- In spite of all,
- Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
- From our dark spirits.
I was brought up imagining that cream rises to the top, merit wins out, the race is to the swift and riches to men of understanding, but it ain't necessarily so. The swift stand a better chance if they are also beautiful.
GARRISON KEILLOR, "Not Smart? Not a Problem," A Prairie Home Companion, Jun. 22, 2010
Perhaps there is no gift of nature that requires as little exertion on the part of the owner as personal beauty. I am not certain but that it is this very absence of effort which excites our admiration.
BRET HARTE, "On a Pretty Girl at the Opera"
It has been said that the beauties of the mind are valuable because they are more lasting than those of the body; but I do not remember to have heard it said that the beauties of the mind are valuable because they make those of the body more lasting.
FULKE GREVILLE, Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
- "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 walks in bravest dress,
- And, fed with April's mellow showers,
- The earth laughs out with sweet May-flowers,
- That flush for very happiness.
GERALD MASSEY, "The Ballad of Babe Christabel"
- Our world oft turns in gloom, and Life both many a perilous way,
- Yet there's no path so desolate and thorny, cold and gray,
- But Beauty like a beacon burns above the dark of strife,
- And like an Alchemist aye turns all things to golden life.
GERALD MASSEY, "The Chivalry of Labour Exhorted to the Worship of Beauty"
- Beauty in a woman is a moving thing,
- Yet sometimes just the patient lack of it
- Will pierce the heart to deeper poignancies,
- And, melting, draw a note of tenderness
- That not the fairest woman could evoke!
DONALD EVANS, "Shrines of Unloveliness"
Beauty is best when it comes mixed with danger.
SHERRILYN KENYON & DIANNA LOVE, Blood Trinity
- Oft as by chance, a little while apart
- The pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn,
- Sweet Beauty, opening on the impoverished heart,
- Beams like a jewel on the breast of dawn.
ALAN SEEGER, "Sonnet VIII"
Beautiful things are so easily broken by the world.
CASSANDRA CLARE, City of Fallen Angels
- 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 ofo 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?"
- All beautiful things bring sadness, nor alone
- Sweet music, as our wisest Poet spake,
- Because in us keen longings they awake.
RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, "All Beautiful Things"
While all is new, all is beautiful. That is a well-known song. Yes, and the next day the air changes into another one equally well known.
OCTAVE MIRBEAU, The Diary of a Chambermaid
One cannot grow beauty in the soil of hate and pain.
RICK REMENDER, Uncanny X-Force, No. 15, Nov. 2011
Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist--a master ... can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is ... and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be ... and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart ... no matter what the merciless hours have done to her.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN, Stranger in a Strange Land
Beauty requires contrast.
- Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate
- With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon
- Of human thought or form, where art thou gone?
- Why dost thou pass away and leave our state,
- This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate?
- Ask why the sunlight not for ever
- Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain-river,
- Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown,
- Why fear and dream and death and birth
- Cast on the daylight of this earth
- Such gloom, why man has such a scope
- For love and hate, despondency and hope?
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty"
If I conceive of a woman so transcendingly beautiful that upon her beauty no improvement can be made, I do not conceive of the principle itself of beauty, but only of its incarnation. In the woman, and through her, I perceive that by virtue of which she becomes beautiful. When I see a beautiful woman, I see in her a more beautiful woman still; for in every person we find some fault, and by eliminating the fault, we attain nearer to perfection. But in and through that more beautiful woman still, I perceive that which gives the character of beauty. But this principle can never be perceived directly in itself; it can be perceived only when manifesting itself in some person or thing, and even then only as transcending.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE, The Doctrine of Life
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