Quotes about beauty
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“There's no need to imagine that you're a wondrous beauty, because that's what you are.”

Source: Moominsummer Madness

“My mother… she is beautiful, softened at the edges and tempered with a spine of steel. I want to grow old and be like her.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Mother's Day, For Mother

“All little creatures are beautiful… every living thing when it first sees life is born in beauty. What they grow to be is a different matter.”

Brian Jacques book Outcast of Redwall

Source: Outcast of Redwall

Life

“When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want to summon
the eyes and hidden mouths
of stone and light and water
to testify against you.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Light, Water

“My dear, it is a great strength to have faced the worst and to have *felt* it a feature of beauty. Nothing ever after can shake one.”

Olaf Stapledon book Odd John

Source: Odd John

“The old tale of Sleeping Beauty might end happily in French or English, but he was in Russia, and only a fool would want to live through the Russian version of any fairy tale.”

Orson Scott Card Enchantment

Source: Enchantment

Fools, Sleep

“A cultural fixation on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty but an obsession about female obedience.”

Naomi Wolf (1962) American writer

“All which is beautiful and noble is the result of reason and calculation.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

“The most solid comfort one can fall back upon is the thought that the business of one's life is to help in some small way to reduce the sum of ignorance, degradation and misery on the face of this beautiful earth.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Life, Way, Business, Help

“The life of the individual has meaning only insofar as it aids in making the life of every living thing nobler and more beautiful. Life is sacred, that is to say, it is the supreme value, to which all other values are subordinate.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Life

“Love and war always go together. They are the peaks of human emotion! Evil and good, beauty and ugliness”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

Love, War, Evil

“No synonym for God is so perfect as Beauty. Whether as seen carving the lines of the mountains with glaciers, or gathering matter into stars, or planning the movements of water, or gardening — still all is Beauty!”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

26 June 1875, page 208
John of the Mountains, 1938

God, Mountain, Star, Water

“She had perfect features, with her eye, nose, lips, and ears the right size and in right places. That is all it takes to make people beautiful, normal body parts – yet why does nature mess it up so many times?”

Chetan Bhagat book 2 States: The Story of My Marriage

Source: 2 States: The Story of My Marriage

People, Nature, Time, Parting

“Beauty that arose out of pain.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Pain

“Nothing,' wrote Tolstoy, 'can make our life, or the lives of other people, more beautiful than perpetual kindness.”

Gretchen Rubin (1966) American writer

Source: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

Life, People

“The day is ending. It's time for something that was beautiful to turn into something else that is beautiful. Now, Let go.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Time

“Perhaps he's in love with Agatha," she said.
"I hope not. I intend to marry Agatha myself. She may be a thousand years old, but she makes an incomparable jam tart. Beauty fades, but cooking is eternal.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Love, Hope, Cooking

“Think of your pain like a bunch of red roses, a beautiful thorn necklace. Everyone has one.”

Francesca Lia Block (1962) American children's writer

Pain, Thinking

“Physical beauty wasn't the same as True Beauty, any more than pretty ugly meant truly ugly or Magnetic North meant True North.”

Justina Chen (1968) American writer

Source: North of Beautiful

“But you'd sell your soul for it, wouldn't you? For one day of feeling beautiful.”

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

Feeling, Soul

“And it was good just to hold her and touch the softness of her skin. He wanted to hold her hard, not to hurt her but to keep her safe, to show her that he was strong enough to protect her. Her beauty was like fire and strange music, and he loved her.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Dark Visions

Love, Music, Strong, Hurt

“Such certainty is beautiful, but uncertainty is more beautiful still”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

“Hope is a most beautiful drug.”

Jeremy Mercer (1971) Canadian writer

Source: Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co.

Hope

“The ruins proclaim the building was beautiful.”

Mohsin Hamid (1971) Pakistani novelist

“Would you complain because a beautiful sunset doesn't have a future or a shooting star a payoff? And why should romance 'lead anywhere'? Passion isn't a path through the woods. Passionthe woods.”

Tom Robbins Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Source: Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Star, Passion, Future

“Order and disorder', said the speaker, 'they each have their beauty.”

Orson Scott Card book Speaker for the Dead

Source: Speaker for the Dead

“Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: “People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

People, Light, Sun

“There is both joy and suffering on planet Earth because this beautiful world is a world of duality - a world of opposites. There is an opposite side to everything.”

