quotations about beauty
The yoke of beauty is easy to bear
Since I need not lay it down.
KARLE WILSON BAKER
"The Marching Mountains", Burning Bush
Beautiful things may be admired, if not loved.
L. FRANK BAUM
The Tin Woodman of Oz
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 as summer fruits, which are easy to corrupt, and cannot last; and for the most part it makes a dissolute youth, and an age a little out of countenance; but yet certainly again, if it light well, it maketh virtue shine, and vices blush.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Beauty", The Essays or Counsels
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
Beauty means this to one person, perhaps, and that to another. And yet when any one of us has seen or heard or read that which to him is beautiful, he has known an emotion which is in every case the same in kind, if not in degree; an emotion precious and uplifting. A choirboy's voice, a ship in sail, an opening flower, a town at night, the song of the blackbird, a lovely poem, leaf shadows, a child's grace, the starry skies, a cathedral, apple trees in spring, a thorough-bred horse, sheep-bells on a hill, a rippling stream, a butterfly, the crescent moon -- the thousand sights or sounds or words that evoke in us the thought of beauty -- these are the drops of rain that keep the human spirit from death by drought. They are a stealing and a silent refreshment that we perhaps do not think about but which goes on all the time....It would surprise any of us if we realized how much store we unconsciously set by beauty, and how little savour there would be left in life if it were withdrawn. It is the smile on the earth's face, open to all, and needs but the eyes to see, the mood to understand.
JOHN GALSWORTHY
Candelabra
Beauty is only skin deep, and the world is full of thin skinned people.
RICHARD ARMOUR
attributed, The Mammoth Book of Comic Quotes
Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked.
ST. AUGUSTINE
City of God
In every man's heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty.
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
Travels in Philadelphia
A beautiful face fires our imagination, and we see higher virtue and intelligence in it than we can detect in its owner's head or heart when we descend to calm inspection.
CHARLES READE
Foul Play
Beauty is Nature's coin, must not be hoarded,
But must be current, and the good thereof
Consists in mutual and partaken bliss.
JOHN MILTON
Comus
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
Love of beauty is really only the sex instinct, which nothing but complete union satisfies.
JOHN GALSWORTHY
Saint's Progress
Tho' Beauty is generally the creature of fancy, yet are there some who will be Beauties in every eye.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
Clarissa
You think God will never forgive you, but the only God is beauty and beauty always forgives. It forgives with its infinite indifference.
GLEN DUNCAN
The Last Werewolf
Only true love can keep beauty innocent.
U2
"A Man and a Woman"
The idea of beauty is the fundamental idea of everything. In the world we see only distortions of the fundamental idea, but art, by imagination, may lift itself to the height of this idea. Art is therefore akin to creation.
LEO TOLSTOY
What Is Art?
Trust a girl of sixteen for knowing well if she is pretty; concerning her plainness she may be ignorant.
ELIZABETH GASKELL
Mary Barton
Choosing beauty over content (or choosing beauty as content) is always an act of sedition. If we accept the cant of official culture, we must believe that the beauty we steal from any man-made thing is stolen from its more virtuous and metaphysical backstory, wherein "real" beauty is said to reside.
DAVE HICKEY
The Invisible Dragon
Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The Conduct of Life