quotations about beauty
Though beauty is, with the most apt similitude, I had almost said with the most literal truth, called a flower that fades and dies almost in the very moment of its maturity; yet there is, methinks, a kind of beauty which lives even to old age; a beauty that is not in the features, but, if I may be allowed the expression, shines through them. As it is not merely corporeal it is not the object of mere sense, nor is it to be discovered but by persons of true taste and refined sentiment.
FULKE GREVILLE
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
Beauty can never really understand itself.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Beauty is the gift from God.
ARISTOTLE
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
"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"
Love is the divine Fire, and Beauty its glowing reflection in the skies of Time.
RICHARD GARNETT
De Flagello Myrtes
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
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"
Beautiful things may be admired, if not loved.
L. FRANK BAUM
The Tin Woodman of Oz
The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Jack and Jill: A Village Story
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
Horns to bulls wise Nature lends;
Horses she with hoofs defends;
Hares with nimble feet relieves;
Dreadful teeth to lions gives;
Fishes learn through streams to slide;
Birds through yielding air to glide;
Men with courage she supplies;
But to women these denies.
What then gives she? Beauty, this
Both their arms and armour is:
She, that can this weapon use,
Fire and sword with ease subdues.
ANACREON
"Beauty"
Beauty is objectified pleasure.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
The Sense of Beauty
The yoke of beauty is easy to bear
Since I need not lay it down.
KARLE WILSON BAKER
"The Marching Mountains", Burning Bush
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
Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.
PETRARCH
De Remedies
Beautiful peaches are not always the best flavored; neither are handsome women the most amiable.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
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
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