“Everything has a beauty peculiar to itself; but if you put one instead of another, the most beautiful becomes ugly, because it is not in its proper place.”

— Lucian

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Lucian 17

ancient Greek writer 120

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl—A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship

“Gold gives an appearance of beauty even to ugliness:
But with poverty everything becomes frightful.”

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636–1711) French poet and critic

L'or même à la laideur donne un teint de beauté :
Mais tout devient affreux avec la pauvreté.
Satire 8, l. 209
Satires (1716)

“One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty another's ugliness; one man's wisdom another's folly.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Circles

“India is a beautiful bride and Hindus and Muslims are her two eyes. ... If one of them is lost, this beautiful bride will become ugly.”

Syed Ahmed Khan (1820–1898) Indian educator and politician

Quoted in Shirali, Aresh (10 August 2017). "The Enigma of Aligarh" https://openthemagazine.com/freedom-issue-2017/freedom-issue-2017-dispatches-from-history/the-enigma-of-aligarh/. Open Magazine.
Variant: "India is like a bride which has got two beautiful and lustrous eyes—Hindus and Mussulmans. If they quarrel against each other that beautiful bride will become ugly and if one destroys the other, she will lose one eye." Writings and Speeches of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan https://books.google.com/books?id=ausHAAAAMAAJ, p. 160.

“If you permit your thoughts to dwell on evil you yourself will become ugly. Look only for the good in everything so you absorb the quality of beauty.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

“A beautiful object has no intrinsic quality that is good for the mind, nor an ugly object any intrinsic power to harm it. Beautiful and ugly are just projections of the mind. The ability to cause happiness or suffering is not a property of the outer object itself. For example, the sight of a particular individual can cause happiness to one person and suffering to another. It is the mind that attributes such qualities to the perceived object.”

Dilgo Khyentse (1910–1991) Bhutanese Buddhist Lama

“Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

As quoted in New York World Telegram & Sun (21 August 1960); also in Threads: My Life Behind the Seams in the High-Stakes World of Fashion (2004) by Joseph Abboud, p. 79

“There can be no question of selecting in any direction, but of a penetrating the whole cosmic law of rhythms, forces and material that are the real world, from the ugliest to the most beautiful, everything that has character and expression, from the crudest and most brutal to the gentlest and most delicate; everything that speaks to us in its capacity as life. From this it follows that one must know all in order to be able to express all. It is the abolition of the aesthetic principle. We are not disillusioned because we have no illusions; we have never had any. What we have and what is our strength, is our joy in life; our interest in life, in all its amoral aspects. That is also the basis of our contemporary art. We do not even know the laws of aesthetics. That old idea of selection according to the beauty-principle Beautiful — Ugly, like to ethical Noble — Sinful, is dead for us, for whom the beautiful is also ugly and everything ugly is endowed with beauty. Behind the comedy and the tragedy we find only life's dramas uniting both; not in noble heroes and false villains, but people.”

Asger Jorn (1914–1973) Danish artist

Variant translations:
What we possess and what gives us strength is our joy in life, our interest in life in all its amoral facets. This is also the foundation for today's art. We do not even know the aesthetic laws.
We are not disillusioned because we have no illusions; we have never had any. What we have, and what constitutes our strength, is our joy in life, in all of its moral and amoral manifestations.
1940 - 1948, Intimate Banalities' (1941)

“India is like a bride which has got two beautiful and lustrous eyes—Hindus and Mussulmans. If they quarrel against each other that beautiful bride will become ugly and if one destroys the other, she will lose one eye.”

Syed Ahmed Khan (1820–1898) Indian educator and politician

Writings and Speeches of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan https://www.google.com/books/edition/Writings_and_Speeches/ausHAAAAMAAJ?hl=en, Nachiketa Publications (1972), p. 160.
Variant: "India is a beautiful bride and Hindus and Muslims are her two eyes. If one of them is lost, this beautiful bride will become ugly." Quoted in Shirali, Aresh (10 August 2017). "The Enigma of Aligarh" https://openthemagazine.com/freedom-issue-2017/freedom-issue-2017-dispatches-from-history/the-enigma-of-aligarh/. Open Magazine.

“Suppose someone were to say: 'Imagine this butterfly exactly as it is, but ugly instead of beautiful'?!”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Zettel

“Everything has a beauty peculiar to itself; but if you put one instead of another, the most beautiful becomes ugly, because it is not in its proper place.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Lucian 17

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