Quotes about beauty
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“It is with the reading of books the same as with looking at pictures; one must, without doubt, without hesitations, with assurance, admire what is beautiful.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Books, Reading

“The most beautiful clothes that can dress a woman are the arms of the man she loves.”

Yves Saint Laurent (1936–2008) fashion designer

Love, Clothes

“Our total reality and total existence are beautiful and meaningful…. We should judge reality by the little which we truly know of it. Since that part which conceptually we know fully turns out to be so beautiful, the real world of which we know so little should also be beautiful. Life may be miserable for seventy years and happy for a million years: the short period of misery may even be necessary for the whole.”

Kurt Gödel (1906–1978) logician, mathematician, and philosopher of mathematics

Life, World, Reality, Parting

“There is nothing more beautiful than a beautiful woman.”

Gianni Agnelli (1921–2003) Italian businessman

Agnelli: The Rules of the Game, Vanity Fair (1991)

Beauty, For Her

“Look, when you realize how fake it all is; the football, the basketball, the Lady Gaga, the Justin Bieber—you know, who gives you these carbon tax messages. They tell your kids they gotta love Justin Biebler [sic], and then Biebler [sic] says "hand in your guns", "pass the Cyber Security Act", and "the police state is good", and then your children are turned into a mindless vassals—who now, they look up to some twit, instead of looking up to Thomas Jefferson, or looking up to Nikola Tesla, or looking up to Magellan; I mean, kids, Magellan is a lot cooler than Justin Bieber! He circumnavigated with one ship the entire planet! He was killed by wild natives before they got back to Portugal! And when they got back there was only like eleven people alive of the two hundred and something crew and the entire ship was rotting down to the waterline! That's destiny! That's will! That's striving! That's being a trailblazer and explore! Going into space! Mathematics! Quantum mechanics! The secrets of the universe! It's all there! Life is fiery with its beauty! Its incredible detail! Tuning into it! They wanna shutter your mind, talking about Justin Bieber! It's pure evil! They're taking your intellect, your soul, and giving you Michael Jordan and Bieber. Unlock your human potential! Defeat the globalists who wanna shutter your mind!—Your doorways to perception!—I wanna see you truly live! I wanna see you truly be who you are!”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

Alex Jones: The "Justin Biebler" Rant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDMB0KyhPN8, 21 February 2011. 2011

Love, Life, Children, People

“What honey? What is that? It's a sign, I can't see it, wait a minute. Oh, thank you darlin', thank you very much. Oh, thank you. The thought is beautiful dear, and I love you for it, but I, I haven't been caught up in this thing and I can't accept this kingship thing because to me there's only one, which is Christ.”

Elvis Presley (1935–1977) American singer and actor

September 30, 1974. South Bend, IN. Notre Dame Ath Center. Source: http://www.elvisconcerts.com/real/oct74-01.htm Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEZpSFnDxRg

Love, Waiting, Christ

“Sometimes I am tempted to believe that I am better than anybody because I know Him. And then I remember that, I don't know him because I was smart enough to figure out some riddle. And I don't know him because I was good enough to ascend into heaven on my own and shake hands with him and meet him. Of all the things that make God awesome, the most awesome thing in the world that I can imagine from a god is that one who would be holy, and one that would be just,… and one that would be innocent and beautiful, and would have no need of me… that someone like that could love me is amazing. And uh, that does not make me a good person; but it makes Him a great God!”

Rich Mullins (1955–1997) American christian musician

Louisville, Kentucky http://www.kidbrothers.net/words/concert-transcripts/louisville-kentucky-jun2594.html (June 25, 1994) In Concert

Love, God, World, Imagination

“Nothing kills the soul that commands to evil (Nafs al Ammarra) like seeing the beauty of the heart.”

Shams-i Tabrizi (1185–1248) 1185-1248, spiritual instructor of Mewlānā Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhi.

Me & Rumi (2004)

Soul, Evil, Heart

“I don't like girls who wear lots of make-up and you can't see their face. Some girls are beautiful but insecure and look much better without the make-up, but decide to put loads on. I like girls with nice eyes and a nice smile.”

