Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,808 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

English Italiano Polski עברית Français Português فارسی Español 中文 Русский Deutsch العربية हिन्दी 日本語 Ελληνικά Latina

Beauty

Love Friendship Happiness Hope Fear Courage Death Life Time War Peace Freedom Truth Wisdom Knowledge Science Art Music Nature Money Work Power God Beauty Laughter Family Success and failure Change Dreams Books and reading

“At that time [c. 1904 – 1905] I tried, by means of lines and by distribution of mottled points of colours [in his tempera painting on paper: 'Russian Beauty in a Landscape', 1905] to express the musical spirit of Russia. Other pictures of that period reflected the contradictions and later the eccentricities of Russia.”
Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) said by 1944 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What sometimes enrages me and always disappoints and grieves me is the preference of great schools of learning for the derivative as opposed to the original, for the conventional and thin which can be duplicated in many copies rather than the new and powerful, and for arid correctness and limitation of scope and method rather than for universal newness and beauty, wherever it may be seen.”
Norbert Wiener (1894–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For those of you who thought you'd be forgotten, The friends you've made will try their best, to make it so. Think of all the beauty that you left behind you. You can take it if you want it, and then let it go.”
Zooey Deschanel (born 1980) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Birds' songs express joy, beauty, and purity, and evoke in us vitality and love. So many beings in the universe love us unconditionally. The trees, the water, and the air don't ask anything of us; they just love us. Even though we need this kind of love, we continue to destroy them. By destroying the animals, the air, and the trees, we are destroying ourselves.”
Thích Nhất Hạnh (1926–2022) first seen 1993 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Love in Action: Writings on Nonviolent Social Change (1993), p. 131
“The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.”
Thích Nhất Hạnh (1926–2022) first seen 1992 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Touching Peace (1992), p. 1. Parallax Press
“The changing seasons of the Midwest – the intense heat in summer, bitter cold in winter, and unsurpassable beauty and invigorating weather of fall and spring – is what makes it an interesting place to live. Only robust and virile people can live in such a climate and enjoy it.”
Nile Kinnick (1918–1943) first seen 1942 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Journal entry (January 6, 1942)
“The love which demands nothing but beauty itself and lives in selfless worship . . . is the love that no disappointment can ever conquer, perhaps not even death itself (if that existed).”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Where the glacier meets the sky, the land ceases to be earthly, and the earth becomes one with the heavens; no sorrows live there anymore, and therefore joy is not necessary; beauty alone reigns there, beyond all demands.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The poet felt completely free now as he stood there on the deck in his collar and boots, sailing past new and ever newer districts; even if he did not own this land's resources, he owned its beauty.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every transgression is a game, every grief easy to bear compared with having discovered beauty; it was at once the crime that could never be atoned and the hurt that could never be assuaged, the tear that could never be dried.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As a child he stood by the seashore at Ljósavík and watched the waves soughing in and out, but now he was heading away from the sea. "Think of me when you are in glorious sunshine." Soon the sun of the day of resurrection will shine on the bright paths where she awaits her poet. And beauty shall reign alone.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The man smiled at him a sly smile. As if they knew a secret between them, these two. Something of age and youth and their claims and the justice of those claims. And of their claims upon them. The world past, the world to come. Their common transciencies. Above all a knowing deep in the bone that beauty and loss are one.”
Cormac McCarthy (1933–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Finally he leaned and cupped his hand to the glass chimney and blew out the lamp and lay back in the dark. He knew that on the day of his death he would see her face and he could hope to carry that beauty into the darkness with him, the last pagan on earth, singing softly upon his pallet in an unknown tongue.”
Cormac McCarthy (1933–2023) said by 2023 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What beauty can compare to that of a cantina in the early morning?”
Malcolm Lowry (1909–1957) said by 1957 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed; a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the last individual of a race of living beings breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again.”
William Beebe (1877–1962) first seen 1906 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Bird (1906)
“I think brown marks a reunion of peoples, an end to ancient wanderings. Rival cultures and creeds conspire with Spring to create children of a beauty, perhaps of a harmony, previously unknown. Or long forgotten.”
Richard Rodriguez (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Diversity emanates beauty.”
Newton Lee wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nature shows us its artistic beauty that sciences explain the hows and religions contemplate the whys.”
Newton Lee wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beauty can be so subjective that there is an age-old debate among philosophers quoting Rene Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” versus George Berkeley’s “To be is to be perceived.”
Newton Lee wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Many are to believe on Christ through the communication of truth by His servants. As they see the beauty of the Word of God, and as they see Jesus revealed in the lives of His children, they will praise Him with heart and soul and voice.”
Ellen G. White (1827–1915) first seen 1903 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Signs of the Times (9 December 1903], paragraph 10
“950. Beauty is but Skin deep ; within is Filth and Putrefaction.”
Thomas Fuller (writer) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why do I write today?The beauty of the terrible faces of our nonentities stirs me to it: colored women day workers— old and experienced— returning home at dusk, in cast off clothing faces like old Florentine oak.”
William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Each speech having its own character, the poetry it engenders will be peculiar to that speech also in its own intrinsic form. The effect is beauty, what in a single object resolves our complex feelings of propriety.”
William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The cries of a dying dog are to be blotted out as best I can. René Char you are a poet who believes in the power of beauty to right all wrongs. I believe it also. With invention and courage we shall surpass the pitiful dumb beasts, let all men believe it, as you have taught me also to believe it.”
William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I wanted them to see the gloriousness of the California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah desert. So every chance we got, we stopped the bus and just absorbed that dead heat beauty and that terrain.”
John Lydon (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The woman who first gives life, light, and form to our shadowy conceptions of beauty, fills a void in our spiritual nature that has remained unknown to us till she appeared.”
