Themes

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

"(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."

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

"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."

"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."

"Half of all the women in the world are beautiful to men, nearly all are beautiful when they smile, and all are beautiful all the time to God."

"In this job an illusion of beauty is sold which doesn’t really exist like that. It’s like a work of art, an act. I cry in front of the camera but am not really sad. I’ve just come from a job, am made-up and made to look beautiful with fantastic clothes and hair and nails all done."

"Nieuwerkerke's replacement did not give Manet and the painters of the any... cause for cheer. Under the Third Republic... in November 1870 ... became Director of Fine Arts. ...Blanc had published a biography of Ingres, whom he idealized... and for several decades [Blanc] had been the most prolific and articulate exponent of the sort of celebrated at the . In his lofty conception of art, Eve was the original representative of beauty, but by plucking the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge she had plunged the world into a... sort of Platonic world of appearances in which the ideal was obscured by the humdrum and ugly material world. ...[T]he ability to see through the veil of appearances... was "obscure, latent, and sleeping" among the majority of men. However, great artists— ...especially Ingres and the painters of the —"carry within themselves this idea of the beautiful in a state of light." The true mission of art was... to show the "idea of the beautiful" that concealed itself behind the flickering shadows of the fallen world. ...[A]rt should not portray nature... but should idealize it... [H]e was vehemently opposed to Realism and paintings of la vie moderne, believing that artists who imitated nature and everyday life were slaves to appearance."

"Why is the world so beautiful? is a question that we all ought to be embracing."

"I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want—an adorable pancreas?"

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever; Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing."

"Beauty...is merciless. You do not look at it, it looks at you and does not forgive."

"We must remember: what is beautiful is the resistance, and that people can—and must—resist from their own authentic place in the world…It is from this solid, self-knowing place that we can work towards peace and justice"

"Rara est adeo concordia formæ Atque pudicitiæ."

"The divine right of beauty is the only one an Englishman ought to acknowledge, and a pretty woman the only tyrant he is not authorized to resist."

"Eyes raised toward heaven are always beautiful, whatever they be."

"A skein of silk without a knot! A fair march made without a halt! A curious form without a fault! A printed book without a blot! All beauty!—and without a spot."

"Once a centenarian teacher who had the body of an adolescent told me he had studied martial arts. "Me, too," I answered. We were in Notre Dame, and he said, "Attack me." I put myself in a combat position, and he moved his left hand in such an incredibly beautiful way that while I looked at it, fascinated, he gave me a big slap. "Beauty is the most dangerous weapon," he warned. It took me a long time to understand. He used a secret Chinese practice, which consists of drawing a snake in the air with your hand to distract the enemy. And that is how beauty is: the most awful weapon."

"Consider the origins of beauty and you soon realize that it is a triumph of accident. Be it human or art, the chances are its parents were toxic waste."

"When you get to the point where you cheat for the sake of beauty, you're an artist."

"¿En perseguirme, mundo, qué interesas? ¿En qué te ofendo, cuando sólo intento poner bellezas en mi entendimiento y no mi entendimiento en las bellezas?"

"Where beauty is worshiped for beauty's sake as a goddess, independent of and superior to morality and philosophy, the most horrible putrefaction is apt to set in. The lives of the aesthetes are the far from edifying commentary on the religion of beauty."

"Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt, more properly than perceived. Or if we reason concerning it, and endeavor to fix its standard, we regard a new fact, to wit, the general tastes of mankind, or some such fact, which may be the object of reasoning and enquiry."

"Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty."

"A queen, devoid of beauty is not queen; She needs the royalty of beauty's mien."

"Sith Nature thus gave her the praise, To be the chiefest work she wrought, In faith, methink, some better ways On your behalf might well be sought, Than to compare, as ye have done, To match the candle with the sun."

"Nihil est ab omni Parte beatum."

"O matre pulchra filia pulchrior."

"A heaven of charms divine Nausicaa lay."

"Beauty is the index of a larger fact than wisdom."

"Beauty draws more than oxen."

"If you need something to worship, then worship life — all life, every last crawling bit of it! We're all in this beauty together!"

"Care about the beings you care about in gorgeous and surprising ways. Color outside the lines. Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty. This is your last chance."

"Many a temptation comes to us in fine, gay colours that are but skin deep."

"There's beauty all around our paths, if but our watchful eyes Can trace it 'midst familiar things, and through their lowly guise."

"There is certainly a religion which belongs to the physical form, and which should be regarded in degree as much as that which belongs to the soul. It is as much a duty for every man and woman to perfect fully their physical form as for them to continually search for immortality."

"To the artist, to the musician, is given the task of creating and expressing beauty--of sensitizing the souls of men."