Justin Bieber (1994) Canadian singer-songwriter, record producer, and actor

Quoted in MTV Justin Bieber: "Girls Look Better Without Make-Up" http://www.mtv.co.uk/news/justin-bieber/202740-justin-bieber, April 2010

Smile, Girl

“It is through beauty that we arrive at freedom.”

Friedrich Schiller book On the Aesthetic Education of Man

Letter 2
On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1794)

Freedom

“Lesson one: If you're ever in a beautiful cathedral, take your hat off!”

Ben Kowalewicz (1975) musician

From "The Diary of Billy Talent":

“I wonder–
didn’t the Creator really do injustice?
With a power to defeat everyone without any battle,
children are busy at play with the most beautiful moments of their life.
Once they grow conscious of it,
those moments will have gone away
never to return to them.”

Suman Pokhrel (1967) Nepali poet, lyricist, playwright, translator and artist

Children http://www.occupypoetry.net/children_1/ From Poetry

Life, Children, Business

“What men and women need is encouragement. Their natural resisting powers should be strengthened, not weakened…. Instead of always harping on a man's faults, tell him of his virtues. Try to pull him out of his rut of bad habits. Hold up to him his better self, his REAL self that can dare and do and win out!… The influence of a beautiful, helpful, hopeful character is contagious, and may revolutionize a whole town…. People radiate what is in their minds and in their hearts. If a man feels kindly and obliging, his neighbors will feel that way, too, before long. But if he scolds and scowls and criticizes — his neighbors will return scowl for scowl, and add interest!… When you look for the bad, expecting it, you will get it. When you know you will find the good — you will get that…. Tell your son Tom you KNOW he'll be glad to fill that woodbox — then watch him start, alert and interested!”

Eleanor H. Porter (1868–1920) American novelist

Works, Pollyanna (1913)

Women, Men, People, Hope

“The things that change are not our real life. Within us there is another body, another beauty. It belongs to that ray of light which never changes. We must discover how to mingle with it and become one with that unchanging thing. We must realize and understand this treasure of truth. That is why we have come to the world.”

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (1900–1986) Sri Lankan Sufi leader

Life, Truth, World, Understanding

“I am a feminist. I reject wholeheartedly the way we are taught to perceive women. The beauty of women, how a woman should act or behave. Women are strong and fragile. Women are beautiful and ugly. We are soft-spoken and loud, all at once. There is something mind-controlling about the way we're taught to view women. My work, both visually and musically, is a rejection of all those things. And most importantly a quest.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

SHOWstudio Interview. In Camera with Lady Gaga 30 May 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmcxdZQCnT4&feature=PlayList&p=6DB0E6483F09B62E&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1.

Women, Music, Way, Strong

“If there is anything beautiful other than absolute beauty, that can only be beautiful as far as it partakes of absolute beauty—and this I should say of everything. …by beauty all things become beautiful. …by greatness only great things become great and greater and greater, and by smallness the less becomes less.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

“Ah, music! What a beautiful art! But what a wretched profession!”

Georges Bizet (1838–1875) French composer

Starement of 3 August 1867, as quoted in An Encyclopedia of Quotations about Music (1981) by Nat Shapiro, p. 115

Art, Music

“Why they had gone so suddenly off the walls seems to have been that they had taken the resolve of those who give up a place as lost; they put all ladies and beauties to death, then, looking themselves to die, came naked out to fight. Our men attacking, each one from his post, drove them from the walls whereupon 2 or 300 of them entered Medini Rao's house and there almost killed one another in this way: -- one having taken stand with a sword, the rest eagerly stretched out the neckblow. Thus went the greater number to hell. By God's grace this renowned fort was captured in 2 or 3 garis (cir. an hour), without drum and standard, with no hard fighting done. A pillar of pagan-heads was ordered set up on a hill north-west of Chanderi. A chronogram of this victory having been found in the words of Fath-i-daru'l-harb (Conquest of a hostile seat), I thus composed them:
Was for a while the station Chandiri Pagan-full, the seat of hostile force;
By fighting, I vanquished its fort,
The date was Fath-i-daru'l-harb.”

