quotations about beauty
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"
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"
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"
Beauty can pierce one like pain.
THOMAS MANN
Buddenbrooks
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
Beauty in woman is that potent alchemy which transforms men into asses.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
Much that is beautiful must be discarded
So that we may resemble a taller
Impression of ourselves.
JOHN ASHBERY
"Illustration"
Ask me where beauty is, I'll say
'Tis in sweet maiden's witchery;
Amid the beams of her flashing eye
When pleasure's cup is sparkling high,
And new-born love's first artless glances
Illume her brow,
And joy within her young heart dances
For the first vow;
When she knows not of blighting care,
And all is bright, and fresh, and fair;
And fancy's banner is unfurled,
Tinting with rose her future world;
Nor cloud, nor mist dims in her eye
The sunshine of life's morning sky,
That, with such gay and golden beams,
Colours her happy youth with dreams.
C. B. LANGSTON
"Where Is Beauty?"
A beautiful face fires our imagination, and we see higher virtue and intelligence in it than we can detect in its owner's head or heart when we descend to calm inspection.
CHARLES READE
Foul Play
We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.
MAYA ANGELOU
attributed, The Butterfly's Daughter
Horns to bulls wise Nature lends;
Horses she with hoofs defends;
Hares with nimble feet relieves;
Dreadful teeth to lions gives;
Fishes learn through streams to slide;
Birds through yielding air to glide;
Men with courage she supplies;
But to women these denies.
What then gives she? Beauty, this
Both their arms and armour is:
She, that can this weapon use,
Fire and sword with ease subdues.
ANACREON
"Beauty"
The beauty that men seek is half a dream--
Where'er we wander, yet it lies afar;
It touches with its wand a setting star,
It stirs the ripple of an ebbing stream.
And though we run beyond the dawning gleam,
Or kneel to worship at an altar bright,
We may not know the soul of its delight,
Or more than marvel at its palest beam.
KENNETH RAND
"The True Magic"
Only true love can keep beauty innocent.
U2
"A Man and a Woman"
The yoke of beauty is easy to bear
Since I need not lay it down.
KARLE WILSON BAKER
"The Marching Mountains", Burning Bush
Beauty is Nature's coin, must not be hoarded,
But must be current, and the good thereof
Consists in mutual and partaken bliss.
JOHN MILTON
Comus
What is love at first sight but a proof of the powerful but silent language of physiognomy?
MARY CLEMMER AMES
attributed, Edge-tools of Speech
Beauty is as summer fruits, which are easy to corrupt, and cannot last; and for the most part it makes a dissolute youth, and an age a little out of countenance; but yet certainly again, if it light well, it maketh virtue shine, and vices blush.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Beauty", The Essays or Counsels
You think God will never forgive you, but the only God is beauty and beauty always forgives. It forgives with its infinite indifference.
GLEN DUNCAN
The Last Werewolf
Beauty is only skin deep, and the world is full of thin skinned people.
RICHARD ARMOUR
attributed, The Mammoth Book of Comic Quotes
Sculptors, poets, painters, musicians--they're the traditional purveyors of Beauty. But it can as easily be created by a gardener, a farmer, a plumber, a careworker.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Onion Girl