Beauty

"Beauty is almost wholly a matter of fashion; what is beautiful today would have been grotesque a couple of generations ago and will be grotesque a hundred years ahead. It will be worse than grotesque; it will be outmoded and therefore faintly ridiculous."

"The first step towards establishing pretensions of any kind, is to believe firmly in them yourself: faith is very catching, and half the beauty-reputations of which I hear have originated with the possessors."

"'Tis beauty calls, and glory shows the way."

"(Five-year-old Max, to his father): My teacher tells me real beauty's on the inside. (Father, in reply): That's just something ugly people say."

"Beautiful in form and feature, Lovely as the day, Can there be so fair a creature Formed of common clay?"

"Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax, Her cheeks like the dawn of day, And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds, That ope in the month of May."

"Nothing makes a woman more beautiful than the belief that she is beautiful."

"Oh, could you view the melodie Of ev'ry grace, And musick of her face, You'd drop a teare, Seeing more harmonie In her bright eye, Then now you heare."

"You are beautiful and faded Like an old opera tune Played upon a harpsichord."

"Where none admire, 'tis useless to excel; Where none are beaux, 'tis vain to be a belle."

"Beauty, like wit, to judges should be shown; Both most are valued where they best are known."

"Beauty and sadness always go together. Nature thought beauty too rich to go forth Upon the earth without a meet alloy."

"I remember that in a widely distributed French newspaper they asked the famous author of the Génie du Christianisme, if a nymph was not a bit more beautiful than a nun. In supposing them represented by the same talent or by equal talents (a condition without which the question would make no sense), there is no doubt that the nun would be more beautiful. The error best suited to extinguishing the true sentiment of beauty is that of confusing that which pleases with that which is beautiful, or in other words, that which pleases the senses with that which pleases the intelligence. What spectator of our sex will not find himself more moved by Titian's Venus than by Raphael's most beautiful Virgin? And yet what a difference of merit and worth! The beautiful, in all imaginable genres, is that which pleases enlightened virtue. Any other definition is false or insufficient. So why would the nun be less beautiful than the nymph? Perhaps because she is clothed? By what immoral blindness would one want to judge the representation other than the reality? Who does not know that veiled beauty is more seductive than visible beauty? What man has not noticed, and ten thousand times, that the woman who decides to satisfy the eye more than the imagination lacks taste even more than wisdom?"

"Beauty ... is the sole aspect of the spiritual which we can perceive through our senses."

"O, thou art fairer than the evening air Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars."

"A male hero, at best, lacks the qualities of maternal love and tenderness which are as essential to a normal child as the breath of life. Suppose your child's ideal becomes a superman who uses his extraordinary power to help the weak. The most important ingredient in the human happiness recipe still is missing-love. It's smart to be strong. It's big to be generous. But it's sissified according to exclusively masculine rules, to be tender, loving affectionate, and alluring. "Aw, that;'s girls stuff!" snorts our young comics reader. "Who wants to be a girl?" And that's the point. Not even girls want to be girls so long as our feminine archetype lacks force, strength, and power. Not wanting to be girls, they don't want to be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good women are. Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman."

"Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it."

"Days like this, I look out at all the snow and think. Man, this is beautiful… Then I wonder – is it really beautiful, or have we just been conditioned to think of everything “white” as beautiful? Is my mind, perhaps, not as liberated from the slave mentality as I thought? Then I think, what if snow were brown? Would I find it as nice to look at, or would it look "dirty"? Is this indicative that somewhere within my subconscious lurks some heretofore undiscovered self-hate?"

"Through light and joy is the world opened up, revealed for what it is: ineffable beauty, unending creation."

"The moment one give close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnified world in itself."

"Beauty is Nature's coin, must not be hoarded, But must be current, and the good thereof Consists in mutual and partaken bliss."

"Beauty is nature's brag, and must be shown In courts, at feasts, and high solemnities, Where most may wonder at the workmanship."

"Hung over her enamour'd, and beheld Beauty, which, whether waking or asleep, Shot forth peculiar graces."

"She fair, divinely fair, fit love for gods."

"... for beauty stands In the admiration only of weak minds Led captive. Cease to admire, and all her plumes Fall flat and shrink into a trivial toy, At every sudden slighting quite abash'd."

"And ladies of the Hesperides, that seemed Fairer than feign'd of old."

"Yet beauty, tho' injurious, hath strange power, After offence returning, to regain Love once possess'd."

"Amarás la belleza, que es la sombra de Dios sobre el Universo."

"Beauty is as tangible as blood, in a way. It is a separate, distinct force that inhabits the bodies of men and women. You must have noticed the vacuity that accompanies perfect beauty in so many women...the force so strong that it drives out all other forces and lives vampirishly at the expense of intelligence and goodness and conscience and all else."

"Beauty has wings, and too hastily flies, And love, unrewarded, soon sickens and dies."

"Beauty is everlasting, and dust is for a time."

"Beauty is perceived rhythm. Wave-rhythm through which everything outside us is mediated. Or: The beautiful is really everything one looks at with love. The more one loves the world, the more beautiful one will find it."

"Since most people find mathematics somewhat forbidding, if not frightening, they find it difficult to understand how it can be regarded as beautiful. ... It is not the visual beauty of a painting or the audio beauty of a musical performance. Nor is it the literary beauty of a great poem; it is entirely intellectual and therefore, while more difficult to perceive, more satisfying when perceived."

"Beauty is but a flower Which wrinkles will devour."

"Man believes that the world itself is filled with beauty—he forgets that it is he who has created it. He alone has bestowed beauty upon the world—alas! only a very human, an all too human, beauty."

"Altho' your frailer part must yield to Fate, By every breach in that fair lodging made, Its blest inhabitant is more displayed."

"And should you visit now the seats of bliss, You need not wear another form but this."

"An essential quality of beauty is aloofness."

"Science is not everything, but science is very beautiful."

"Hast thou left thy blue course in heaven, golden-haired son of the sky! The west has opened its gates; the bed of thy repose is there. The waves come, to behold thy beauty. They lift their trembling heads. They see thee lovely in thy sleep; they shrink away with fear. Rest, in thy shadowy cave, O sun! let thy return be in joy."

"And all the carnal beauty of my wife Is but skin-deep."

"Aut formosa fores minus, aut minus improba, vellem. Non facit ad mores tam bona forma malos."

"Auxilium non leve vultus habet."

"One would think that the mere shortness of life would be a reminder that to destroy beauty is to destroy one’s own self too."

"Let your beauty be not just the outward adorning of braiding the hair, and of wearing jewels of gold, or of putting on fine clothing; but in the hidden person of the heart, in the incorruptible adornment of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God very precious."

"Making something beautiful is difficult, but it is amazingly worthwhile. If you learn to make something in your life truly beautiful—even one thing—then you have established a relationship with beauty. From there you can begin to expand that relationship out into other elements of your life and the world. That is an invitation to the divine. That is the reconnection with the immortality of childhood, and the true beauty and majesty of the Being you can no longer see. You must be daring to try that."

"Beauty leads you back to what you have lost. Beauty reminds you of what remains forever immune to cynicism. Beauty beckons in a manner that straightens your aim. Beauty reminds you that there is lesser and greater value. Many things make life worth living: love, play, courage, gratitude, work, friendship, truth, grace, hope, virtue, and responsibility. But beauty is among the greatest of these."

"Raram facit misturam cum sapientia forma."

"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"

"The flowers anew returning seasons bring! But beauty faded has no second spring."