Quotes about beauty
page 17

“Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don't abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book."

(Acceptance speech,, November 17, 2010)”

Patti Smith (1946) American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist

Books, World

“Beautiful women are always drawn to men they think will keep them beautiful.”

Mark Z. Danielewski book House of Leaves

Source: House of Leaves

Women, Men, Thinking

“There is a beauty in the world, though it's harsher than we expect it to be.”

Michael Cunningham book The Hours

Source: The Hours

World

“The real and proper question is: why is it beautiful?”

Annie Dillard book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Source: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Question

“You have this ability to find beauty in weird places.”

Kamila Shamsie (1973) Pakistani writer

Source: Kartography

“Looking at him now-even if she hadn't been in love with him, that part of her that was her mother's daugher, that loved every beautiful thing for its beauty alone, would still have wanted him.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Love, Parting

“I want to help you to grow as beautiful as God meant you to be when He thought of you first.”

George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish journalist, novelist

God, Help

“Memories did one no good, not when one knew the truth in the present. Will was beautiful, but he was not hers; he was anybody's. Something in him was broken, and trough that break spilled a blind cruelty, a need to hurt and to push away.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Truth, Memory, Hurt

“I can see that the sadness has returned. And it's not a beautiful sadness- beautiful sadness is a myth. Sadness turns our features to clay, not porcelain.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Sadness

“It just goes to show you: every baby is born beautiful.
It's what we project on them that makes them ugly.”

Jodi Picoult book Small Great Things

Source: Small Great Things

Baby

“In a way, it is beautiful to be young and hard up. With the right wife, and I had her, deprivation became a game.”

Wallace Stegner book Crossing to Safety

Source: Crossing to Safety

Way, Game

“All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful.”

Umberto Eco book The Island of the Day Before

Source: The Island of the Day Before

“There are only three things that America will be remembered for 2000 years from now when they study this civilization: The Constitution, Jazz music, and Baseball. These are the 3 most beautiful things this culture's ever created.”

Gerald Early (1952) American poet

Music, Study

“Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of great distress.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Two: Soul and Body, p 49

Life, Law, Time

“That something so small could be so beautiful. Worth so much. Only the strongest people can turn away from feelings like that.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

People, Feeling

“I swear to you, there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

“Beauty, grace, and charm my foot. It's a school for sadists with good tea-serving skills.”

Libba Bray A Great and Terrible Beauty

Source: A Great and Terrible Beauty

School, Tea

“There will be boys who will tell you you're beautiful, but only a few will see you.”

Laura Ruby American writer

Source: Bone Gap

Boy

“How sad the world is, so beautiful yet so absurd…”

Irène Némirovsky (1903–1942) French novelist who died at the age of 39 in Auschwitz

Source: Suite Française

World, Sadness

“It is a time of quiet joy, the sunny morning. When the glittery dew is on the mallow weeds, each leaf holds a jewel which is beautiful if not valuable. This is no time for hurry or for bustle. Thoughts are slow and deep and golden in the morning.”

John Steinbeck book Tortilla Flat

Source: Tortilla Flat

Time, Joy

“It makes me sad because I've never seen such--such beautiful shirts before.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Sadness

“Don’t worry. I won’t send you off without warning. Just stand there and be awed by my beauty. It’s the safest mode around me. (Savitar)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dark Side of the Moon

“Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.”

Clive Barker Days of Magic, Nights of War

Source: Days of Magic, Nights of War

Sad, Fools, Heart, Happiness

“… what one ought to capture in beauty is that which is treacherous and irresistible…”

László Krasznahorkai book War & War

Source: War & War

“This is what it is to love an artist: The moon is always rising above your house. The houses of your neighbors look dull and lacking in moonlight. But he is always going away from you. Inside his head there is always something more beautiful.”

Sarah Ruhl Eurydice

Source: Eurydice

Love, Housing

“It is a brave and stupid thing, a beautiful thing, to waste one's life for love.”

