quotations about beauty
Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The Sense of Beauty
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
LEO TOLSTOY
The Kreutzer Sonata
Beauty is but a lease from nature.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
I must tell you that we artists cannot tread the path of Beauty without Eros keeping company with us and appointing himself as our guide.
THOMAS MANN
Death in Venice
At the unprovable cosmological fringes beauty swings it. Now mathematical models are like supermodels: They have grace, symmetry, elegance. It's hardly surprising. Modernity having done away with Absolute Moral Values and Objective Reality, there's only beauty left. What theory won't we espouse if it's beautiful? What atrocity won't we excuse?
GLEN DUNCAN
The Last Werewolf
A fair face without a fair soul is like a glass eye that shines and sees nothing.
JOHN STUART BLACKIE
The Day-book of John Stuart Blackie
A lump rises in our throat at the sight of beauty from an implicit knowledge that the happiness it hints at is the exception.
ALAIN DE BOTTON
The Architecture of Happiness
Beauty, like male ballet dancers, makes some men afraid.
MORDECAI RICHLER
Son of a Smaller Hero
Beauty soon grows familiar to the lover, Fades in his eye, and palls upon the sense.
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it.
CONFUCIUS
Ne'er boast; for beauty is a dream that fades.
THEOCRITUS
"A Countryman's Wooing"
One cannot grow beauty in the soil of hate and pain.
RICK REMENDER
Uncanny X-Force, Nov. 2011
The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one's own -- even more, one's own, for that has been put in our care and we are responsible for its well-being.
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
Ship of Fools
Beauty may be said to be God's trademark in creation.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
There is likely to be beauty wherever proportion exists.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Remember that there are two kinds of beauty: one of the soul and the other of the body. That of the soul displays its radiance in intelligence, in chastity, in good conduct, in generosity, and in good breeding, and all these qualities may exist in an ugly man. And when we focus our attention upon that beauty, not upon the physical, love generally arises with great violence and intensity. I am well aware that I am not handsome, but I also know that I am not deformed, and it is enough for a man of worth not to be a monster for him to be dearly loved, provided he has those spiritual endowments I have spoken of.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it.
SIGMUND FREUD
Civilization and Its Discontents
All we have, it seems to me, is the beauty of art and nature and life, and the love which that beauty inspires.
EDWARD ABBEY
"Fire Lookout: Numa Ridge", The Journey Home
Beauty is almost no longer possible if it is not a lie.
R. D. LAING
introduction, The Politics of Experience
The spirit in man has been created in accordance with the image of beauty, so that whenever it either hears or sees anything beautiful, it may have a propensity towards it, and seek for communion with it.
MUHAMMAD AL-GHAZALI
The Alchemy of Happiness