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beauty quotes

  • There is sometimes a greater judgement shewn in deviating from the rules of art, than in adhering to them; and†there ismore beauty inthe works of a great genius who is ignorant of all the rules of art, than in the works of a little genius, who not only knows but scrupulously observes them.

    -Joseph Addison
      In The Spectator, no.592,10 Sep.

  • Edward Hopper is the great painter of American hell in the 20th century, the limner-laureate of the beauty, poignance, eternityand bone-ache disquietude of life.

    - Henry Southworth Allen
     In the Washington Post, 25  Jun.

  •    My Love in her attire doth show her wit, It doth so well become her; For every season she hath dressings fit, For winter, spring, and summer. No beauty she doth miss When all her robes are on; But beauty's self she is When all her robes are gone.

    -Anonymous
    'Madrigal'. Collected in F Davison (ed) Poetical Rhapsody (1602).

  • Pulchritudo enim creaturae nihil est aliud quam similitudo divinae pulchritudinis in rebus participata. The beautyofcreaturesisnothingother thananimage of the divine beauty in which things participate.

    - StThomas Aquinas
    c.1260  Commentarium in Dionysii De Divinibus Nominibus, bk.4, ch.5.

  • Solus homo delectatur in ipsa pulchritudine sensibilium secundum seipsam. Only man delights in the beauty of sense objects for their own sake.

    - StThomas Aquinas
    c.1268  Summa Theologia, bk.1, question 91, article 3.

  • And that sweet City with her dreaming spires, She needs not June for beauty's heightening.

    - Matthew Arnold
      Of Oxford. New Poems,'Thyrsis', l.19^20.

  • Bonte   vaut mieux que beaute  . Kindness is worth more than beauty.

    -Jean d' also known as Jean Blondel   fl.c.1375 Arras
    c.1393  Melusine.

  • Sero te amavi, pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova, sero te amavi! Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you.

    -St Augustine originally Aurelius Augustinus
    AD 397  Confessions, bk.10, ch.27.

  • Beauty is as summer-fruits, which are easy to corrupt, and cannot last.

    - Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
      Essays, no.43,'Of Beauty'.

  • That is the best part of beauty, which a picture cannot express.

    - Francis,Viscount St Albans Bacon
      Essays, no.43,'Of Beauty'.

  • I have trouble with beauty.

    - Georg Baselitz
      On the effects of witnessing suffering as a child in Dresden during the war. In the NewYork Times, 21 May.

  • La'  , tout n'est qu'ordre et beaute  , Luxe, calme et volupte  . There where all is order and beauty. Lush, calm and voluptuous.

    - Charles Baudelaire
      Les Fleurs du mal,'L'Invitation au Voyage'.

  • Beautyand the lust for learning have yet to be allied.

    - Sir (Henry) Max(imilian) Beerbohm
    Zuleika Dobson, ch.7.

  • Je n'e  cris point d'amour, n'estant point amoureux, Je n'e  cris de beaute  , n'aiant belle maistresse, Je n'e  cris de douceur, n'esprouvant que rudesse, Je n'e  cris de plaisir, me trouvant douloureux. I cannot write of love, as I am not in love, I cannot write of beauty, as I have no beautiful mistress, I cannot write of sweetness, as I experience nothing but hardship, I cannot write of pleasure, as I am always in pain.

    -Joachim du Bellay
      Les Regrets, no.79.

  • On se fait une ide  e pre  cise de l'ordre, mais non pas du de s ordre. La beaute  , la vertu, le bonheur, ont des proportions; la laideur, le vice, et le malheur, n'en ont point. We can form a precise idea of order, but not of disorder. Beauty, virtue, happiness, all have their proportions; ugliness, vice and unhappiness have none.

    -Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
      Paul et Virginie.

  •    Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear: though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident.One thing have I desired of the L, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the L all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the L, and to inquire in his temple.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORDORDORDPsalms 27:3^4.

  • O worship the L in the beauty of holiness: fear before him, all the earth.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORDPsalms 96:9.

  • Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the L, she shall be praised.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORDProverbs 31:30.

  • Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the L revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely hehath borne ourgriefs, and carried our sorrows.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ORDIsaiah 53:1^4.

  • The Spirit of the Lord G isuponme; becausethe Lhath anointed meto preach good tidings untothemeek; he hath sent me, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;To proclaim the acceptable yearofthe L, and the dayof vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for thespirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the L, that he might be glorified.

    -Bible (Old Testament)
    ODORD ORDORDIsaiah 61:1^3.

  • Knowledge of ideal beauty is not to be acquired. It is born with us. Innate ideas are in every man, born with him; theyare truly himself.

    -William Blake
    c.1808  Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses.

  • And I replied unto all these things which encompass the door of my flesh,'Ye have told me of my god, that ye are not he: tell me something of him'. And theycried all with a great voice,'He made us'.Myquestioning themwasmy mind's desire, and their Beauty was their answer.

    - Robert Seymour Bridges
      The Spirit of Man: The Confessions of St  Augustine.

  • If you get simple beauty and naught else, You get about the best thing God invents.

    - Robert Browning
      Men and Women,'Fra Lippo Lippi'.

  • Italia! oh Italia! thou who hast The fatal gift of beauty.

    -Rochdale
    ^18  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 4, stanza 42.

  • 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 mellowed to that tender light Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

    -Rochdale
      'She Walks in Beauty'.

  • He shouldered high his voluntary Cross, Wrestled his hardships into forms of beauty, And taught his gorgon destinies to sing.

    - (Ignatius) Roy Dunnachie Campbell
      'Luis de Camo‹   es'.

  • If Nature had not befriended us with beauty, and other good graces, to help us to insinuate our selves into men's affections, we should have beenmore enslaved thanany other of Nature's creatures she hath made.

    - Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle Cavendish
      Sociable Letters.

  • Awit should no more be sincerethana woman constant; one argues a decay of parts, as t'other of beauty.

    -William Congreve
      The Way of the World, act1, sc.6.

  • Beauty is the lover's gift.

    -William Congreve
      Mirabell. The Way of the World, act 2, sc.4.

  • A gentleman's park is my aversion. It is not beauty because it is not nature.

    -John Constable
      In R B Beckett (ed) Constable's Correspondence, Suffolk Records Society (1962^70).

  • En perseguirme, Mundo, Que   interesas? En que   te ofendo, cuando so  lo intento poner bellezas en mi entendimiento y no mi entendimiento en las bellezas? World, in hounding me, what do you gain? How can it harm you if I choose, astutely, rather to stock my mind with things of beauty, than waste its stock on every beauty's claim?

    - SorJuana Ine  s de la Cruz
      Poes|  a, teatro y prosa,'Que  jase de la suerte' (translated as 'She Complains about Her Fate',1985).

  •    why talk of beauty what could be more beaut- iful than these heroic happy dead who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter they did not stop to think they died instead then shall the voices of liberty be mute? He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water.

    - e e pen name of  Edward Estlin Cummings cummings
      is 5,'Two, III'.

  • But beauty vanishes; beauty passes; However rarerare it be; And when I crumble, who will remember This lady of the West Country?

    -Walter de la Mare
      'Epitaph'.

  • Strength and beautyare the blessings of youth; temperance, however, is the flower of old age.

    -Democritus
    Fragment quoted in H Diels and W Kranz (eds) Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, vol.2 (1952), no.294.

  • Les beaute  s ont, dans les arts, le me"  me fondement que les ve  rite  s dans la philosophie.Qu'est-ce que la ve  rite  ? La conformite   de nos jugements avec les e"  tres. Qu'est-ce que la beaute   d'imitation? La conformite   de l'image avec la chose. Beauty has in art the same foundation as does truth in philosophy. What is the truth? The conformity of our judgements with beings. What is the beauty of imitation? The conformity of the image with the thing.

    - Denis Diderot
      Entretiens sur le fils naturel, pt.3.

  • Youth, beauty, graceful action seldom fail: But common interest always will prevail: And pity never ceases to be shown To him, who makes the people's wrongs his own.