Andrew Sean Greer book The Confessions of Max Tivoli

Source: The Confessions of Max Tivoli

Love, Life, Stupidity

“Beauty doesn't have to beanything. What's a vase about? What's a sunset or a flower about? What, for that matter, is Mozart's Twenty-third Piano Concerto?”

Douglas Adams book The Salmon of Doubt

Source: The Salmon of Doubt

Flowers

“There was beauty in the idea of freedom, but it was an illusion. Every human heart was chained by love.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

Love, Idea, Freedom, Heart

“The emerging woman… will be strong-minded, strong-hearted, strong-souled, and strong-bodied… strength and beauty must go together.”

Louisa May Alcott book An Old-Fashioned Girl

Source: An Old-Fashioned Girl

Soul, Strong, Heart

“The most beautiful heart of all is the one that can still love even while it bleeds, and especially after its been broken into thousands of pieces.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Styxx

Love, Heart

“may I be I is the only prayer--not may I be great or good or beautiful or wise or strong.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Strong

“The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

Quoted in A Living Architecture : Frank Lloyd Wright and Taliesin Architects (2000) by John Rattenbury
Context: Human beings can be beautiful. If they are not beautiful it is entirely their own fault. It is what they do to themselves that makes them ugly. The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.

Beauty, Life

“And when the fog's over and the stars and the moon come out at night it'll be a beautiful sight.”

Jack Kerouac book Big Sur

Source: Big Sur

Star, Night

“Aphrodite had the beauty; Zeus had the thunderbolts. Everyone loved Aphrodite, but everyone listened to Zeus.”

Esther M. Friesner (1951) American writer

Source: Nobody's Princess

Love

“We are Sinclairs. Beautiful. Privileged. Damaged. Liar. We live, least in the summertime, on a private island off the coast of Massachusetts. Perhaps that is all you need to know.”

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

“No, my friend, I am not drunk. I have just been to the dentist, and need not return for another six months! Is it not the most beautiful thought?
--Poirot”

Agatha Christie book One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

Source: One, Two, Buckle My Shoe

“Why did God make women so beautiful and man with such a loving heart?”

Walker Percy book Love in the Ruins

Source: Love in the Ruins

Love, Women, God, Heart

“Some of the greatest poetry is revealing to the reader the beauty in something that was so simple you had taken it for granted.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

At an interview with Stephen Colbert at Montclair Kimberley Academy on January 29th, 2010.
2010s

Beauty

“Giordino… simply sighed in resignation. "Who else," he asked no one in particular, "but Dirk Pitt could tramp off into a blizzard on an uninhabited backwater island in the Antarctic and discover a beautiful girl?”

Clive Cussler Shock Wave

Source: Shock Wave

Girl

“Beauty is not required. Beauty is accuracy's distraction.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

Source: The Signature of All Things

“The beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added after a moment’s silence, "Perhaps more so.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Silence

“the beauty of doing nothing”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Variant: The sweetness of doing nothing.
Source: Eat, Pray, Love

“In a society that worships love, freedom and beauty, dance is sacred, It is a paryer for the future, a remembrance of the past and a joyful exclamation of thanks for the present.”

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (1984) Novelist

Source: The Shapeshifters: The Kiesha'ra of the Den of Shadows

Love, Freedom, Past, Future

“How do you make a girl know she's beautiful? What is the system for that, what do you show her, how do you give her a new set of eyes and turn her face back to the mirror?”

Michelle Tea (1971) American writer

Girl

“I believe in the hands that work, in the brains that think, and in the hearts that love… I believe in sunshine, fresh air, friendship, calm sleep, beautiful thoughts.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Love, Friendship, Thinking, Sleep

“There can be no more beautiful spot to die in, no spot more worthy of total despair, than one’s own novel.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Source: Diaries of Franz Kafka

Despair

“I knew it was beautiful, but knowing something is beautiful and caring about it are two very different things, and I didn't care.”

Maureen Johnson book Let It Snow

Source: Let It Snow: Three Holiday Romances

“The leaves had fallen from the trees and lay crisp and crackling beneath his feet. Picking one up he marveled, not for the first time, at the perfection of nature where leaves were most beautiful at the very end of their lives.”

