quotations about beauty
Life deprived of beauty is not worthy of being called human.
LUIS BARRAGÁN
attributed, Artes de Mexico, 1994
Beauty is the gift from God.
ARISTOTLE
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?"
The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries out in terror before being defeated.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"Le Confiteor de l'artiste," Le Spleen de Paris
Beautiful peaches are not always the best flavored; neither are handsome women the most amiable.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
Beauty is not a means, not a way of furthering a thing in the world. It is a result; it belongs to ordering, to form, to aftereffect.
EUDORA WELTY
On Writing
Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.
PETRARCH
De Remedies
In life, as in art, the beautiful moves in curves.
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
What Will He Do With It?
This is the essence of beauty--the possession of a quality which excites the human organism to functioning harmonious with its own nature.
ETHEL PUFFER HOWES
The Psychology of Beauty
When I entreated Life to make me wise,
It drew aside Love's broidered veil of lies;
And perilous Beauty, undivined before,
Beckoned me from the mazes of his eyes.
ELSA BARKER
"The Garden of Rose and Rue", The Book of Love
Love is the divine Fire, and Beauty its glowing reflection in the skies of Time.
RICHARD GARNETT
De Flagello Myrtes
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"
The queen banishes Snow White because of her beauty. But the dwarves help Snow White because they're smitten by that very beauty. It teaches kids an important lesson: Nothing matters except for your looks.
CRAIG FERGUSON
The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, Jun. 1, 2012
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
Tho' Beauty is generally the creature of fancy, yet are there some who will be Beauties in every eye.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
Clarissa
Beauty can afford to laugh at distinctions: it is itself the greatest distinction.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
JOHN KEATS
"Ode on a Grecian Urn"
Beauty in woman is that potent alchemy which transforms men into asses.
ABRAHAM MILLER
Unmoral Maxims
Beauty can pierce one like pain.
THOMAS MANN
Buddenbrooks
But beauty of all kinds gives us a peculiar delight and satisfaction; as deformity produces pain, upon whatever subject it may be placed, and whether surveyed in an animate or inanimate object. If the beauty or deformity, therefore, be placed upon our own bodies, this pleasure or uneasiness must be converted into pride or humility, as having in this case all the circumstances requisite to produce a perfect transition of impressions and ideas. These opposite sensations are related to the opposite passions. The beauty or deformity is closely related to self, the object of both these passions. No wonder, then our own beauty becomes an object of pride, and deformity of humility.
DAVID HUME
A Treatise of Human Nature