"The True Magic"
We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.
MAYA ANGELOU
attributed, The Butterfly's Daughter
Beauty is as summer fruits, which are easy to corrupt, and cannot last; and for the most part it makes a dissolute youth, and an age a little out of countenance; but yet certainly again, if it light well, it maketh virtue shine, and vices blush.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Beauty", The Essays or Counsels
Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked.
ST. AUGUSTINE
City of God
This is the essence of beauty--the possession of a quality which excites the human organism to functioning harmonious with its own nature.
ETHEL PUFFER HOWES
The Psychology of Beauty
You think God will never forgive you, but the only God is beauty and beauty always forgives. It forgives with its infinite indifference.
GLEN DUNCAN
The Last Werewolf
Beauty
Is the fume-track of necessity. This thought
Is therapeutic. If, after several
Applications, you do not find
Relief, consult your family physician.
ROBERT PENN WARREN
"Island of Summer"
Only true love can keep beauty innocent.
U2
"A Man and a Woman"
A beautiful face fires our imagination, and we see higher virtue and intelligence in it than we can detect in its owner's head or heart when we descend to calm inspection.
CHARLES READE
Foul Play
In every man's heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty.
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
Travels in Philadelphia
Beauty is only skin deep, and the world is full of thin skinned people.
RICHARD ARMOUR
attributed, The Mammoth Book of Comic Quotes
The terrible predicament of a beautiful girl is that only an experienced womanizer, someone cynical and without scruple, feels up to the challenge. More often than not, she will lose her virginity to some filthy lowlife in what proves to be the first step in an irrevocable decline.
MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ
The Elementary Particles
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
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?
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
Love of beauty is really only the sex instinct, which nothing but complete union satisfies.
JOHN GALSWORTHY
Saint's Progress
Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate
With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon
Of human thought or form, where art thou gone?
Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?
Ask why the sunlight not for ever
Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain-river,
Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,
Why fear and dream and death and birth
Cast on the daylight of this earth
Such gloom, why man has such a scope
For love and hate, despondency and hope?
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"Hymn to Intellectual Beauty"