Babur (1483–1530) 1st Mughal Emperor

Quote from Bevridge translation of the Baburnama https://archive.org/stream/baburnama017152mbp#page/n663/mode/2up

Death, Men, God, Hostility

“O this world is beautiful because of you! To love somebody means that we're closer to God.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

O diese Welt ist schön durch dich! Die Liebe zu einem Menschen führt uns Gott näher.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Love, God, World

“The dimple that thy chin contains has beauty in its round,
That never has been fathomed yet by myriad thoughts profound.”

Hafez (1326–1389) Persian poet

Source: Odes, CXLIII, in Hafiz of Shiraz: Selections from his Poems, translated from the Persian, by Herman Bicknell (1875), p. 197; quoted in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 59

“How could an inferior, ugly black boy be able to get a white girl and not me? I am beautiful, and I am half white myself. I am descended from British aristocracy. He is descended from slaves. I deserve it more.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Racial Superiority

Girl, Boy

“Enquire: 'Who am I?' and you will find the answer. Look at a tree: from one seed arises a huge tree; from it comes numerous seeds, each one of which in its turn grows into a tree. No two fruits are alike. Yet it is one life that throbs in every particle of the tree. So, it is the same Atman everywhere. All creation is That: There is beauty in the birds and in the animals. They too eat and drink like us, mate and multiply; but there is this difference: we can realize our true nature, the Atman. Having been born as human beings, we must not waste this opportunity. At least for a few seconds every day, we must enquire as to who we are. It is no use taking a return ticket over and over again. From birth to death, and death to birth is samsara. But really we have no birth and death. We must realize that.”

Sri Anandamoyi Ma (1896–1982) Hindu saint

Anandamayi Ma, Ananda Varta Quarterly
By herself

Life, Death, Birth, Drink

“I excused myself as soon as I finished eating, and boy did I stuff myself on that meal. I then walked outside onto the beach. The wine had long since gone to my head, making me feel a sense of dizzy invigoration. I started walking along the shore, taking in the magnificence of the gentle, moonlit ocean. It was so… romantic. I kept walking and walking with no destination in mind. The romance of it all filled me with despair and longing. I wanted a girlfriend to experience that moment with me, but no girl wanted to be my girlfriend. The only thing I could do was imagine how heavenly it would be to have a beautiful girl by my side. It is such a shameful tragedy.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

I ended up walking for two hours, and at the end of it I was crying to myself because I felt so sad.
My Twisted World (2014), Thoughts at 19, Longing

Feeling, Imagination, Girl, Boy

“Each bud flowers but once and each flower has but its minute of perfect beauty; so, in the garden of the soul each feeling has, as it were, its flowering instant, its one and only moment of expansive grace and radiant kingship.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet

30 December 1850
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries
Context: Each bud flowers but once and each flower has but its minute of perfect beauty; so, in the garden of the soul each feeling has, as it were, its flowering instant, its one and only moment of expansive grace and radiant kingship. Each star passes but once in the night through the meridian over our heads and shines there but an instant; so, in the heaven of the mind each thought touches its zenith but once, and in that moment all its brilliancy and all its greatness culminate. Artist, poet, or thinker, if you want to fix and immortalize your ideas or your feelings, seize them at this precise and fleeting moment, for it is their highest point. Before it, you have but vague outlines or dim presentiments of them. After it you will have only weakened reminiscence or powerless regret; that moment is the moment of your ideal.

Feeling, Soul, Flowers, Perfection

“One type of paradise that is portrayed for mankind is streams, beautiful nymphs and greeneries. But there is another kind of paradise. ... The warfront was the lost paradise of the human beings, indeed.”

