Beauty

"What happens when everyone in a society is finally beautiful (and healthy)? When the final aesthetic surgery is developed that will make all visages and bodies "perfect"? Will everyone in that society be happy? In examining the discourses of the late nineteenth century on this question, we are confronted with the paradox of François Xavier Bichat, as paraphrased by Charles Darwin: "If everyone were cast in the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty. If all our women were to become as beautiful as the Venus de’ Medici (de Milo), we should for a time be charmed; but we should soon wish for variety; and as soon as we had obtained variety, we should wish to see certain characters a little exaggerated beyond the then existing common standard.” The very search for the improvement of the body (and the concomitant “happiness” of the psyche) must lead to further discontent."

"Do not allow yourself to be thrashed by the provoking whip of a beautiful face. How can sense slaves enjoy the world? Its subtle flavours escape them while they grovel in primal mud. All nice discriminations are lost to the man of elemental lusts."

"Good manners without sincerity are like a beautiful dead lady."

"Beauty is not so much performance as promise."

"Schön war ich auch, und das war mein Verderben."

"Handsome is that handsome does."

"Monstruosidad del ánimo es más deforme que la del cuerpo, porque desdice de la belleza superior."

"Beauty by no complexion is defin'd, Is of all colours, and to none confin'd."

"'Tis impious pleasure to delight in harm. And beauty should be kind, as well as charm."

"The man of half-grown intelligence, when he observes an object which is bathed in the glow of a seeming beauty, thinks that that object is in its essence beautiful, no matter what it is that so prepossesses him with the pleasure of the eye. He will not go deeper into the subject. But the other, whose mind's eye is clear, and who can inspect such appearances, will neglect those elements which are the material only upon which the Form of Beauty works; to him they will be but the ladder by which he climbs to the prospect of that Intellectual Beauty, in accordance with their share in which all other beauties get their existence and their name."

"The elegance of rich, complex, and diverse phenomena emerging from a simple set of universal laws is at least part of what physicists mean when they invoke the term "beautiful.""

"Spieglein, Spieglein an der Wand: Wer ist die schönste Frau in dem ganzen Land?"

"The dimple that thy chin contains has beauty in its round, That never has been fathomed yet by myriad thoughts profound."

"Beauty was lent to nature as the type Of heaven's unspeakable and holy joy, Where all perfection makes the sum of bliss."

"Whenever the mind of the artist suffers itself to be occupied, during its periods of creation, by any other predominant motive than the desire of beauty, the result is false in art."

"There are few efforts more conducive to humility than that of the translator trying to communicate an incommunicable beauty. Yet, unless we do try, something unique and never surpassed will cease to exist, except in the libraries of a few inquisitive book lovers."

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

"Beauty draws more than oxen."

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

"A heaven of charms divine Nausicaa lay."

"O matre pulchra filia pulchrior."

"A lovely being, scarcely formed or moulded, A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded."

"Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the marsh and sky, Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, Then beauty is its own excuse for being."

"The beautiful rests on the foundations of the necessary."

"Her glossy hair was cluster'd o'er a brow Bright with intelligence, and fair and smooth; Her eyebrow's shape was like the aerial bow, Her cheek all purple with the beam of youth, Mounting, at times, to a transparent glow, As if her veins ran lightning."

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

"Who gave thee, O Beauty, The keys of this breast,— Too credulous lover Of blest and unblest? Say, when in lapsed ages Thee knew I of old? Or what was the service For which I was sold?"

"We fly to beauty as an asylum from the terrors of finite nature."

"Thou who hast The fatal gift of beauty."

"Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue."

"Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it."

"She walks in beauty like the night Of cloudless chimes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies."

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

"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."

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

"Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated."

"The desire for truth so prominent in the quest of science, a reaching out of the spirit from its isolation to something beyond, a response to beauty in nature and art, an Inner Light of conviction and guidance—are these as much a part of our being as our sensitivity to sense impressions?"

"The light of love, the purity of grace, The mind, the Music breathing from her face, The heart whose softness harmonized the whole, And, oh! the eye was in itself a Soul!"

"Heaven forbid if beauty were to have substance. Genuine beauty is always meaningless, without virtue."

"The innate love of harmony and beauty that set the ruder souls of his people a-dancing and a-singing raised but confusion and doubt in the soul of the black artist; for the beauty revealed to him was the soul-beauty of a race which his larger audience despised."

"Who doth not feel, until his failing sight Faints into dimness with its own delight, His changing cheek, his sinking heart confess, The might—the majesty of Loveliness?"

"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!"

"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."

"I am one who tells the truth and exposes evil and seeks with Beauty for Beauty to set the world right."

"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."