Quotes about beauty

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Source: City of Thieves

Source: The Remains of the Day

Source: Into the Wild

Source: Reasons to Stay Alive

Source: Bone Gap

Beauty
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)

Source: The Sense of Wonder

Source: The Beauty Myth

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Recapture the Wonder

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Source: Flipped

Source: Court Duel

Bk. I, l. 1
Endymion (1818)

Source: The Secret Place

Source: The Final Empire

Source: The Bluest Eye

Source: Uglies

Source: The Great Gatsby

Source: The Song of Achilles

Source: Choke

Source: Lucky

Source: Little Women

Source: The Throne of Fire

1
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)
Source: Minority Report

Source: The Fry Chronicles

Source: The Book of Tea

Source: The Lake

Source: The Diviners

Source: The Kings of Clonmel

Source: Waiting for God

Source: Rush

Source: Last Sacrifice

Mustapha Mond, in Ch. 16<!-- p. 228-->
Source: Brave New World (1932)
Context: I'm interested in truth, I like science. But truth's a menace, science is a public danger. As dangerous as it's been beneficent. … It's curious … to read what people in the time of Our Ford used to write about scientific progress. They seemed to imagine that it could go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else. Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasise from truth and beauty to comfort and hapiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered. Still, in spite of everything, unrestricted scientific resarch was still permitted. People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were sovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Years' War. That made them change their tune all right. What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled — after the Nine Years' War. People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. But it's been very good for happiness. One can't have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for.

Up a Road Slowly

A Defence of Poetry http://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html (1821)

Source: Eleven Minutes

Source: North of Beautiful

Variant translations: The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms — it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.
The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the germ of all art and all true science. Anyone to whom this feeling is alien, who is no longer capable of wonderment and lives in a state of fear is a dead man. To know that what is impenetrable for us really exists and manifests itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties — this knowledge, this feeling … that is the core of the true religious sentiment. In this sense, and in this sense alone, I rank myself among profoundly religious men.
As quoted in After Einstein : Proceedings of the Einstein Centennial Celebration (1981) by Peter Barker and Cecil G. Shugart, p. 179
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
As quoted in Introduction to Philosophy (1935) by George Thomas White Patrick and Frank Miller Chapman, p. 44
The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man."
He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.
1930s, Mein Weltbild (My World-view) (1931)
Context: The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery — even if mixed with fear — that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man.

Source: The Vampire Lestat

Source: Tropic of Cancer (1934), Chapter One
Context: This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will.

Source: Hey Nostradamus!

Source: The English Patient

Source: The Bluest Eye

Source: The Uglies Trilogy

Source: Magic Rises

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Power of Your Subconscious Mind

Source: Batman: Arkham Asylum - A Serious House on Serious Earth

Source: The Island of the Day Before

Source: Sailor Moon Stars, #3

Source: Lover Unbound

Source: Adam Bede

Source: The Poems Of Wilfred Owen

She Walks in Beauty http://readytogoebooks.com/LB-SWB42.htm, st. 1. The subject of these lines was Mrs. R. Wilmot.—Berry Memoirs, vol. iii. p. 7. <br class="br">Hebrew Melodies (1815)

L'art pour l'art est un vain mot. L'art pour le vrai, l'art pour le beau et le bon, voilà la religion que je cherche....
Letter to Alexandre Saint-Jean, (19 April 1872), published in Calmann Lévy (ed.) Correspondance (1812-1876). Eng. Transl by Raphaël Ledos de Beaufort in Letters of George Sand Vol. III, p. 242

Letter to G. and F. Keats (December 21, 1817)
Letters (1817–1820)

Source: North of Beautiful

Source: Secret Vampire

Source: Ouran High School Host Club, Vol. 5

Source: The World as Will and Representation, Vol 1

Source: Beastly

Source: The Road

Source: Skeleton Crew

Source: Critique of Judgment

Source: Shock Value: A Tasteful Book About Bad Taste

Source: Sapphique

Source: The Notebook