Qasem Soleimani (1957–2020) Iranian senior military officer

In a 2009 interview Quoted in "Soleimani, a General Who Became Iran Icon by Targeting US" https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/01/02/world/middleeast/ap-ml-iran-qassem-soleimani.html. The Associated Press

“Victory to you Mother Karnataka,
The daughter of Mother India!
Hail the land of beautiful rivers and forests!
Hail the abode of saints and seers!”

Kuvempu (1904–1994) Kannada novelist, poet, playwright, critic, and thinker

Jaya Bharata Jananiya Tanujate (1930)

Victory, Daughters

“Beauty is seen through the eyes, but beautiful people are only known through their heart.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1979

People, Heart

“We do not believe anyone - we do not trust any beautiful verbal constructions. There is a real situation on the battlefield.”

Volodymyr Zelensky (1978) 6th President of Ukraine

2022, "We will not give up anything. And we will fight for every meter of our land" (30 March 2022)

“The beauty of art is in our imperfection.”

José Baroja (1983) Chilean author and editor

Source: Radiorama de Occidente. "La Otra Historia". 1480 Rock and Pop AM. Guadalajara. Mexico.

Art

“She was such a beautiful, delicate apparition that she was on the verge of reciting a verse by Huidobro or Neruda right there, dedicated, by the way, to the little rose.”

José Baroja book Un hijo de perra y otros cuentos

Way

“The conclusion is like beautiful wrapping paper on a gift.”

Broody Kent

“When people concentrate on the idea of beauty, they are, without realizing it, confronted with the darkest thoughts that exist in this world. That, I suppose, is how human beings are made.”

Yukio Mishima book The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Source: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

People, World, Idea

“She was beautiful, but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful: something to be admired from a distance, not up close.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch

Way

“The beauty, the poetry of the fear in their eyes. I didn't mind going to jail for, what, five, six hours? It was absolutely worth it.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Fear

“Behind every beautiful thing there's been some kind of pain”

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

Song lyrics, Time Out of Mind (1997), Not Dark Yet

Pain

“Paul's last words to Linda: "You're up on your beautiful Appaloosa stallion. It's a fine spring day. We're riding through the woods. The bluebells are all out, and the sky is clear-blue".”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

I had barely got to the end of the sentence when she closed her eyes and gently slipped away. She was unique, and the world is a better place for having known her. I love you, Linda. note: Last words to his wife, Linda, as recounted by McCartney in a statement released to the press three days after her death Source: as quoted in "Linda's Death 'Heartbreak' for McCartney" https://www.newspapers.com/image/?clipping_id=99480655 by Emma Ross, Tucson Citizen (April 21, 1998), p. B1

Spring

“Oh, Jo, how could you? Your one beauty.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

“Dream beautiful dreams and then work to make those dreams come true.”

Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Motivational, Success, Deep, Inspirational

“Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

People, Art, Nature

“The fact that a thesis is flawed does not mean that we should not invest in it as long as other people believe in it and there is a large group of people left to be convinced. The point was made by John Maynard Keynes when he compared the stock market to a beauty contest where the winner is not the most beautiful contestant but the one whom the greatest number of people consider beautiful. Where I have something significant to add is in pointing out that it pays to look for the flaws; if we find them, we are ahead of the game because we can limit our losses when the market also discovers what we already know. It is when we are unaware of what could go wrong that we have to worry.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Source: The Alchemy of Finance

People, Game, Loss

“Real poetry, is to lead a beautiful life. To live poetry is better than to write it.”

Bashō Matsuo (1644–1694) Japanese poet

Life

“I am going to make everything around me beautiful - that will be my life.”

Elsie De Wolfe (1865–1950) American interior decorationinterior decorator

Life

“The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

People, Truth, Feeling, Courage

“Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.”

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet

Letter to Rene Lui Descartes XIV (6 March 1540) As quoted in Character Sketches: Or, The Blackboard Mirror (1890) by George Augustus Lofton, p. 432.

“I love classic beauty. It’s an idea of beauty with no standard.”

Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019) German fashion designer

Love, Idea

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Beauty, Peaceful, Housing

“To look in the mirror and like what you see, even when it doesn't look like your idea of beauty.”