Louise Penny book The Brutal Telling

Source: The Brutal Telling

Nature, Tree, Time, Perfection

“such hours are beautiful to live, but very hard to describe…”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

“Now I no longer wish to be loved, beautiful, happy or successful. I want one thing and one thing only - to be left alone.”

Jean Rhys book Good Morning, Midnight

Source: Good Morning, Midnight

Love, Success, Happiness

“The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

Beauty, Parting

“Darkness was a beautiful thing. The kiss of a shadow. A caress as soft as moonlight.”

Mary E. Pearson (1955) young-adult fiction writer

Source: The Beauty of Darkness

Kiss

“I have loved the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remembered.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

To Fanny Brawne (c. February 1820)
Letters (1817–1820)
Context: "If I should die," said I to myself, "I have left no immortal work behind me — nothing to make my friends proud of my memory — but I have loved the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remembered."

Love, Time

“Beauty was deceptive. I would rather wear my pain, my ugliness. I was torn and stitched. I was a strip mine, and they would just have to look. I hoped I made them sick. I hoped they saw me in their dreams.”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Pain, Dreams, Hope

“Does it hurt?”
He bent his head and lightly kissed her forehead. “Only when I laugh.”
“I’ll try not to be funny.”
“Epic fail, beautiful.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Last Breath

Kiss, Hurt

“You know what’s a great metaphor for love? Sleeping beauty. Because you have to plow through this incredible thicket of thorns in order to get to beauty, and even then, when you get there, you still have to wake her up.
— Tiny Cooper”

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Love, Sleep

“You needn't worry about your appearance, my dear, because true beauty springs from the heart and dwells in the eyes.”

Judith McNaught (1944) American writer

Source: Something Wonderful

Spring, Appearance, Heart

“You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

Source: Fight Club

“The fact that one of these ladies was my mom made me particularly sad because my mom is beautiful. And she’s always on a diet. Sometimes, my dad calls her beautiful, but she cannot hear him.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Sadness, Moms

“I think how the world is still somehow beautiful even when I feel no joy at being alive within it.”

Loung Ung (1970) American academic

Source: First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers

World, Feeling, Thinking, Joy

“Music could ache and hurt, that beautiful music was a place a suffering man could hide.”

Pat Conroy book Beach Music

Source: Beach Music

Music, Suffering, Hurt

“No matter how bad things get, you can always see the beauty in them. The worse things get, the more you have to make yourself see the magic in order to survive.”

Francesca Lia Block (1962) American children's writer

Source: Pink Smog

“The prince is never going to come. Everyone knows that; and maybe sleeping beauty's dead.”

Anne Rice book The Vampire Lestat

Source: The Vampire Lestat

Sleep, Dead

“You're beautiful, but you're somewhere else. That's okay. I can handle that. But we won't continue as friends, not just now. I like you as a lover, not a friend.”

Luke Davies (1962) Australian writer

Source: Isabelle the Navigator

Lovers

“"

"What does it mean?"

"It means that you are beautiful.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

“Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together.”

Francesco Petrarca book De remediis utriusque fortunae

De remediis utriusque fortunae (1354), Book II

“To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Youth, Freedom, Indecision

“Kissing - and I mean like, yummy, smacking kissing - is the most delicious, most beautiful and passionate thing that two people can do, bar none. Better than sex, hands down.”

Drew Barrymore (1975) American actress, director and producer

People, Sex, Kiss, Passion

“Two blind men waited at the end of an era, contemplating beauty.”

Brandon Sanderson book Words of Radiance

Source: Words of Radiance

Men, Waiting

“Yet, he thought, if I can die saying, "Life is so beautiful," then nothing else is important. If i can believe in myself that much, nothing else matters.”

Mario Puzo The Godfather

Source: The Godfather

Life

“Men pass in front of our eyes like butterflies, creatures of a brief season. We love them; they are brave, proud, beautiful, and clever.”