    -John Dryden
    Absalom and  Achitophel, pt.1, l.723^6.

  • The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the power of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which ourdull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive formsthis knowledge, this feeling, isatthe centerof true religiousness.In thissense, and in this sense only, I belong to the rank of devoutly religious men.

    - Albert Einstein
    Quoted in Philipp Frank Einstein: HisLife and Times (1947), ch.12, section 5.

  • You can scarcely imagine the beauty and magnificence of the buildings we burnt.

    -James Bruce Elgin
      Letter,18  Aug. Quoted in Nigel Cameron Barbarians and Mandarins (1989), ch.16.

  • We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die, We Poets of the proud old lineage Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why What shall we tell you? Tales, marvellous tales Of ships and stars and isles where good men rest.

    -James Elroy Flecker
      'The Golden  Journey to Samarkand', epilogue.

  • Cricket remains for me the game of games, the sanspareil, the great metaphor, the best marriage ever devisedof mind and body† For meit remainstheProust of pastimes, the subtlest and most poetic, the most past- and-present; whose beauty can lie equally in days, in a whole, or in one tiny phrase, a blinding split second.

    -John Robert Fowles
    Quick Singles,'Vain Memories'. Quoted in Helen Exley Cricket Quotations (1992).

  • Quiet book-learning in monasteries and ethereal music, sonnets and courtly lovethat stuff is all fantasyand veneer† You couldn't afford to let the beauty of the thing seduce you too far or you forgot the truth and the truth was always hard as iron bloody bars.

    -Janice Galloway
      Foreign Parts, ch.7.

  • He was afflicted by the thought that where Beauty was, nothing ever ran quite straight, which, no doubt, was why so many people looked on it as immoral.

    -John Galsworthy
      In Chancery, pt.1, ch.13.

  • Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys and destiny obscure; Nor Grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the poor. The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Awaits alike th' inevitable hour, The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

    -Thomas Gray
    Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, l.29^36.

  • Beauty pains, and when it pained most, I shot.

    - Ernst Bernard Haas
      In Life,1  Aug.'The Glow of Paris'.

  • I believe that the scientist is trying to expand absolute truth and the artist absolute beauty, so that I find in art and science, and in an attempt to live a good life, all the religion I want.

    -J(ohn) B(urdon) S(anderson) Haldane
    Living Philosophies.

  • Beauty isthe first test: there isno permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.

    - Godfrey Harold Hardy
    A Mathematician's  Apology.

  •    Who says that fictions onlyand false hair Become a verse? Is there in truth no beauty? Is all good structure in a winding stair?

    - George Herbert
    'Jordan (1)', collected in The Temple, Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations (published posthumously,1633).

  • All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.

    -Gerard Manley Hopkins
      'Pied Beauty'.

  • Le beau n'a qu'un type; le laid en a mille. Beauty has only one form; ugliness has a thousand.

    -Victor Marie Hugo
      Cromwell, pre  face.

  • In art economy is always beauty.

    - Henry James
      Preface for revised NewYork edn of  The Altar of the Dead (first published1895).

  • God passes through the thicket of the world, and wherever his glance falls he turns all things to beauty.

    -StJohn of the Cross originally Juan deYepes yAŁ   lvarez
    Ca  ntico espiritual (translated by K Kavanaugh and O Rodriguez as The Spiritual Canticle).

  • A pox of her autumnal face, her pieced beauty!

    - Ben Jonson
    ^10  Epicoene, act1, sc.1.

  •    A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

    -John Keats
      Endymion, bk.1, l.1^5.

  • I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of the imaginationwhat the imagination seizes as beauty must be truthwhether it existed before or not.

    -John Keats
      Letter to Benjamin Bailey, 22 Nov.

  • 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,'that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

    -John Keats
      Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St.  Agnes and Other Poems,'Ode on a Grecian Urn', stanza 5.

  • 'Tisn't beauty, so to speak, nor good talk necessarily. It's just It. Some women'll stay in a man's memory if they once walked down a street.

    - (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling
      Traffics and Discoveries,'Mrs Bathhurst'.

  •    A new glass age has begun, which is equal in beauty to the old one of Gothic windows.