Sharon G. Flake book The Skin I'm In

Source: The Skin I'm In

Idea

“The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance… logic can be happily tossed out the window.”

Stephen King book The Stand

Source: The Stand

God, World, Chance

“No one who is not utterly blind can fail to see that God gathered all the beauty of which the whole world is capable of in woman.”

Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535) Magician, occult writer, theologian, astrologer, alchemist

God, World

“The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.”

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

Letter to the minister of a church in Brooklyn (20 November 1950), p. 95. The minister had earlier written Einstein asking if he would send him a signed version of a quote about the Catholic church attributed to Einstein in Time magazine (see the "Misattributed" section below), and Einstein had written back to say the quote was not correct, but that he was "gladly willing to write something else which would suit your purpose". According to the book, the minister replied "saying he was glad the statement had not been correct since he too had reservations about the historical role of the Church at large", and said that "he would leave the decision to Einstein as to the topic of the statement", to which Einstein replied with the statement above.
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)
Context: The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life. To make this a living force and bring it to clear consciousness is perhaps the foremost task of education. The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action.

Life, Dependency

“With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.”

Max Ehrmann (1872–1945) American writer, poet, and attorney

Source: Desiderata: A Poem for a Way of Life

World, Dreams, Happiness

“Beauty is about being comfortable in your own skin. It's about knowing and accepting who you are.”

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

Source: Seriously... I'm Kidding

Beauty

“I suppose nowadays it's all a question of surgery, isn't it? Of course the notion is beautiful, the idea of staying a boy and a child forever, and I think you can. I have known plenty of people who, in their later years, had the energy of children and the kind of curiosity and fascination with things like little children. I think we can keep that, and I think it's important to keep that part of staying young. But I also think it's great fun growing old.”

Johnny Depp (1963) American actor, film producer, and musician

Children, People, Boy, Idea

“We have seen many rich persons, many powerful persons, many famous persons, many beautiful persons, many learned and scholarly persons, and persons in the renounced order of life unattached to material possessions. But we have never seen any one person who is unlimitedly and simultaneously wealthy, powerful, famous, beautiful, wise and unattached, like Kṛṣṇa, in the history of humanity. Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, is a historical person who appeared on this earth 5,000 years ago. He stayed on this earth for 125 years and played exactly like a human being, but His activities were unparalleled. From the very moment of His appearance to the moment of His disappearance, every one of His activities is unparalleled in the history of the world, and therefore anyone who knows what we mean by Godhead will accept Kṛṣṇa as the Supreme Personality of Godhead. No one is equal to the Godhead, and no one is greater than Him. That is the import of the familiar saying “God is great.”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Source: Krsna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead

Life, God, World, History

“Death is the mother of beauty. Only the perishable can be beautiful, which is why we are unmoved by artificial flowers.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Death, Flowers

“I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Beauty, Time, Past

“Some people look for a beautiful place, others make a place beautiful.”

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927) Indian Sufi

Motivational, Wise, Deep, Inspirational

“Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty if only we have the eyes to see them.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

Nature, Painting

“But remember this, Japanese boy… airplanes are not tools for war. They are not for making money. Airplanes are beautiful dreams. Engineers turn dreams into reality.”

Hayao Miyazaki The Wind Rises

Source: The Wind Rises

Money, War, Dreams, Boy

“Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings.”

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) American psychiatrist

Beauty, Peaceful

“Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity but to change the mind of humanity about God. It is “simple and beautiful;” as Einstein said great truth would always have to be.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Source: Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self

God, Truth, Change

“Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Art

“You don't have to be born beautiful to be wildly attractive.”

Diana Vreeland (1903–1989) American magazine editor

“We are born sad and we die sad, but meanwhile we love bodies whose sad beauty is a miracle.”

Mario Benedetti (1920–2009) Uruguayan journalist, novelist, and poet

Love, Sadness

“I can't think of anything to write about, I'm just walking around here between the lines, under the light of your eyes, in the breadth of your mouth as in a beautiful happy day, which remains beautiful and happy, even when the head is sick and tired.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

Thinking, Light, Happiness

“I glanced up at him. "I love things that are beautiful when you don't expect them to be.”