Wilkie Collins (1824–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Also in The Pre-Raphaelite Art of the Victorian Novel: Narrative Challenges to Visual Gendered Boundaries by Sophia Andres [Ohio State University Press, 2005, 0-814-20974-2] (p. 86)
“A dreamer he was, and ever would be. Yet dreaming need not injure us, if it do but take its turn with waking; and even dreams themselves may be turned to beauty, by favoured men to whom nature has given the powers of casting them into form.”
James Anthony Froude (1818–1894) said by 1894 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He knew that the whole mystery of beauty can never be comprehended by the crowd, and that while clearness is a virtue of style, perfect explicitness is not a necessary virtue.”
Arthur Symons (1865–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. ... [T]rust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.”
Mary Schmich (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Love of beauty is really only the sex instinct, which nothing but complete union satisfies.”
John Galsworthy (1867–1933) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Saint's Progress (1919)
“There are few efforts more conducive to humility than that of the translator trying to communicate an incommunicable beauty. Yet, unless we do try, something unique and never surpassed will cease to exist, except in the libraries of a few inquisitive book lovers.”
Edith Hamilton (1867–1963) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Three Greek Plays, introduction (1937)
“He will always see the most beauty whose affections are the warmest and most exercised, whose imagination is the most powerful, and who has most accustomed himself to attend to the objects by which he is surrounded.”
Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey (1773–1850) first seen 1811 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Archibald Alison's Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste, in the Edinburgh Review (May 1811)
“Whoso loves beauty is unable for that very reason to love deformity. One may not believe in our gods, but it is possible to love them...”
Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A time will come when under changed circumstances she will recover her beauty. I thought of it to-day and at once asked myself what would be our relations towards each other in the future, and whether it would make any change. I am certain it will not. I know already how it feels to live without her, and shall not do anything which might make her cast me off.”
Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When you return, the youngest of the seers, Released from fetters of ancestral pose, There will be beauty waiting down the years — Revisions of the ruby and the rose.”
Nathalia Crane (1913–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And the eyes of all look upward seeing sign-word drawing nigh, The stony wings of Egypt coming back across the sky;We hear the clinking tamborine of Miriam anew; We believe in every miracle since Lindbergh flew the blue — The wonder of the long draw when the bowstring is a thread — The beauty of a courage that can raise the wings of lead.”
Nathalia Crane (1913–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The human face is the organic seat of beauty.... It is the register of value in development, a record of Experience, whose legitimate office is to perfect the life, a legible language to those who will study it, of the majestic mistress, the soul.”
Eliza Farnham (1815–1864) first seen 1864 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Woman and Her Era (1864), pt. 1, ch. 1
“I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art - and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position.”
Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) first seen 1952 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from 'Time Magazine', 10 March 1952; as quoted on Wikipedia: Marcel Duchamp
“The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem.. .I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.”
Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) said by 1968 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quote from Marcel Duchamp, by Kynaston McShine, 1989; as quoted on Wikipedia: Marcel Duchamp
“..I served Beauty by drawing her enemies.”
Paul Klee (1879–1940) first seen 1901 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote of Paul Klee, from 'Diaries I', 1901; as quoted in 'Klee & Kandinsky', 2015 exhibition text, Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau Munich, 2015-2016
“No one before the twenty-first century had ever loved flowers and fruiting trees and little birds and the simple beauty of green leaves as did those who lived after the Famine, for whom they were precious and rare and always endangered. (four: THROUGH THE BURNING LABYRINTH)”
Marge Piercy (born 1936) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To be a poet is to open your eyes to everything around you. I love the beauty of the world, but I get angry at the cruelty in the world. How can we not get angry at the tremendous cruelty that is built into our system?”
Marge Piercy (born 1936) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, which is a pity because this week the National Association of Beholders wrote to tell me that I've got a face like a rucksack full of dented bells.”
Charlie Brooker (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For beauty with sorrow Is a burden hard to be borne: The evening light on the foam, and the swans, there; That music, remote, forlorn.”
Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Slowness is a beauty”
Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) said by 1917 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To me the motif itself is an insignificant factor; what I want to reproduce is what lies between the motif and me.. .Other painters paint a bridge, a house, a boat.. .I want to paint the air in which the bridge, the house and the boat are to be found - the beauty of the air around them, and that is nothing less than the impossible.”
Claude Monet (1840–1926) first seen 1895 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Claude Monet, in an interview, 1895; as quoted in: Paul Hayes Tucker et al. (eds). (1999) Monet in the Twentieth Century. London: Royal Academy of Arts/Boston: Museum of Fine Arts. As cited in: , "About There, or Therea…
“When we are bored, when we are out of tune, when we have little worries, it clears our feelings and changes our mood if we can get in touch with the beauty of the natural world.”
Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon (1862–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Any two opposite colours of the rainbow (eg yellow and blue) , form a third between them, thus imparting to each other their peculiar qualities . The sight of what they were originally is quite lost, and instead, a most pleasing green is found, which colour, nature has chosen for the vestment of the earth, and with the beauty of which the eye never tires.”
William Hogarth (1697–1764) said by 1764 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's the best proposal that we ought to have because it's flatter, it's fairer, it's finite, it's family friendly. And instead, we've had a Congress that spent money like John Edwards at a beauty shop.”
Mike Huckabee (born 1955) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Republican presidential candidate debate, Johnston, Iowa, 2007-12-12
“It was a world which granted privileges to some and imposed prohibitions on others...Endowed with strength and eager to learn, one had to drag himself in a narrow prison cell when he could see an open field, a vast horizon in the distance; when he could feel the beatings of a heart; and when he believed himself entitled to enjoy the beauty of a dream.”
José Rizal (1861–1896) first seen 1884 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Laughter and Tears", an essay (c.1884)