quotations about beauty
Beauty for the most part, consists in objects of sight; but it is also received through the ears, by the skilful composition of words, and the consonant proportion of sounds; for in every species of harmony, beauty is to be found.
PLOTINUS
"Concerning the Beautiful"
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 objectified pleasure.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The Sense of Beauty
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
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
To speak of beauty is to enter another and more exalted realm--a realm sufficiently apart from our everyday concerns as to be mentioned only with a certain hesitation. People who are always in praise and pursuit of the beautiful are an embarrassment, like people who make a constant display of their religious faith. Somehow, we feel such things should be kept for our exalted moments, and not paraded in company, or allowed to spill out over dinner.
ROGER SCRUTON
Beauty
Beauty is the gift from God.
ARISTOTLE
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
It's important for all types of women to know that you don't have to fit a prototype of what one person thinks is beautiful in order to be beautiful or feel beautiful.... People think, Sexy, big breasts, curvy body, no cellulite. It's not that. Take the girl at the beach with the cellulite legs, wearing her bathing suit the way she likes it, walking with a certain air, comfortable with herself. That woman is sexy. Then you see the perfect girl who's really thin, tugging at her bathing suit, wondering how her hair looks. That's not sexy.
JENNIFER LOPEZ
Readers Digest, Aug. 2003
The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Jack and Jill: A Village Story
To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain for the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.
JANE AUSTEN
Northanger Abbey
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
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"
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"
Much that is beautiful must be discarded
So that we may resemble a taller
Impression of ourselves.
JOHN ASHBERY
"Illustration"
Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.
PETRARCH
De Remedies
Beautiful things may be admired, if not loved.
L. FRANK BAUM
The Tin Woodman of Oz
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