    - Arthur Korn
      Glas im Bau und als Gebrauchsgegenstand (translated as Glass in Modern  Architecture,1967).

  •   Even in victory, there is no beauty, and he who calls it beautiful is one who delights in slaughter.

    -Lao-Tzu   6c
    c.250  BC  Tao-te Ching, no.31. Collected in LinYutang (trans and ed)  The Wisdom of China and India (1942).

  • On ne peut juger de la beaute   de la vie que par celle de la mort. One can only judge the beauty of life through death.

    - Comte de properly Isidore Ducasse Lautre  amont
      Poe  sies, pt.2.

  •    I do not want peace nor beauty nor even freedom from 494 pain. I want to fight and to feel new gods in the flesh.

    - D(avid) H(erbert) Lawrence
      Letter to E H Brewster, 2  Jan.

  • Death is a name for beauty not in use.

    - Irving Layton
      'Composition in Late Spring', collected in The Collected Poems of Irving Layton (1971).

  • Il n'y a que la Beaute  et elle n'a qu'une expression parfaite, la Poe  sie. There is only beautyand it has only one perfect expression, poetry.

    - Ste  phane Mallarme 
      Letter to Cazalis.

  • We sing the love of danger.Courage, rashness, and rebellion are the elements of our poetry. Hitherto literature has tended to exalt thoughtful immobility, ecstasy, and sleep, whereas we are for aggressive movement, febrile insomnia, mortal leaps, and blows with the fist.We proclaim that the world is richer for a new beautyof speed, and our praise isfor themanat the wheel. There is no beauty now save in struggle, no masterpiece can be anything but aggressive, and hence we glorify war, militarism and patriotism.

    - Emilio FilippoTomasso Marinetti
      Manifesto of Futurism. Quoted in Denis Mack Smith Italy:  A Modern History (1959), p.270.

  • We affirm that the world's magnificence has been enriched bya new beauty: the beautyof speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of explosive breatha roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot ismore beautiful than theVictory of Samothrace.

    - Emilio FilippoTomasso Marinetti
      Manifesto of Futurism.

  • What is beauty, saith my sufferings, then? If all the pens that ever poets held Had fed the feeling of their masters'thoughts, And every sweetness that inspired their hearts, Their minds, and muses on admire'  d themes; If all the heavenly quintessence they still From their immortal flowers of poesy, Wherein, as in a mirror, we perceive The highest reaches of a human wit; If these had made one poem's period, And all combined in beauty's worthiness, Yet should there hover in their restless heads One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least, Which into words no virtue can digest.

    - Christopher Marlowe
      Tamburlaine the Great (published1590), pt.1, act 5, sc.1.

  • And every warrior that is rapt with love Of fame, of valour, and of victory, Must needs have beauty beat on his conceits: I thus conceiving and subduing both, That which hath stopped the tempest of the gods, Even from the fiery-spangled veil of heaven, To feel the lovely warmth of shepherds'flames, And march in cottages of strowe'  d weeds, Shall give the world to note, for all my birth, That virtue solely is the sum of glory, And fashions men with true nobility.

    - Christopher Marlowe
      Tamburlaine the Great (published1590), pt.1, act 5, sc.1.

  • Euclid alone Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they Who, though once only and then but far away, Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.

    - Edna St Vincent Millay
      Harp-Weaver and Other Poems,'Sonnet 22: Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare'.

  • Yet beauty, though injurious, hath strange power, After offence returning, to regain Love once possessed.

    -John Milton
    Samson  Agonistes, l.1003^5.

  • In the final analysis, all architecture reveals the application of human ingenuity to the satisfaction of human needs. And among these needs are not only shelter, warmth and accommodation, but also the needs, felt at every moment in every part of the world in endlessly different ways, for something more profound, evocative and universal, for beauty, for permanence, for immortality.

    - Patrick Nuttgens
      'The Nature of  Architecture', in Ben Farmer and Hentie Louw (eds) Companion to Contemporary  Architectural Thought (1993).

