Quotes about beauty
page 46

Justin D. Fox photo
Ismail ibn Musa Menk photo

“Then we have Sūrat al-Sharḥ, also known as al-Inshirāḥ. I need to make mention of this because in it is a lot of comfort for myself and yourselves. We have a problem in life. When we have a problem Allah says, "Don't worry, with that difficulty, there is ease." You will never know what ease is all about unless you've been through difficulty. Those who have a beautiful life, sometimes they are still worried and depressed because they don't know what it is like to have suffered a little bit. So Allah's blessing, he makes us suffer slightly so that when there's a little bit of ease, mashallah. You know, a man who's always driven a Rolls-Royce will never know what it's like to ride a bicycle to work. Two ways of making them ride. One is, the doctor tells you you're about to die, Allahu Akbar, and you need to ride to work. Immediately everything is given up. Why? Because we're worried about dear life. That's why. If you see people – Subhan Allah – I've seen a man who had a carrot, and he was pretending like he's smoking this carrot and nibbling on it. And I told him, I said: "My brother, what made you nibble on this carrot?" He says: "My doctor told me I can't smoke, and a good replacement is a carrot." I said: "Allahu Akbar, you're stuffing your mouth with a carrot because of a doctor, but when Allah told you smoking is bad, then you didn't want to listen…" Allahu Akbar. May Allah make us from amongst those who eat carrots rather than smoking cigarettes. Really. So, my brothers and sisters, it's a reality. Whenever there is a person who has tasted goodness alone, and they don't know what difficulty is about, there comes a time when they do not appreciate what they have. So like I was saying, two ways. One is, Allah snatches it away from you, so you now have nothing. So many people have climbed the peak in terms of materialistic items, and then they've dropped down the mountain. They say it's easier to drop from the top than it is from the bottom. Allahu Akbar. When you arrive at the top, a small movement and you roll down, you're with the avalanche, one time. And when you're at the bottom, they can kick you – if you drop, you stand up again and you're walking – same level, masshalah, it's all about altitude. May Allah protect us. Another thing is, when you drop from the top, greater likelihood of breaking more bones. When you drop from the bottom, "Ah, I might have just hurt my head slightly", just say "Ouch" and carry on. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala protect us and grant us humbleness. So, remember, sometimes Allah wants you to go down, so that you appreciate the bicycle after you had nothing, yet ten years ago you had the Rolls-Royce. May Allah bless us. So Allah says, and I'm sure we know verses, verse number five and six:
فَإِنَّ مَعَ الْعُسْرِ يُسْرً
إِنَّ مَعَ الْعُسْرِ يُسْرًا
"Indeed, with every difficulty [or, with difficulty] there is ease.
And indeed, with the difficulty there is ease."
[…] May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala alleviate the suffering that we are all going through in our own little ways. Remember it's a gift of Allah. To keep you in check sometimes. To keep you calling out to Him. May Allah open our doors.”

Ismail ibn Musa Menk (1975) Muslim cleric and Grand Mufti of Zimbabwe.

" Do you have problems in life? Watch This! by Mufti Menk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgp2zbE9Ofg", YouTube (2013)
Lectures

Dejan Stojanovic photo

“Beauty is a cheap word, but beauty remains priceless.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

Words and Beauty http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/words-and-beauty/
From the poems written in English

Mata Amritanandamayi photo
Stig Dagerman photo
John Muir photo

“God never made an ugly landscape. All that the sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it is wild.”

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

pages 16-21 (at page 16)
1890s, The National Parks and Forest Reservations, 1895

Jean-François Millet photo

“I work like a gang of slaves; the day seems five months long. My wish to make a winter landscape has become a fixed idea. I want to do a sheep picture and have all sorts of projects in my head. If you could see how beautiful the forest is! I rush there at the end of the day, after my work, and I come back every time crushed. It is so calm, such a terrible grandeur, that I find myself really frightened. I don't know what those fellows, the trees, are saying to each other.... we don't know their language, that is all; but I am quite sure of this - they do not make puns!.... Send [me] 3 burnt sienna, 2 raw ditto, 3 Naples's yellow, 1 burnt Italian earth, 2 yellow ocher, 2 burnt umber, 1 bottle of raw oil.”

Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) French painter

Quote of Millet, in his letter from Barbizon, c. 1850 to fr:Alfred_Sensier in Paris; as cited by Arthur Hoeber in The Barbizon Painters – being the story of the Men of thirty https://ia902205.us.archive.org/30/items/barbizonpainters00hoeb/barbizonpainters00hoeb.pdf – associate of the National Academy of Design; publishers, Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York 1915, p. 38
In 1850 Millet entered into an arrangement with Alfred Sensier, who provided him with materials and money in return for drawings and paintings (source: Murphy, Alexandra R. Jean-François Millet. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1984, p. xix), see: Wikipedia, Millet
1835 - 1850

Sarah Jessica Parker photo
Albert Einstein photo
Eric S. Raymond photo
Leo Tolstoy photo
A. A. Attanasio photo

“Yet every hair on the body is numbered. And in truth, every day is the beautiful day, the last day.”

A. A. Attanasio (1951) writer

A.A. Attanasio. Centuries. 1997. p.310 ISBN 978-1-60450-283-1

Saki photo

“I always say beauty is only sin deep.”

Saki (1870–1916) British writer

"Reginald's Choir Treat"
Reginald (1904)

Elinor Glyn photo
Nathaniel Hawthorne photo
Titus Salt photo

“Ladies and gentlemen, it is with no ordinary feelings, I assure you, that I rise on this occasion to thank you for the very flattering manner in which you have received the last toast, and for the good wishes expressed therein. I cannot look around me, and see this vast assemblage of my friends and workpeople, without being moved. I feel gratified at this day's proceedings; I also feel greatly honoured by the presence of the nobleman at my side. I am more than all delighted at the presence of this vast assemblage of my workpeople. Perhaps it may be permitted me to remark that ten or twelve years ago I was looking forward to this day (on which I complete my his fiftieth year) as the period when I hoped to retire from business and enjoy myself in agricultural pursuits, which would be quite congenial to my mind and inclination. As the time drew near, looking at my large family (five of them being sons) I reversed that decision, and resolved to proceed a little longer and remain at the head of the firm. Having thus determined, I at once made up my mind to leave Bradford. I did not like to be a party to increasing that already overcrowded borough, but I looked around for a site suitable for a large manufacturing establishment, and I fixed upon this, as offering every capability for a first rate manufacturing and commercial establishment. It is also, from the beauty of its situation, and the salubrity of the air, a most desirable place for the erection of dwellings. Far be it from me to do anything to pollute the air or the water of the district. I shall do my utmost to avoid these evils, and I have no doubt of being successful. I hope to draw around me a population that will enjoy the beauties of this neighbourhood—a population of well paid, contented, happy operatives. I have given instructions to my architects (who are competent to carry them out) that nothing shall be spared to render the dwellings of the operatives a pattern to the country, and if my life is spared by Divine Providence, I hope to see satisfaction, contentment, and happiness around me.”

Titus Salt (1803–1876) English industrialist and philanthropist

The speech he made to the 3,500 guests (including his workers) at the banquet on 1853-09-20, which he held to celebrate both his fiftieth birthday and the opening of his new factory at Saltaire. [Inauguration of the works at Saltaire, The Bradford Observer, 1853-09-22, 8, http://find.galegroup.com/bncn/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&orientation=&scale=0.33&sort=DateAscend&docLevel=FASCIMILE&prodId=BNCN&tabID=T012&subjectParam=Locale%2528en%252C%252C%2529%253ALQE%253D%2528jn%252CNone%252C17%2529Bradford%2BObserver%253AAnd%253ALQE%253D%2528da%252CNone%252C10%252909%252F22%252F1853%2524&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchId=R2&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=11&qrySerId=Locale%28en%2C%2C%29%3ALQE%3D%28jn%2CNone%2C17%29Bradford+Observer%3AAnd%3ALQE%3D%28da%2CNone%2C10%2909%2F22%2F1853%24&subjectAction=DISPLAY_SUBJECTS&retrieveFormat=MULTIPAGE_DOCUMENT&enlarge=&bucketSubId=&inPS=true&userGroupName=brad&hilite=y&docPage=article&nav=prev&sgCurrentPosition=0&docId=R3207957429, 2012-06-07 (subscription site)]
A slightly edited version (in the third person) appears in [Holroyd, Abraham, 1873, 2000, Saltaire and its Founder, Piroisms Press, ISBN 0-9538601-0-8, 14-15]