Rhonda Byrne (1951) Australian writer and producer

Source: Hero

World, Suffering, Joy

“A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one’s life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Source: The Art of Travel

Life

“A Boat

O beautiful
was the werewolf
in his evil forest.
We took him
to the carnival
and he started
crying
when he saw
the Ferris wheel.
Electric
green and red tears
flowed down
his furry cheeks.
He looked
like a boat
out on the dark
water.”

Richard Brautigan (1935–1984) American novelist, poet, and short story writer

Tear, Water, Evil, Cry

“Beautiful is dangerous.”

Neal Shusterman book Unwind

Unwind

“True, I have raped history, but it has produced some beautiful offspring.”

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) French writer and dramatist, father of the homonym writer and dramatist

History

“You can't be beautiful until you feel beautiful.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

Invisible Monsters

Feeling

“In some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
Source: The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Context: Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Love, Star, Distant

“She was beautiful - but especially she was without mercy.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

“There is no beauty or romance or mystery in the sea except for the men that sail abroad upon it, and those who stay at home and dream of them.”

Lord Dunsany (1878–1957) Irish writer and dramatist

Men, Dreams, Home, Sea

“We both believe in monsters. But all the ghosts and demons are you. And all the angels and genies are you. All the kings, queens, Buddhas, beautiful boys. Inside you. No one can take them away. (Missing Angel Juan.)”

Francesca Lia Block (1962) American children's writer

Angels, Boy

“If you must know, I-I had never in my life kissed a young lady, and you are far too beautiful to me to want to get it wrong!”

Diana Wynne Jones book Castle in the Air

Source: Castle in the Air

Life, Kiss

“But you weren't born expecting that kind of beauty in everyone, all the time. You just got programmed into thinking anything else is ugly.”

Scott Westerfeld book Uglies

Source: Uglies

Thinking, Time

“And I'm moved, it's so beautiful. Not what I wrote, but to have it given back like this. To have her remember the words and the tune. To hear it in her voice.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

“Above all things physical, it is more important to be beautiful on the inside - to have a big hear and an open mind and a spectacular spleen.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Source: Seriously... I'm Kidding

“Beauty walks a razor's edge, someday I'll make it mine.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), Shelter from the Storm

“Thats beautiful! Sad and beautiful," murmured Meggie. Why were sad stories often so beautiful? It was different in real life.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkheart

Life, Sadness

“I am dying: it's a beautiful word. Like the long slow sigh of the cello: dying. But the sound of it is the only beautiful thing about it.”

Sonya Hartnett book Surrender

Source: Surrender

“Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.”

André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist

Sadness, Joy

“Beauty without expression is boring.”

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

“Not that it was beautiful,
but that, in the end, there was
a certain sense of order there;
something worth learning
in that narrow diary of my mind”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Source: To Bedlam and Part Way Back

Sense, Learning

“beautiful girls have certain advantages.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

White Oleander

Girl

“How beautiful life is and how sad! How fleeting, with no past and no future, only a limitless now.”

James Clavell book Shōgun

Source: Shōgun

Life, Sadness, Past, Future

“The fear of God reigning in the heart is the beauty of the soul.”

Matthew Henry (1662–1714) Theologician from Wales

God, Fear, Soul, Heart

“Do you think I'm pretty?
I think you're beautiful
Beautiful?
You are so beautiful, it hurts sometimes.”

Richelle Mead Vampire Academy

Source: Vampire Academy

Beauty, Thinking, Hurt

“Heroes rarely look the way we draw them in our minds: attractive, imposing figures with rippling muscles and strong chins. More times than not they are humble beings, small and flawed. It is only their spirits that are beautiful and strong.”

Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer

Source: The Gift

Way, Strong, Time, Drawing

“We need beauty because it makes us ache to be worthy of it.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

“Erik: Are you very tired?
Christine: Oh, tonight I gave you my soul, and I am dead.
Erik: Your soul is a beautiful thing, child. No emperor received so fair a gift. The angels wept to-night.”

Gaston Leroux book The Phantom of the Opera

Source: The Phantom of the Opera

Angels, Soul, Night, Dead

“Either way, change will come. It could be bloody, or it could be beautiful. It depends on us.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

Way, Change, Dependency

“Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find.”

