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Beauty

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“The beauty of a butterfly’s wing, the beauty of all things, is not a slave to purpose, a drudge sold to futurity. It is excrescence, superabundance, random ebullience, and sheer delightful waste to be enjoyed in its own high right.”
Donald C. Peattie (1898–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In my art, I love to capture mundane things, the beauty of objects and people’s expressions, especially women. I want my art to breathe life into a long-forgotten culture, give life to society, capture it in all its glory and create beauty using ruins of random objects.”
Olivia Mary Nantongo (born 1994) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Goodness is a special kind of truth and beauty. It is truth and beauty in human behavior.”
Harry Allen Overstreet (1875–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Isadora Duncan] wrote to George Bernard Shaw: "Will you be the father of my next child? A combination of my beauty and your brains would startle the world," but he replied: "I must decline your offer with thanks, for the child might have my beauty and your brains.”
George Bernard Shaw (disputed) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Anecdote presented in "Isadore Duncan: Dancer as Plaything of Fate" in A Century of Sundays: 100 years of Breaking News in the Sunday Papers (2006), by Nadine Dreyer, p. 65; the anecdote provided here does not cite earl…
“Makers of base coin hate the daylight Coins of pure gold love the daylight, Because daylight is the mirror that reflects them So that they see their own perfect beauty. God has named the resurrection ‘that day,’ Day shows off the beauty of red and yellow.”
Rumi (attributed) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Who has not experienced how, on near acquaintance, plainness becomes beautified, and beauty loses its charm, exactly according to the quality of the heart and mind? And from this cause am I of opinion that the want of outward beauty never disquiets a noble nature or will be regarded as a misfortune. It never can prevent people from being amiable and beloved in the highest degree.”
Fredrika Bremer (attributed) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are flowers which only yield their fragrance to the night; there are faces whose beauty only fully opens out in death. No more wrinkles; no drawn, distorted lineaments; an expression of extreme humility, blended with gladness of hope; a serene brightness, and an ideal straightening of the outline, as if the Divine finger, source of supreme beauty, had been laid there.”
Valérie de Gasparin (attributed) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For he being dead, with him is beauty slain, And, beauty dead, black chaos comes again.”
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) said by 1616 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
John Keats (1795–1821) said by 1821 at the latest bartlett, Public domain source
“Beauty is almost wholly a matter of fashion; what is beautiful today would have been grotesque a couple of generations ago and will be grotesque a hundred years ahead. It will be worse than grotesque; it will be outmoded and therefore faintly ridiculous.”
Henry Kuttner (1915–1958) said by 1958 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In this job an illusion of beauty is sold which doesn’t really exist like that. It’s like a work of art, an act. I cry in front of the camera but am not really sad. I’ve just come from a job, am made-up and made to look beautiful with fantastic clothes and hair and nails all done.”
Heidi Klum (born 1973) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview in Der Spiegel (10 February 2006)
“Beautiful is a word for young people. Beauty is a phase you grow through, like acne.”
Peter S. Beagle (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Women's greater social desirability and beauty power afford opportunities for creating both measurable and invisible income. While the opportunities are available to almost all women and some men, they are available in abundance to the genetic celebrity ... a woman so beautiful that men do more than look and talk--they follow her.”
Warren Farrell (born 1943) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A cloud of dust is not a beautiful thing to look at. Very few painters have done portraits of huge clouds of dust or included them in their landscapes or still life. Film directors rarely choose huge clouds of dust to play the lead roles in romantic comedies, and as far as my research has shown, a huge cloud of dust has never placed higher than twenty-fifth in a beauty pageant. - Lemony Snicket”
Daniel Handler (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No argument or logic carries the same degree of conviction as insight, and it is the kind of conviction by which we know that dawn over the Alps on a perfect morning is beautiful. Argument cannot produce it and doubt cannot remove it. The outward beauty meets the inward recognition and in our hearts we know.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Einstein said that "the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious." So why do so many of us try to explain the beauty of music, thus depriving it of its mystery?”
Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) first seen 1976 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Unanswered Question (1976)
“When we see one another in heaven, we will have beautiful bodies that will far surpass the beauty of our bodies on this earth.”
Paul Enns (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Puritans cannot destroy a beautiful thing, yet, by means of their extraordinary prurience, they can almost taint beauty for a moment. It is chiefly, I regret to say, through journalism that such people find expression. I regret it because there is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If I could put my hand on the north star, would it be as beautiful? The sea is lovely, but when we bathe in it, the beauty forsakes all the near water. For the imagination and senses cannot be gratified at the same time.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) said by 1882 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting—a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) first seen 1848 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Though attributed to Emerson in Edwards' A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908), p. 37, this quote originates in Politics for the People (1848) by Charles Kingsley.
“The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth.”
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) first seen 1855 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sevastopol in May (1855), Ch. 16
“Truth is ... one approach to the attainment of the good, but in and of itself, it is neither the good nor the beautiful ... Socrates, Pascal, and others regarded knowledge of the truth with regard to purposeless objects as incongruous with the good ... [by] exposing deception, truth destroys illusion, which is the principle attribute of beauty.”
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) said by 1910 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All of Vietnam has [beautiful women] and not just singular enchantresses but huge aggregate percentages of sirens and belles. Any random group of thirty Vietnamese women will contain a dozen who make Julia Roberts look like Lyle Lovett ... I wonder if it changes the nature of a society for beauty to be so common. Maybe in Vietnam "She has a wonderful personality" really means something.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable. The most common error made in matters of appearance is the belief that one should disdain the superficial and let the true beauty of one's soul shine through. If there are places on your body where this is a possibility, you are not attractive — you are leaking.”
Fran Lebowitz (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Lay your sleeping head, my love Human on my faithless arm; Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral; But in my arms till break of day Let the living creature lie: Mortal, guilty, but to me The entirely beautiful.”
W. H. Auden (1907–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What I can't understand is why you can't see the extraordinary beauty of the idea that life started from nothing – that is such a staggering, elegant, beautiful thing, why would you want to clutter it up with something so messy as a God?”
Richard Dawkins (born 1941) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whatever is in any way beautiful hath its source of beauty in itself, and is complete in itself; praise forms no part of it. So it is none the worse nor the better for being praised.”
Marcus Aurelius (121–180) said by 180 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
“And yet, it was not, not now, she that really counted. Or if she counted (and, oh, gloriously she did) it was for another’s sake. The earth and stars and sun, all that was or will be, existed for his sake. And he was coming. The most dreadful, the most beautiful, the only dread and beauty there is, was coming. The pillars on the far side of the pool flushed with his approach. I cast down my eyes.”
C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This world is empty to him alone who does not understand how to direct his libido towards objects, and to render them alive and beautiful for himself, for Beauty does not indeed lie in things, but in the feeling that we give to them.”
Carl Jung (1875–1961) said by 1961 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beautiful wreck! for still thy face, Though changed, is very fair; Like beauty's moonlight, left to shew Her morning sun was there.”
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) first seen 1828 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Change from The London Literary Gazette (16th February 1828)
“Beauty should be around the beautiful.”
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) said by 1838 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'Abdullah ibn Mas'ud reported that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "No one who has an atom's weight of pride in his heart will enter the Garden [heaven]." A man said, "And if the man likes his clothes to be good and his sandals to be good?" He said, "Allah is Beautiful and loves beauty. Pride means to renounce the truth and abase people.”
Muhammad (571–632) said by 632 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Animated the face might have been beautiful — any set of features can support beauty — but even a superb makeup job could not have made her pretty.”
Spider Robinson (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The beautiful seems right By force of Beauty, and the feeble wrong Because of weakness.”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) said by 1861 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In courtesy I’d have her chiefly learned; Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned By those that are not entirely beautiful; Yet many, that have played the fool For beauty’s very self, has charm made wise. And many a poor man that has roved, Loved and thought himself beloved, From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“First Shakespeare sonnets seem meaningless; first Bach fugues, a bore; first differential equations, sheer torture. But training changes the nature of our spiritual experiences. In due course, contact with an obscurely beautiful poem, an elaborate piece of counterpoint or of mathematical reasoning, causes us to feel direct intuitions of beauty and significance. It is the same in the moral world.”