  • 'Strange friend,' I said,'here is no cause to mourn.' 'None,'said the other,'save the undone years, The hopelessness.Whatever hope is yours Was my life also; I went hunting wild After the wildest beauty in the world.'

    -Wilfred Owen
      'Strange Meeting', collected in Poems (published1920).

  • Of such wisdom, the poetic passion, the desire of beauty, the love of art for its own sake, has most. For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highestquality toyourmomentsasthey pass,and simply for those moments'sake.

    -Walter Pater
      'Conclusion' in Studies in the History of the Renaissance.

  • The flowers anew, returning seasons bring; But beauty faded has no second spring.

    - Ambrose Philips
      The First Pastoral,'Lobbin'.

  • Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon.When we love a womanwe don't start measuring her limbs.

    - Pablo Ruiz y Picasso
      In an interview with Christian Zervos, editor of Cahiers d'Art, translatedbyAlfred H BarrJr in his Picasso: FiftyYears of His Art (1946).

  • First follow Nature, and your judgement frame By her just standard, which is still the same: Unerring Nature, still divinely bright, One clear, unchanged, and universal light, Life, force and beauty must to all impart, At once the source and end and test of art.

    - Alexander Pope
    An Essay on Criticism, l.68^73.

  • Still round and round the ghosts of Beauty glide, And haunt the places where their honour died. See how the world its veterans rewards! Ayouth of frolics, an old age of cards.

    - Alexander Pope
      Epistles to Several Persons,'To a Lady', l.241^4.

  • The real sin against life is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one's owneven more, one's own, for that has been put in our care and we are responsible for its well- being.

    - Katherine Anne Porter
      Ship of Fools, pt.3.

  • Art very possibly ought to be the supreme achievement, the'accomplished', but there is the other satisfactory effectthat of a man hurling himself at an indomitable chaos and yanking and hauling as much of it as possible into some sort of order (or beauty) aware of it both as chaos and as potential.

    - Ezra Loomis Pound
    Quoted in H Kenner (ed) The Pound Era (1973).

  • But of good household features her person was made, Nor by faction cry'd up nor of censure afraid, And her beauty was rather for use than parade.

    - Matthew Prior
      'Jinny theJust' (first printed1907).The title was givenbyA R Waller.

  • On a dit que la beaute   est une promesse de bonheur. Inversement, la possibilite   du plaisir peut e"  tre un commencement de beaute  . It has been said that beauty is a guarantee of happiness. Conversely, the possibility of pleasure can be the beginning of beauty.

    - Marcel Proust
    ' 1923  A la recherche du temps perdu,'La Prisonni e' re'.

  • Here lies a lady of beauty and high degree. Of chills and fever she died, of fever and chills, The delight of her husband, her aunts, an infant of three, And of medicos marvelling sweetly on her ills.

    -John Crowe Ransom
      Chills and Fever,'Here Lies a Lady'.

  • Un soir, j'ai assis la Beaute   sur mes genoux.Et je l'ai trouve  e ame'  re.Et je l'ai injurie  e. One evening, I sat Beauty on my knees.And I found her bitter.And I hurt her.

    - (Jean Nicolas) Arthur Rimbaud
      Une saison en enfer,'Jadis, si je me souviens bien'.

  • Le Bonheur e  tait ma fatalite  , mon remords, mon ver: ma vie serait toujours trop immense pour e"  tre de  voue  e a'   la force et a'   la beaute  . Happiness was my fate, my remorse, my worm: my life would always be too large to be dedicated to force and to beauty.

    - (Jean Nicolas) Arthur Rimbaud
      Une saison en enfer, De  lires, no.2,'Alchimie du verbe'.

  • There can be no danger in sweetness and youth Where love is secured by good nature and truth, On her beauty I'll gaze, and of pleasure complain, While every kind look adds a link to my chain.

    -JohnWilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester
    'The Submission', l.13^16 (published1680).

  • But could we not reach the point of highest perfection in a new kind of art, in this art of landscape, and perhaps reach a higher beauty than existed before?

    - Philipp Otto Runge
      Letter, quoted in L Eitner Neoclassicism and Romanticism 1750^1850 (1964).

