
“True beauty is always oddly surprising.”
Book Three, Part II “The Edge of the Sea”, Chapter 2 (p. 353)
The Birthgrave (1975)
Ce qui est fort beau est nécessairement toujours vrai.
Source: Armance (1827), Ch. 6
Ce qui est fort beau est nécessairement toujours vrai.
Armance (1827)
“True beauty is always oddly surprising.”
Book Three, Part II “The Edge of the Sea”, Chapter 2 (p. 353)
The Birthgrave (1975)
“True friends are like diamonds – bright, beautiful, valuable, and always in style.”
“So you must always remember / that time ends the beauty”
Original: Ainsi vous doit-il souvenir / Que le temps finit la beauté
Source: Oeuvres poétiques
Misattributed
Source: Hermann Weyl as quoted by Freeman Dyson: "Characteristic of Weyl was an aesthetic sense which dominated his thinking on all subjects. He once said to me, half-joking, 'My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful; but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.'" - Freeman Dyson, "Obituary of Hermann Weyl," Nature (1956-03-10), pp. 457-458.
Source: Seriously... I'm Kidding
So, the flowers of your field, in so far as I am gardener, shall come from my heart where they reside in much good will; and my eye and hand shall attend merely to the cultivating, the weeding, the fungous blight, the noxious insect of the air, and the harmful worm below.
And so shall your garden grow; from the rich soil of the humanities it will rise up and unfold in beauty in the pure air of the spirit.
So shall your thoughts take up the sap of strong and generous impulse, and grow and branch, and run and climb and spread, blooming and fruiting, each after its kind, each flowing toward the fulfillment of its normal and complete desire. Some will so grow as to hug the earth in modest beauty; others will rise, through sunshine and storm, through drought and winter's snows year after year, to tower in the sky; and the birds of the air will nest therein and bring forth their young.
Such is the garden of the heart: so oft neglected and despised when fallow.
Verily, there needs a gardener, and many gardens.
Source: Kindergarten Chats (1918), Ch. 4 : The Garden
Vol. 1, p. 77; "Sensus Communis".
Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711)