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
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
One cannot grow beauty in the soil of hate and pain.
RICK REMENDER
Uncanny X-Force, Nov. 2011
If we consider all the hypotheses, which have been formed either by philosophy or common reason, to explain the difference betwixt beauty and deformity, we shall find that all of them resolve into this, that beauty is such an order and construction of parts, as either by the primary constitution of our nature, by custom, or by caprice, is fitted to give a pleasure and satisfaction to the soul. This is the distinguishing character of beauty, and forms all the difference betwixt it and deformity, whose natural tendency is to produce uneasiness.
DAVID HUME
A Treatise of Human Nature
Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it.
CONFUCIUS
Beauty has the more ardent, but worth the more discriminating lovers.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
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
Thus was beauty sent from heaven--the lovely mistress of truth and good in this dark world.
MARK AKENSIDE
The Pleasures of Imagination
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
Beauty just keeps coming into the world and passing away, coming in and passing away. You can't blame beauty. Beauty doesn't know what else to do.
GLEN DUNCAN
By Blood We Live
Beauty is almost no longer possible if it is not a lie.
R. D. LAING
introduction, The Politics of Experience
Ne'er boast; for beauty is a dream that fades.
THEOCRITUS
"A Countryman's Wooing"
Birds of fine plumage are not the best songsters; neither are comely women the most virtuous.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
Beauty had this penalty -- it came too readily, came too completely. It stilled life -- froze it. One forgot the little agitations; the flush, the pallor, some queer distortion, some light or shadow, which made the face unrecognisable for a moment and yet added a quality one saw for ever after. It was simpler to smooth that all out under the cover of beauty.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
To the Lighthouse
The French girls would tell you, to believe that you were pretty would make you so.
ELIZABETH GASKELL
Wives and Daughters
Beauty, like male ballet dancers, makes some men afraid.
MORDECAI RICHLER
Son of a Smaller Hero
In spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits.
JOHN KEATS
Endymion
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
Beauty may be said to be God's trademark in creation.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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