Beauty

"'Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on."

"There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple: If the ill spirit have so fair a house, Good things will strive to dwell with't."

"I've fought the good fight. And now it’s all over, there's an indescribable peace. ... I believe in Michelangelo, Velásquez and Rembrandt; in the might of design, the mystery of color, the redemption of all things by beauty everlasting and the message of Art that has made these hands blessed. Amen. Amen."

"A lovely lady, garmented in light From her own beauty."

"She died in beauty—like a rose blown from its parent stem."

"Beauty is a magnet: repels some, attracts many, leaves no one unmoved."

"O beloved Pan, and all ye other gods of this place, grant me to become beautiful in the inner man."

"Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee."

"Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?"

"To me the most beautiful thing is vulnerability."

"The saying that beauty is but skin deep, is but a skin-deep saying."

"For all that faire is, is by nature good; That is a signe to know the gentle blood."

"Her face so faire, as flesh it seemed not, But heavenly pourtraict of bright angels' hew, Cleare as the skye withouten blame or blot, Through goodly mixture of complexion's dew."

"Beauty, my dear Sir, is not so much a quality of the object beheld, as an effect in him who beholds it. If our sight were longer or shorter, or if our constitution were different, what now appears beautiful to us would seem misshapen, and what we now think misshapen we should regard as beautiful. The most beautiful hand seen through the microscope will appear horrible. Some things are beautiful at a distance, but ugly near; thus things regarded in themselves, and in relation to God, are neither ugly nor beautiful. Therefore, he who says that God has created the world, so that it might be beautiful, is bound to adopt one of the two alternatives, either that God created the world for the sake of men's pleasure and eyesight, or else that He created men's pleasure and eyesight for the sake of the world. ...Perfection and imperfection are names which do not differ much from the names beauty and ugliness. ... This I know, that between finite and infinite there is no comparison; so that the difference between God and the greatest and most excellent created thing is no less than the difference between God and the least created thing."

"L'admiration pour le beau se rapporte toujours à la Divinité."

"They seemed to whisper: "How handsome she is! What wavy tresses! what sweet perfume! Under her mantle she hides her wings; Her flower of a bonnet is just in bloom.""

"Beauty is nothing other than the promise of happiness."

"For the sublime and the beautiful and the interesting, you don't have to look far away."

"Beauty, like truth, never is so glorious as when it goes the plainest."

"She wears a rose in her hair, At the twilight's dreamy close: Her face is fair,—how fair Under the rose!"

"Formosa facies muta commendatio est."

"Part of the beauty of me is that I am very rich."

"Beauty more than bitterness, makes the heart break"

"O quanta species cerebrum non habet!"

"Beauty soon grows familiar to the lover, Fades in his eye, and palls upon the sense."

"What is lovely never dies, But passes into other loveliness, Star-dust, or sea-foam, flower or wingëd air."

"Things are beautiful if you love them."

"Beauty, real beauty, is something very grave. If there is a God, He must be partly that."

"Beauty is one of the rare things that do not lead to doubt of God."

"Beauty adds to goodness a relation to the cognitive faculty: so that "good" means that which simply pleases the appetite; while the "beautiful" is something pleasant to apprehend."

"I must not say that she was true, Yet let me say that she was fair; And they, that lovely face who view, They should not ask if truth be there."

"A common expression among African Americans relates the good to the beautiful, "beauty is as beauty does" or "she's beautiful because she's good." The first statement places emphasis on what a person does, that is, how a person "walks" among others in the society. The second statement identifies the beautiful by action. If a person's actions are not good, it does not matter how the person looks physically. Doing good is equivalent to being beautiful."

"Slow was I, Lord, too slow in loving you. ... You were waiting within me while I went outside me, looking for you there, misshaping myself as I flung myself upon the shapely things you made."

"Inasmuch as love grows in you, in so much beauty grows; for love is itself the beauty of the soul."

"There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion."

"The beautiful are never desolate; But some one always loves them—God or man. If man abandons, God himself takes them."

"Are not all young men ready to trust the promise of a pretty face and to infer beauty of soul from beauty of feature? An indefinable impulse leads them to believe that moral perfection must co-exist with physical perfection."

"Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the infinite."

"Beauty is something that disappears when you try to define it."

"Unfortunately, truth is neither a listable nor a decidable property; nor is the truth of a statement of arithmetic. The American logician John Myhill has used the term 'prospective' to characterize those attributes of the world that are neither listable nor decidable. They are properties that cannot be recognized by the application of some formula, made to conform to a rule, or generated by some computer program. They are characterized by incessant novelty that cannot be encompassed by any finite set of rules. 'Beauty', 'ugliness', 'truth', 'harmony', simplicity', and 'poetry' are names we give to some of the attributes of this sort. There is no way of listing all examples of beauty or ugliness, nor any procedure for saying whether or not something possesses either of those attributes, without redefining them in some more restrictive fashion that kills their prospective character."

"Beautiful is a word for young people. Beauty is a phase you grow through, like acne."

"Ye Gods! but she is wondrous fair! For me her constant flame appears; The garland she hath culled, I wear On brows bald since my thirty years. Ye veils that deck my loved one rare, Fall, for the crowning triumph's nigh. Ye Gods! but she is wondrous fair! And I, so plain a man am I!"

"Beauty. The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband."

"Glance at the sun. See the moon and the stars. Gaze at the beauty of the earth's greenings. Now, Think."

"There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness."

"Beauty will be convulsive or not at all."

"Beauty, the eternal Spouse of the Wisdom of God and Angel of his Presence thru' all creation, fashioning her love-realm in the mind of man, attempteth every mortal child with influences of her divine supremacy."

"Verily by Beauty it is that we come at , yet not by Reason at Beauty."

"I had hardly ever seen a handsome youth; never in my life spoken to one. I had a theoretical reverence and homage for beauty, elegance, gallantry, fascination; but had I met those qualities incarnate in masculine shape, I should have known instinctively that they neither had nor could have sympathy with anything in me, and should have shunned them as one would fire, lightning, or anything else that is bright but antipathetic."

"The essence of all beauty, I call love, The attribute, the evidence, and end, The consummation to the inward sense Of beauty apprehended from without, I still call love."