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

Moving On, World

“The beautiful feeling after writing a poem is on the whole better even than after sex, and that's saying a lot.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Sex, Feeling

“You'll call me Damon. I see no need for dramatic titles. I, on the other hand will call you beautiful, lover, mine. I'll call you mine." (Damon to Serena)”

Maya Banks (1964) Author

Source: Sweet Persuasion

Lovers

“It [the book] was spinning a magic spell around her heart, sticky as a spider's web and enchantingly beautiful..”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkheart

Books, Heart

“Particularly beautiful people were like particularly funny-looking people, though. Once you know them you mostly forgot about it.”

Ann Brashares The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

Source: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

People

“That is the beauty of memory, isn’t it? Our reality is always clouded by our perceptions of truth. (Mnimi)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Night Embrace

Source: Night Embrace

Truth, Reality, Memory

“Beautiful women rarely possess sufficient depth of character to survive without their pretty feathers.”

Karen Marie Moning book Darkfever

Source: Darkfever

Women

“So, there was this beautiful princess.
She was locked in a high tower(…)She was stuck up there(…)So the only thing was to jump.”

Scott Westerfeld book Pretties

Source: Pretties

Princess

“She said it was beautiful to be loved, and that it made everything on earth look brighter.”

Fanny Fern (1811–1872) American writer

Source: Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of the Present Time

Love

“What seems nasty, painful, evil can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Pain, Evil, Joy

“Nowadays silence is looked on as odd and most of my race has forgotten the beauty of meaning much by saying little. Now tongues work all day by themselves with no help from the mind.”

Toni Morrison Love

Source: Love

Silence, Help

“There's no beauty without poignancy and there's no poignancy without the feeling that it's going, men, names, books, houses--bound for dust--mortal”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

Source: The Beautiful and Damned

Men, Books, Feeling, Housing

“To love beauty is to see light.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Love, Light

“The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

44 min 50 sec
Source: Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Blues For a Red Planet [Episode 5]
Context: The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together. Information distilled over 4 billion years of biological evolution. Incidentally, all the organisms on the Earth are made essentially of that stuff. An eyedropper full of that liquid could be used to make a caterpillar or a petunia if only we knew how to put the components together.

Beauty, Way

“The world is a dream, you say, and it’s lovely, sometimes. Sunset. Clouds. Sky.”

“No. The image is a dream. The beauty is real. Can you see the difference?”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Love, World, Dreams

“Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

No. 2, The Anagram, line 27
Elegies
Source: The Complete English Poems

Love

“I like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words, beautiful and wise, all around me. I always feel better when I can see that there is something to hold back the shadows.”

Roger Zelazny book Nine Princes in Amber

Source: Nine Princes in Amber

Feeling

“Drunk with beauty, I tore down
Armfuls of blossoms.
How desolate the marred sky!”

Alison Croggon (1962) contemporary Australian poet, playwright and fantasy novelist

Source: The Naming

“Imaginative literature primarily pleases rather than teaches. It is much easier to be pleased than taught, but much harder to know why one is pleased. Beauty is harder to analyze than truth.”

Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) American philosopher and educator

Source: How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

Truth, Imagination, Literature

“Show not what has been done, but what can be. How beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths.”

Umberto Eco book The Name of the Rose

Source: The Name of the Rose

World

“I know that I found it beautiful. But I cannot recapture it's beauty.”

Bernhard Schlink book The Reader

Source: The Reader

“If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.”

Anatole France (1844–1924) French writer

Beauty

“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Literature, Universe, Parting

“Surely you’ve been sent from the heavens to teach us mortals what beauty is.”

Sidney Sheldon book Memories of Midnight

Source: Memories of Midnight

“I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and of little value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Variant: I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.
Source: Doctor Zhivago

Life, People

“We create order out of chaos, beauty and meaning out of ugly randomness.”

Rick Riordan book The Throne of Fire

Source: The Throne of Fire

“Art always serves beauty, and beauty is the joy of possessing form, and form is the key to organic life since no living thing can exist without it.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago

Beauty, Life, Art, Joy

“Under the pink Harlequin sunglasses strawberry dangling charms, and sugar-frosted eyeshadow she was really almost beautiful.”

Francesca Lia Block Weetzie Bat

Source: Weetzie Bat

“At college, and perhaps for a year afterwards, they had believed in literature, had believed in Beauty and in personal expression as an absolute end. When they lost this belief, they lost everything.”