  • Mathematics possesses not only truth, but supreme beautya beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.

    - Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
      The Principles of Mathematics.

  • I always say beauty is only sin deep.

    -Saki pseudonym of  Hector Hugh Munro
      Reginald,'Reginald's ChoirTreat'.

  • The things people had once held against her† unconventional beauty†un-American elegance, the taste for French clothes and French foodwere suddenly no longer liabilities but assets.

    - Arthur M(eier),Jr Schlesinger
      OnJacqueline Kennedy's post-election image. AThousand Days.

  • Look not thou on beauty's charming, Sit thou still when kings are arming. Taste not when the wine-cup glistens, Speak not when the people listens, Stop thine ear against the singer, From the red gold keep thy finger, Vacant heart, and hand, and eye, Easy live and quiet die.

    - Sir Walter Scott
      The Bride of Lammermoor, ch.3 (LucyAshton's song).

  •    Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?

    - George Bernard Shaw
      AnnWhitefield. Man and Superman, act 4.

  • And the rose like a nymph to the bath addressed, Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast, Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air The soul of her beautyand love lay bare.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'The Sensitive Plant', pt.1, l.29^32.

  • A lovely lady, garmented in light From her own beauty.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'TheWitch of Atlas', stanza 5.

  • For she was beautifulher beauty made The bright world dim, and everything beside Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'TheWitch of Atlas', stanza12.

  • To that high Capital, where kingly Death Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay, He came.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
    Adonais, stanza 7.

  • And truly, even Plato, whosoever well considereth shall find that in the body of his work, though the inside and strength were philosophy, the skin as it were and beauty depended most on poetry.

    - Sir Philip Sidney
      The Defence of Poetry.

  • Where the satyrs are chattering, nymphs with their flattering Glimpse of the forest enhance All the beauty of marrow and cucumber narrow And Ceres will join in the dance.

    - Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell
      Fa c° ade,'Tarantella'.

  • For seasons change, And order, truth, and beauty range, Adjust, attract, and fill: The grass the polyanthus cheques; And polished porphyry reflects, By the descending rill.

    - Christopher Smart
    ADORATION1763  A Song to David, stanza 52.

  • I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling or just after.

    -Wallace Stevens
      Harmonium,'ThirteenWays of Looking At A Blackbird', pt.5.

  • Man is the hunter; woman is his game: The sleek and shining creatures of the chase, We hunt them for the beauty of their skins; They love us for it, and we ride them down.

    -Tennyson
      The Princess, pt.5, l.147^50.

  •    The men, the music piercing that solitude And silence, told me truths I had not dreamed, And have forgotten since their beauty passed.

    - (Philip) Edward Thomas
      'Tears'.

  • For a long time we dreamed of a real leather ball, and at last my brother had one for his birthday. The feel of the leather, the stitching round it, the faint gold letters stamped upon it, the touch of the seam, the smell of it, all affected me so deeply that I still have that ache of beauty when I hold a cricket ball.

    - Alison Uttley
      Carts and Candlesticks.

  • Que coisa e   a formosura, sena‹  o uma caveira bem vestida, a que a menor enfermidade tira a cor, e antes de a morte a despir de todo, os anos lhe va‹  o mortificando a gra c° a daquela exterior e aparente superf|cie, de tal sorte, que, se os olhos pudessem penetrar o interior dela, o na‹  o poderiam ver sem horror? What isbeauty, but a well-dressed skull that loses colour with the slightest illness, and, before death robs it of everything, the grace of its external and apparent surface is mortified by the years in such a way that, if eyes could penetrate within beauty, they could watch it only full of horror?

    - Anto"  nio Vieira
    c.1666  Sermo‹   es,'Serma‹  o do demo   nio mudo' ('Sermon of the Silent Devil').

  • Small is the worth Of beauty from the light retir'd; Bid her come forth, Suffer her self to be desir'd, And not blush to be admir'd.

    - Edmund Waller
      'Go, lovely rose'.

  • Verse thus design'd has no ill fate, If it arrive but at the date Of fading beauty, if it prove But as long-liv'd as present love.

