quotations about beauty
In spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits.
JOHN KEATS
Endymion
The only beautiful thing in the world whose beauty lasts for ever is a pure, fair soul.
BRAM STOKER
"The Rose Prince"
Beauty is like life itself: a dawn mist
the sun burns off. It gives no peace, no rest.
GREGORY ORR
The Caged Owl: New & Selected Poems
Beautiful people lived in a different world, had different relations with people. From the beginning they were raised for love.
ELIF BATUMAN
The Idiot
When I entreated Life to make me wise,
It drew aside Love's broidered veil of lies;
And perilous Beauty, undivined before,
Beckoned me from the mazes of his eyes.
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love
The creator and arbiter of beauty is the heart; to the male rattlesnake the female rattlesnake is the loveliest thing in nature.
AMBROSE BIERCE
"Epigrams of a Cynic"
Women of no beauty may yet be flattered to believe they possess some; others of a moderate share that they have a great deal; but those of elegance and charm generally know the perfection of their external graces so well, that they seem to covet that flattery most which heightens the opinion of their wit and judgment.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
The Nature of Beauty is in the relation of means to an end; the means, the possibilities of stimulation in the motor, visual, auditory, and purely ideal fields; the end, a moment of perfection, of self-complete unity of experience, of favourable stimulation with repose. Beauty is not perfection; but the beauty of an object lies in its permanent possibility of creating the perfect moment. The experience of this moment, the union of stimulation and repose, constitutes the unique aesthetic emotion.
ETHEL PUFFER HOWES
The Psychology of Beauty
Much that is beautiful must be discarded
So that we may resemble a taller
Impression of ourselves.
JOHN ASHBERY
"Illustration"
Life deprived of beauty is not worthy of being called human.
LUIS BARRAGÁN
attributed, Artes de Mexico, 1994
A woman who has never been pretty has never been young.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Airelles,", The Writings of Madame Swetchine
Beauty can afford to laugh at distinctions: it is itself the greatest distinction.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Beauty can pierce one like pain.
THOMAS MANN
Buddenbrooks
Beauty can never really understand itself.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Beauty in woman is that potent alchemy which transforms men into asses.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
Let us reflect, what most powerfully attracts the eyes of beholders, and seizes the spectator with rapturous delight; for if we can find what this is, we may perhaps use it as a ladder, enabling us to ascend into the region of beauty, and survey its immeasurable extent.
PLOTINUS
"Concerning the Beautiful"
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"
Though beauty is, with the most apt similitude, I had almost said with the most literal truth, called a flower that fades and dies almost in the very moment of its maturity; yet there is, methinks, a kind of beauty which lives even to old age; a beauty that is not in the features, but, if I may be allowed the expression, shines through them. As it is not merely corporeal it is not the object of mere sense, nor is it to be discovered but by persons of true taste and refined sentiment.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims
It's important for all types of women to know that you don't have to fit a prototype of what one person thinks is beautiful in order to be beautiful or feel beautiful.... People think, Sexy, big breasts, curvy body, no cellulite. It's not that. Take the girl at the beach with the cellulite legs, wearing her bathing suit the way she likes it, walking with a certain air, comfortable with herself. That woman is sexy. Then you see the perfect girl who's really thin, tugging at her bathing suit, wondering how her hair looks. That's not sexy.
JENNIFER LOPEZ
Readers Digest, Aug. 2003
The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries out in terror before being defeated.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"Le Confiteor de l'artiste," Le Spleen de Paris