Elizabeth Chandler (1954) writer

Source: The Back Door of Midnight

Love

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.”

Rachel Carson (1907–1964) American marine biologist and conservationist

Source: The Sense of Wonder (1965)
Context: Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Whatever the vexations or concerns of their personal lives, their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement in living. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.

Beauty, Hope, Peaceful, Life

“Shh," he said. "Look."
"Where?"
"Can't you see'um?" he whispered. "All the Terabithians standing on tiptoe to see you."
"Me?"
"Shh, yes. There's a rumor going around that the beautiful girl arrving today might be the queen they've been waiting for.”

Katherine Paterson book Bridge to Terabithia

Source: Bridge to Terabithia

Girl, Waiting

“I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Variant: I can barely conceive a type of beauty in which there is no melancholy.

“When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Missing You, Thinking, Past

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

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926–2004) American psychiatrist

As quoted in The Leader's Digest : Timeless Principles for Team and Organization (2003) by Jim Clemmer, p. 84

Beauty, People, Light, Sun

“Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.”

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) American novelist

As quoted in Elbert Hubbard's Scrap Book (1923) by Elbert Hubbard, p. 62

Faith, Hope

“Arguments for preservation based on the beauty of wilderness are sometimes treated as if they were of little weight because they are "merely aesthetic". That is a mistake. We go to great lengths to preserve the artistic treasures of earlier human civilisations. It is difficult to imagine any economic gain that we would be prepared to accept as adequate compensation for, for instance, the destruction of the paintings in the Louvre. How should we compare the aesthetic value of wilderness with that of the paintings in the Louvre? Here, perhaps, judgment does become inescapably subjective; so I shall report my own experiences. I have looked at the paintings in the Louvre, and in many of the other great galleries of Europe and the United States. I think I have a reasonable sense of appreciation of the fine arts; yet I have not had, in any museum, experiences that have filled my aesthetic senses in the way that they are filled when I walk in a natural setting and pause to survey the view from a rocky peak overlooking a forested valley, or by a stream tumbling over moss-covered boulders set amongst tall tree-ferns, growing in the shade of the forest canopy, I do not think I am alone in this; for many people, wilderness is the source of the greatest feelings of aesthetic appreciation, rising to an almost mystical intensity.”

Peter Singer book Practical Ethics

Source: Practical Ethics

People, Art, Way, Feeling

“You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she's not deadly. She's beautiful and she's laughing.”

Hélène Cixous (1937) French philosopher and writer

“You shall create beauty not to excite the senses
but to give sustenance to the soul.”

Gabriela Mistral (1889–1957) Chilean poet-diplomat, writer, educator and feminist.

Soul, Sense

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Often attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt without an original source in her writings, for example in the introduction to It Seems to Me : Selected Letters of Eleanor Roosevelt (2001) by Leonard C. Schlup and Donald W. Whisenhunt, p. 2 http://books.google.com/books?id=UeFWjTMcLZYC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA2#v=onepage&q&f=false. But archivists have not been able to find the quote in any of her writings, see the comment from Ralph Keyes in The Quote Verifier above. Disputed

Deep, Success, Beauty, Motivational

“For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so,
because it serenely disdains to destroy us.
Every angel is terrible.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Duino Elegies

First Elegy (as translated by Stephen Mitchell)
Source: Duino Elegies (1922)
Context: Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them
pressed me against his heart: I would be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.

Angels

“She's beautiful,' he murmured.
'She's a metre across the hips, easily,' said Julia.
'That is her style of beauty,' said Winston.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Sadness, Cry

“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”

Oscar Wilde book The Canterville Ghost

Source: The Canterville Ghost http://www.planetmonk.com/wilde/savile/canterville.c1.html (1887)

Life, Death, Lie, Peace

“she was consumed by 3 simple things:
drink, despair, loneliness; and 2 more:
youth and beauty”

Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Youth, Drink, Loneliness, Despair

“For me the greatest beauty always lies in the greatest clarity.”

