“Death is the mother of beauty. Only the perishable can be beautiful, which is why we are unmoved by artificial flowers.”
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Wallace Stevens278
American poet 1879–1955Related quotes
“Death is the mother of beauty,” said Henry. “And what is beauty?” “Terror.”
Donna Tartt book The Secret History
Source: The Secret History
“Beauty is but a flower
Which wrinkles will devour.”
Thomas Nashe (1567–1601) English Elizabethan pamphleteer and poet
Source: Summer's Last Will and Testament http://www.elizabethanauthors.com/summ1.htm (1600), lines 1588-1589.
Per Kirkeby (1938–2018) Danish artist
as quoted in Per Kirkeby: Paintings and Drawings, Helaine Posner, exhibition catalogue (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT List Visual Arts Center, 1992
1965 - 1995
Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928) Scottish architect, designer, water colourist and artist
Lecture, "Seemliness" (Glasgow, 1902), as cited in: David Brett, C. R. Mackintosh: The Poetics of Workmanship, (2004), p. 56
Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) English poet
Epilogue
The Flower of Old Japan and Other Poems (1907), The Flower of Old Japan
“Beauty's a frail flower.”
Forma bonum fragile est.
Ovid book Ars amatoria
Book II, line 113 (tr. James Michie)
Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love)