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ch. 14, p. 333 [2012 reprint]
“The great artists are the ones who dare to entitle to beauty things so natural that when they're seen afterward, people say: Why did I never realize before that this too was beautiful?”
André Gide (1869–1951) said by 1951 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beautiful women, whose beauty meant more than it said... was their brilliancy always fed by something coarse and concealed? Was that their secret?”
Willa Cather (1873–1947) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Lost Lady (1923), Part I, Ch. 7
“That which God said to the rose, and caused it to laugh in full-blown beauty, He said to my heart, and made it a hundred times more beautiful.”
Rumi (1207–1273) said by 1273 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: III, 4129 (tr. Helminski, 1996)
“They are beautiful monsters... And when they live in a network of peace and hope, when they trust the world and their deepest hungers are fulfilled, then within that system, that delicate web, there is joy. That is what we live for, to bind the monsters together, to murder their fear and give birth to their beauty.”
Orson Scott Card (born 1951) first seen 1987 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Wyrms (1987).
“The beautiful are shyer than the ugly, for they move in a world that does not ask for beauty.”
Ned Rorem (1923–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As long as I breathe I hope. As long as I breathe I shall fight for the future, that radiant future, in which man, strong and beautiful, will become master of the drifting stream of his history and will direct it towards the boundless horizons of beauty, joy and happiness!”
Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) first seen 1879 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Optimism and Pessimism, on the Twentieth Century, and on Many Other Things" (1901), as quoted in The Prophet Armed : Trotsky, 1879-1921 (2003) by Isaac Deutscher , p. 45
“I was writing to my wife when your letter arrived, and now I want to look at her portrait myself, seeing the great beauty it contains. I am such a devoted husband that other beautiful women now do nothing for me.”
Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (1500–1558) first seen 1532 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (1532, Charles’ letter to his sister Marie), Portrait of the Emperor as a Renaissance Prince
“Jews hate nature and the natural order, because it's pure and beautiful, and also because it's bigger and stronger than they are, and they feel that they can not fully control it. Nature's beauty and harmony stands in stark contrast to their squalidness and ugliness, and that makes them hate it all the more. Jews are destroyers. They are anti-humans.”
Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Radio Interview, February 19 2005 thumbnail|I studied that first Karpov-Kasparov match for a year and a half before I cracked it, what they were doing, and discovered that it was all prearranged move-by-move. There's no…
“In that mysterious dimension where the body meets the soul the stereotype is born and has her being. She is more body than soul, more soul than mind. To her belongs all that is beautiful, even the very word beauty itself. All that exists, exists to beautify her.”
Germaine Greer (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How was it that destruction could be so beautiful? Was there something in the scale of it? Was there some shadow in people, lusting for it? Or was it just a coincidental combination of the elements, the final proof that beauty has no moral dimension?”
Kim Stanley Robinson (born 1952) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beauty is something animal, the beautiful is something celestial.”
Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) said by 1824 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This extremely interesting girl, after giving me a single glance from her beautiful eyes, stubbornly refused to look at me again. My vanity at once made me think that it was only so that I would be at full liberty to study her impeccable beauty. It was on this girl that I instantly set my sights, as if all Europe were only a seraglio provided for my pleasures.”
Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) said by 1798 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: History of My Life (trans. Trask 1967), 1997 reprint, v. 7, chapter 2, p. 19
“What indeed is more beautiful than heaven, which of course contains all things of beauty.”
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) said by 1543 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Introduction to Book 1, as quoted/translated by Edward Rosen, Nicholas Copernicus on the Revolutions (1978) ed. Jerzy Dobrzycki, Edward Rosen.
“The mathematician’s patterns, like the painter’s or the poet’s must be beautiful; the ideas like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.”
G. H. Hardy (1877–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source