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781) writer, philosopher, publicist, and art critic

Beauty

“Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever.”

Karen Blixen (1885–1962) Danish writer

Life, Way, Understanding, Time

“The most beautiful clothes that can dress a woman are the arms of the man she loves. But for those who haven't had the fortune of finding this happiness, I am there.”

Yves Saint Laurent (1936–2008) fashion designer

Love, Clothes, Happiness

“I don't think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

Beauty, Thinking

“Words are beautiful but restricted. They're very masculine, with a compact frame. But voice is over the dark, the place where there's nothing to hang on: it comes from a part of yourself that simply knows, expresses itself, and is.”

Jeff Buckley (1966–1997) American singer, guitarist and songwriter

Parting

“Concerts are never real music, you have to give up the idea of hearing in them all the most beautiful things of art.”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

Said to one of his students, according to "Chopin: Pianist and Teacher: As Seen by His Pupils" by Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger

Art, Music, Idea

“We see the strongest guarantee of peace for Europe in a policy of expansion. When have we exploited the embarrassments of other peoples? When Russia was at war with Japan, the Tsar was able to take his last regiment away from our frontier. We did not regard Morocco as an object of war, we looked on while East Africa was divided, while France was creating a great colonial empire of Tunis, Algiers and Morocco, while Italy occupied Tripolis, while Persia was divided between Britain and Russia into two spheres of interest—the world could always rely on the German Kaisers and the German people's love of peace. And what thanks have we had? A world of enemies…When one awakens in this way from a beautiful dream one must not follow that dream again, must not in future believe that renunciation of a world policy will be a guarantee of permanent freedom. They grudged us the right to economic development. We thank the Chancellor for what he said yesterday concerning our security in the East and West.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Speech in the Reichstag (6 April 1916), quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany. From Defeat to Conquest 1913-1933 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945), p. 75
1910s

Love, War, People, World

“It was a beautiful afternoon; one to make you realise that God really can be very good sometimes with weather and scenery.”

Hugh Laurie book The Gun Seller

The Gun Seller (1996)

God, Weather

“Mathematicians have constructed a very large number of different systems of geometry, Euclidean or non-Euclidean, of one, two, three, or any number of dimensions. All these systems are of complete and equal validity. They embody the results of mathematicians' observations of their reality, a reality far more intense and far more rigid than the dubious and elusive reality of physics. The old-fashioned geometry of Euclid, the entertaining seven-point geometry of Veblen, the space-times of Minkowski and Einstein, are all absolutely and equally real. …There may be three dimensions in this room and five next door. As a professional mathematician, I have no idea; I can only ask some competent physicist to instruct me in the facts.
The function of a mathematician, then, is simply to observe the facts about his own intricate system of reality, that astonishingly beautiful complex of logical relations which forms the subject-matter of his science, as if he were an explorer looking at a distant range of mountains, and to record the results of his observations in a series of maps, each of which is a branch of pure mathematics. …Among them there perhaps none quite so fascinating, with quite the astonishing contrasts of sharp outline and shade, as that which constitutes the theory of numbers.”

G. H. Hardy (1877–1947) British mathematician

"The Theory of Numbers," Nature (Sep 16, 1922) Vol. 110 https://books.google.com/books?id=1bMzAQAAMAAJ p. 381

Mountain, Mathematics, Idea, Fashion

“To run 100 miles and more is to bring the body to the point of breaking, to bring the mind to the point of destruction, to arrive at that place where you can alter your consciousness. It was to see more clearly. As my yoga teacher would say, “Injuries are our best teachers.” I'm convinced that a lot of people run ultramarathons for the same reason they take mood-altering drugs. I don't mean to minimize the gifts of friendship, achievement, and closeness to nature that I've received in my running career. But the longer and farther I ran, the more I realized that what I was often chasing was a state of mind — a place where worries that seemed monumental melted away, where the beauty and timelessness of the universe, of the present moment, came into sharp focus.”