Philip Pullman book Northern Lights

Source: The Golden Compass

Love, Men, Season

“Yes, I read. I have that absurd habit. I like beautiful poems, moving poetry, and all theof that poetry. I am extraordinarily sensitive to those poor, marvelous words left in our dark night by a few men I never knew.”

Louis Aragon (1897–1982) French poet, novelist and editor

Source: Treatise on Style

Men, Reading, Night

“When a man is on the verge of passing out from pain, it seemed wrong to notice how beautiful he was.”

Patricia Briggs book Cry Wolf

Source: Cry Wolf

Pain

“Death is the mother of beauty,” said Henry. “And what is beauty?” “Terror.”

Donna Tartt book The Secret History

Source: The Secret History

Death

“Part of the beauty of love was that you didn’t need to explain it to anyone else. You couldto explain. With love, apparently you didn’t necessarily feel the need to explain anything at all.”

Meg Wolitzer book The Interestings

Source: The Interestings

Love, Feeling, Parting

“He has no idea how beautiful the ordinary becomes once it disappears.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Two Boys Kissing

Idea

“The miracle is this: that you will rise in the morning and be able to see again the startling beauty of the day.”

William Kent Krueger book Ordinary Grace

Source: Ordinary Grace

“The Beautiful Poem"

I go to bed in Los Angeles thinking
about you.

Pissing a few moments ago
I looked down at my penis
affectionately.

Knowing it has been inside
you twice today makes me
feel beautiful.”

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

Source: The Pill vs. the Springhill Mine Disaster

Angels, Feeling, Thinking

“She returned his gaze, struck by the sense of her own transformation, and overwhelmed by the beauty which a lifetime havit had taught her to ignore.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Sense

“You just pick your head up and stare at something beautiful like the sky,
or the ocean and you move the hell on.”

James Patterson book Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas

Source: Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas

Hell

“The creation of wealth is certainly not to be despised, but in the long run the only human activities really worthwhile are the search for knowledge, and the creation of beauty. This is beyond argument, the only point of debate is which comes first.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

Source: Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible

Search, Knowledge, Wealth

“Everything has it's beauty but not everyone sees it.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Inspirational, Beauty, Wise, Deep

“You've maddened me for you… have changed everything. So, I'm going to f*ck you long and hard, beauty, because if I'm to be enslaved by you-I want to be your master as well.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Pleasure of a Dark Prince

Change

“Let us live for the beauty of our own reality.”

Tom Robbins Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Variant: Live the beauty or your own reality.
Source: Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Beauty, Reality

“He had fallen in love with this wild, beautiful country and everything it contained. It was the kind of love people dream of having with other people: selfless and free of doubt, reverent and everlasting.”

Michael Blake book Dances with Wolves

Source: Dances with Wolves

Love, People, Dreams, Country

“Men and women, they were beautiful and wild, all a little violent under their pleasant ways and only a little tamed.”

Margaret Mitchell (1900–1949) American author and journalist

Source: Przemine̜ło Z Wiatrem

Women, Men, Way

“That is beautiful which is produced by the inner need, which springs from the soul.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Source: Concerning the Spiritual in Art

Soul, Spring

“And as the years flowed by, some villagers told travelers of a beast and a beauty who lived in the castle and could be seen walking on the battlements, and others told of two beauties, and others, of two beasts.”

Emma Donoghue (1969) Irish novelist, playwright, short-story writer and historian

Source: Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins

Travel

“I will fight any battle for you, crush any adversity. Because you are mine, beautiful girl. I love you so madly that the past before you feels sane…”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Lothaire

Love, Feeling, Girl, Past

“Venice is beautiful, but like a Bergman movie is beautiful; you can admire it, but you don't really want to live in it.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

“The women laughed and wept; the crowd stamped their feet enthusiastically, for at that moment Quasimodo was really beautiful. He was handsome — this orphan, this foundling, this outcast.”

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

Source: The Hunchback Of Notre Dame

Women

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”

Donna Tartt book The Secret History

Variant: It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.
Source: The Secret History

“And that is just the point… how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That's the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. "Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

World, Question