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Beauty

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“Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These preachers of beauty, which light the world with their admonishing smile.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The object of art — like every other product — creates a public which is sensitive to art and enjoys beauty.”
Karl Marx (1818–1883) said by 1883 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beauty is the main positive form of the aesthetic assimilation of reality, in which aesthetic ideal finds it direct expression…”
Karl Marx (1818–1883) said by 1883 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Truth, Goodness, Beauty — those celestial thrins, Continually are born; e'en now the Universe, With thousand throats, and eke with greener smiles, Its joy confesses at their recent birth.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) first seen 1838 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: June 14, 1838
“The perception of beauty is a moral test.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: June 21, 1852
“Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) said by 1862 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 32
“There is but a very minute portion of the creation which we can turn into food and clothes, or gratification for the body; but the whole creation may be used to minister to the sense of beauty.”
William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) said by 1842 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The greatest truths are wronged if not linked with beauty, and they win their way most surely and deeply into the soul when arrayed in this their natural and fit attire.”
William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) said by 1842 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A beauty is a woman you notice; a charmer is one who notices you.”
Adlai Stevenson II (1900–1965) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Stevenson Wit (1965) edited by Bill Adler
“We have exiled beauty; the Greeks took up arms for her.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) first seen 1948 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Helen's Exile" (1948)
“We turn our backs on nature; we are ashamed of beauty. Our wretched tragedies have a smell of the office clinging to them, and the blood that trickles from them is the color of printer's ink.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) first seen 1948 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Helen's Exile" (1948)
“Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard. It steels itself to attain the absolute and authority; it wants to transfigure the world before having exhausted it, to set it to rights before having understood it. Whatever it may say, our era is deserting this world.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) first seen 1948 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Helen's Exile" (1948)
“For those of us who have been thrown into hell, mysterious melodies and the torturing images of a vanished beauty will always bring us, in the midst of crime and folly, the echo of that harmonious insurrection which bears witness, throughout the centuries, to the greatness of humanity.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People understand the meaning of eating lies in the nourishment of the body only when they cease to consider that the object of that activity is pleasure. ...People understand the meaning of art only when they cease to consider that the aim of that activity is beauty, i.e., pleasure.”
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In spite the mountains of books written about art, no precise definition of art has been constructed. And the reason for this is that the conception of art has been based on the conception of beauty.”
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Having acknowledged the measure of the good to be pleasure, i.e., beauty, the European upper classes went back in their comprehension of art to the gross conception of the primitive Greeks which Plato had already condemned. And with this understanding of life, a theory of art was formulated.”
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am very fond of the company of ladies. I like their beauty, I like their delicacy, I like their vivacity, and I like their silence.”
Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don't care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity. I am at ease in my generation.”
Émile Zola (1840–1902) first seen 1866 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mes Haines [My Hates] (1866) as quoted in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 14th ed. (1968) p. 786
“We need a third metric of success, which include our health and our being, first of all, because if we sacrifice that, what do we have? And our capacity to tap into our own wisdom, our own sense of wonder at the beauty of life that we so often miss, and our capacity to give, and to be kind”
Arianna Huffington (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I've never met a person I couldn't call a beauty.”
Andy Warhol (1928–1987) said by 1987 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will.”
Henry Miller (1891–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let the florid music praise, The flute and the trumpet, Beauty’s conquest of your face: In that land of flesh and bone, Where from citadels on high Her imperial standards fly, Let the hot sun Shine on, shine on.”
W. H. Auden (1907–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The problem whether or not a good end justifies bad means seems to arise out of such cases as whether one should lie to a sick man in order to set his mind at rest; or whether one should keep a people in ignorance in order to make them happy; or whether one should begin a long and bloody civil war in order to establish a world of peace and beauty.”
Karl Popper (1902–1994) said by 1994 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Without ideality, there is no grandeur; without grandeur there is no beauty. Olympus is a mountain. The most effective monument will always be the Pyramids. Exuberance is better than taste; the desert is better than a streetpavement, and a savage is surely better than a hairdresser!”
Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880) said by 1880 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We always thought the living earth was a thing of beauty. It isn’t. Life has had to learn to defend itself against the planet’s random geological savagery.”
Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yet it was the impression that the unknown master has set out to create, Phoenix-like, from the dying embers of a great legend. He had captured, and held for all future ages to see, that beauty whose service is the purpose of life, and it sole justification.”
Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Books ... hold within them the gathered wisdom of humanity, the collected knowledge of the world's thinkers, the amusement and excitement built up by the imaginations of brilliant people. Books contain humor, beauty, wit, emotion, thought, and, indeed, all of life. Life without books is empty.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Puzzles of the Black Widowers (1990), pp. 74-75
“But the horse ran on, daring Svetz with its eyes. How to describe such motion? Svetz had never seen ballet. He knew how machinery moved, and this wasn’t it. All he could think of was a man and a woman making love. Slippery-smooth rhythmic motion, absolute single-minded purpose, motion for the pleasure of motion. It was terrible in its beauty, the flight of the horse.”
Larry Niven (born 1938) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How I'm moved. How you move me With your beauty's potency.”
Kate Bush (born 1958) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I love the whirling of the dervishes. I love the beauty of rare innocence. You don't need no crystal ball, Don't fall for a magic wand. We humans got it all, we perform the miracles.”
Kate Bush (born 1958) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I will fight for you, yes, and you will fight for me. And if you have sacrificed joy and courage and beauty and wisdom for my sake, I will give them all to you again; and yet you must also give them to me, for they are things in which without you I am wanting. But together we can make them.”
Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You see the beauty of my proposal is It needn’t wait on general revolution. I bid you to a one-man revolution— The only revolution that is coming.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Build Soil", first recited on May 31, 1932, at Columbia University. Inspired by Virgil's First Eclogue (poets.org)
“The intelligible forms of ancient poets, The fair humanities of old religion, The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain, Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, Or chasms and wat'ry depths; all these have vanished. They live no longer in the faith of reason!”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The most general definition of beauty ... Multeity in Unity.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) said by 1834 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A lovely lady, garmented in light From her own beauty.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) first seen 1820 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Witch of Atlas (1820), st. 5
“It is our will That thus enchains us to permitted ill. We might be otherwise, we might be all We dream of happy, high, majestical. Where is the love, beauty and truth we seek, But in our mind? and if we were not weak, Should we be less in deed than in desire?”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To that high Capital, where kingly Death Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay, He came.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) said by 1822 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is the first time in our history that this ceremony has been held, as you've been told, on this West Front of the Capitol. Standing here, one faces a magnificent vista, opening up on this city's special beauty and history. At the end of this open mall are those shrines to the giants on whose shoulders we stand.”
Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beauty is a whore.”
Walker Percy (1916–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“measureless our pure living complete love whose doom is beauty and its fate to grow”
E. E. Cummings (1894–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The traveller who has contemplated the ruins of ancient Rome may conceive some imperfect idea of the sentiments which they must have inspired when they reared their heads in the splendour of unsullied beauty.”
Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) said by 1794 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder: Isle of Beauty, fare thee well!”
Thomas Haynes Bayly (1797–1839) said by 1839 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Isle of Beauty, st. 3, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "I find that absence still increases love", Charles Hopkins, To C. C.; "Distance sometimes endears friendship, and absence swe…
“And dimly seen, a tangled mass Of Walls and woods of light and shade Stands beckoning up the Stelvio pass Varenna, with its white cascade. I ask myself, Is this a dream? Will it all vanish into air? Is there a land of such supreme And perfect beauty anywhere!”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Near this spot Are deposited the Remains of one Who possessed Beauty without Vanity, Strength without Insolence, Courage without Ferocity, And all the virtues of Man, without his Vices. This Praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery If inscribed over human ashes, Is but a just tribute to the Memory of BOATSWAIN, a DOG”
Lord Byron (1788–1824) first seen 1808 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Inscription on the monument of a Newfoundland dog (1808).
“There be none of Beauty's daughters With a magic like thee; And like music on the waters Is thy sweet voice to me.”
Lord Byron (1788–1824) first seen 1816 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Stanzas for Music, st. 1 (1816).
“Who hath not proved how feebly words essay To fix one spark of beauty's heavenly ray? Who doth not feel, until his failing sight Faints into dimness with its own delight, His changing cheek, his sinking heart, confess The might, the majesty of loveliness?”
Lord Byron (1788–1824) said by 1824 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He who hath bent him o'er the dead Ere the first day of death is fled,— The first dark day of nothingness, The last of danger and distress, Before decay's effacing fingers Have swept the lines where beauty lingers.”
Lord Byron (1788–1824) said by 1824 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes: Thus mellow'd to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies.”
Lord Byron (1788–1824) said by 1824 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source