Scott Jurek (1973) American ultramarthon runner

Source: Eat and Run (2012), Ch. 18, p. 181

Friendship, People, Mood, Nature

“Like beauty, stardom too is skin-deep.”

Shahrukh Khan (1965) Indian actor, producer and television personality

From interview with Komal Nahta

“Rubin, I am not of your world. I've spent all my life in prison. When I was a child I was an orphan and too ugly to be adopted. Now I am too beautiful to be set free.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

As quoted by Jerry Rubin in recounting his visit with Manson in We Are Everywhere (1971)

Life, World

“Oh dear Pan and all the other gods of this place, grant that I may be beautiful inside. Let all my external possessions be in friendly harmony with what is within. May I consider the wise man rich. As for gold, let me have as much as a moderate man could bear and carry with him.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Socrates' prayer, Phaedrus, 279
Plato, Phaedrus

God

“I think magic is very related to happiness. So it is not there all the time, but there are beautiful moments of magic in everyone's life.”

Penélope Cruz (1974) Spanish actress

Cinema.com interview (2001)

Life, Thinking, Time, Happiness

“What then is the place and role of the writer in this cruel, dynamic, split world on the brink of its ten destructions? After all we have nothing to do with letting off rockets, we do not even push the lowliest of hand-carts, we are quite scorned by those who respect only material power. Is it not natural for us too to step back, to lose faith in the steadfastness of goodness, in the indivisibility of truth, and to just impart to the world our bitter, detached observations: how mankind has become hopelessly corrupt, how men have degenerated, and how difficult it is for the few beautiful and refined souls to live amongst them?
But we have not even recourse to this flight. Anyone who has once taken up the WORD can never again evade it; a writer is not the detached judge of his compatriots and contemporaries, he is an accomplice to all the evil committed in his native land or by his countrymen.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Nobel lecture (1970)

Men, Truth, World, Faith

“This world is empty to him alone who does not understand how to direct his libido towards objects, and to render them alive and beautiful for himself, for Beauty does not indeed lie in things, but in the feeling that we give to them.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

The Psychology of the Unconscious (1943)

Lie, World, Feeling, Understanding

“The main thing missing from cartoons is today that old cartoons were cartoony. They did things you can't do in any other medium. Today's cartoons are very conservative and are more like live action. The characters look the same in every frame of the damn cartoon. The old cartoons squashed, stretched, and did crazy expressions. They were imaginative and crazy. A lot of cartoons aren't imaginative, they just say things. It might as well be radio. There is no point in having anything to look at in modern cartoons. But you can't say that about every cartoon. Genndy Tartakovsky's cartoons are beautiful. The closest thing now to what I'm saying is SpongeBob but even that doesn't go very far. It's like a conservative version of Ren & Stimpy.”

John Kricfalusi (1955) Canadian animator

Daniel Robert Epstein (Oct 12, 2004), " John Kricfalusi, interview http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/John%20Kricfalusi/", SuicideGirls, retrieved 2011-03-01

Imagination

“O God! If I worship You for fear of Hell, burn me in Hell
and if I worship You in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise.
But if I worship You for Your Own sake,
grudge me not Your everlasting Beauty.”

Rabia Basri Muslim saint and Sufi mystic

as quoted in Khushwant Singh, The Freethinker's Prayer Book (2013), p. 35

God, Fear, Hope, Hell

“I've found a place that would amaze you. People used to live there, but now it's all overgrown and no one goes there. Absolutely no one — only me… Just a little house and a garden. And two dogs. If you could see how they licked my hands, and their puppies — oh, Primus, there's probably nothing more beautiful! You take them on your lap and cuddle them, and just sit there until sundown not thinking about anything and not worrying about anything. Then when you get up you feel as though you've done a hundred times more than a lot of work. Really, I'm not good for much of anything. Everyone says I'm not cut out for any kind of work. I don't know what I'm good for.”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

People, Dogs, Feeling, Thinking

Quotes about beauty page 2

Quotes about beauty
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