    - Edmund Waller
      'Of EnglishVerse'.

  • Sum up my faults, I pray, and you shall find, That beauty, and gay clothes, a merry heart, And a good stomach to a feast, are all, All the poor crimes that you can charge me with.

    -John Webster
      TheWhite Devil, act 3, sc.2.

  • Why should only I† Be cased up, like a holy relic? I have youth And a little beauty.

    -John Webster
      The Duchess of Malfi, act 3, sc.2.

  • The beauty of the world is almost the only way by which we can allow God to penetrate us†the beauty of the world isthe commonest, easiest and most natural way of approach.

    - Simone Weil
    Attente de Dieu (translated asWaiting for God,1951).

  • I despair of the Republic!† What a horror it is for a whole nation to be developing without a sense of beauty, and eating bananas for breakfast.

    - Edith Newbold ne  e Jones Wharton
      On the US. Letter to Sara Norton,19 Aug.

  • A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it.

    - E(lwyn) B(rooks) White
      One Man's Meat,'Poetry'.

  • Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth Of simple beautyand rustic health.

    -John Greenleaf Whittier
      'Maud Muller', l.3^4.

  • 'Tis midnight, falls the lamp-light dull and sickly On a pale and anxious crowd, Through the court, and round the judges thronging thickly, With prayers they dare not speak aloud Two youths, two noble youths, stand prisoners at the bar You can see them through the gloom In the pride of life and manhood's beauty, there they are Awaiting their death-doom.

    -Jane Francesca ne  e Elgee Wilde
    'The Brothers'.

  • The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, themore strictlyand heavilyand cruelly images of female beauty have come to weigh upon them.

    - Naomi Wolf
      The Beauty Myth, ch.1,'The Beauty Myth'.

  • 'Beauty' is a currency like the gold standard. Like any economy it is determined by politics, and in the modern age in theWest it isthe last, best belief systemthat keeps male domination intact.

    - Naomi Wolf
      The Beauty Myth, ch.1,'The Beauty Myth'.

  • When women breached the power structure in the 1980s†two economies finally merged. Beauty was no longer just a symbolic form of currency: it literally became money.

    - Naomi Wolf
      The Beauty Myth, ch.2 'Work'.

  • London is enchanting. I step out upon a tawny coloured magic carpet, it seems, and get carried into beauty without raising a finger† People pop in and out, lightly, divertingly like rabbits; and I look down Southampton Row, wet as a seal's back or red and yellow with sunshine, and watch the omnibuses going and coming and hear the old crazy organs.One of these days I will write about London, and how it takes up the private life and carries it on, without any effort.

    - (Adeline) Virginia ne  e Stephen Woolf
      Diary entry, 26 May.

  • Fair seed-time had my soul, and I grew up Fostered alike by beauty and by fear.

    -William Wordsworth
    ^1805  The Prelude, bk.1, l.301^2 (published1850).

  • Earth hath not anything to show more fair: Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty: This City now doth like a garment wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill; Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will; Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!

    -William Wordsworth
      Of London.'Composed uponWestminster Bridge', complete poem. (Published1807).

  • That to this mountain-daisy's self were known The beauty of its star-shaped shadow, thrown On the smooth surface of this naked stone!

    -William Wordsworth
      'So fair so sweet', stanza 2 (published1845).

  • 21st Mayagloriousday forbeauty.Iwishyoucould see how lovely our country is at this fine season.

    -William Wordsworth
      Letter toWilliam Boxall, 21 May.

  • Wit ismore necessary than beauty; and I think no young woman ugly that has it, and no handsome woman agreeable without it.

    -William Wycherley
      The CountryWife, act1, sc.1.

  • When you are old and greyand full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face; And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly how Love fled And paced among the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

    -W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
      'WhenYou Are Old', complete poem. Collected in The Rose (1893).

  • What could have made her peaceful with a mind That nobleness made simple as a fire, With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind That is not natural in an age like this, Being high and solitary and most stern? Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there anotherTroy for her to burn?

    -W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
      'No SecondTroy', l.6^12. Collected inThe Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910).

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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