Sara Teasdale photo
Gerard Manley Hopkins photo

“How to keep—is there any any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, lace, latch or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, … from vanishing away?”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

" The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo http://www.bartleby.com/122/36.html: The Leaden Echo, lines 1-2
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Helen Keller photo
Joan Rivers photo

“There is not one female comic who was beautiful as a little girl.”

Joan Rivers (1933–2014) American comedian, actress, and television host

Quoted in L.A. Times (10 May 1974), as reported in The Yale Book of Quotations (2006), p. 638

G. E. Moore photo
Edgar Guest photo
George Gordon Byron photo

“And both were young, and one was beautiful.”

Stanza 2.
The Dream (1816)

Hermann Cohen photo
J.M. Coetzee photo
George Henry Lewes photo

“Many a genius has been slow of growth. Oaks that flourish for a thousand years do not spring up into beauty like a reed.”

George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) British philosopher

Source: The Spanish Drama (1846), Ch. 2

George William Russell photo

“The great deep thrills for through it everywhere
The breath of beauty blows.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Fernand Léger photo

“[a new order].. independent of the values of the feelings, and the description and imitation of nature... The value of technique beauty without artistic intention resides in its organism and can be deducted at the same time by its geometric ambitions. I can therefore speak of a new order: the architecture of the technical world. Since the industrial object belongs to the architectonic order, it is assigned an important role in today's artistic creation.”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Quote from Leger's lecture "The aesthetics of the machine", in Paris, June 1924; as quoted by Paul Westheim in Confessions of Artists. - Letters, Memoirs and Observations of Contemporary Artists; Propyläen Publishing House, Berlin, 1925, p. 324; cited in Review by Francesco Mazzaferro http://letteraturaartistica.blogspot.nl/2016/03/paul-westheim1717.html
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1920's

Dave Attell photo

“Sometimes you need a cigarette. Like after you have sex with a beautiful woman or a confused young man.”

Dave Attell (1965) comedian

Comedy Central Presents: Dave Attell

Baldur von Schirach photo

“The body expresses our very being. The striving for beauty is inborn among the Aryan.”

Baldur von Schirach (1907–1974) German Nazi leader convicted of crimes against humanity in the Nuremberg trial

To a league of German girls. Quoted in "German Bodies: Race and Representation After Hitler" - Page 47 - by Uli Linke - Social Science - 1999

Luis Barragán photo
Rex Stout photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
John Dear photo

“Melancholy sees the worst of things,—things as they may be, and not as they are. It looks upon a beautiful face, and sees but a grinning skull.”

Christian Nestell Bovee (1820–1904) American writer

Source: Intuitions and Summaries of Thought (1862), Volume II, p. 52.

Will Durant photo
Anne Brontë photo
Anton Mauve photo

“.. it is really beautiful here with that freezing weather. o you should see now the distance, and the fields with their black earth and flat shadows it would strike you, how lovely the sun is shining in the Betuwe.. (translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”

Anton Mauve (1838–1888) Dutch painter (1838–1888)

(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Anton Mauve, uit zijn brief:) ..het is hier zo mooi met dat vriesende weer. o je moest thans de verschieten eens zien, en die akkers met zijn zwarte aarde en vlakken schaduwen dat zou je frapperen, heerlijk schijnt de zon in de ..
in a letter to Willem Maris, 1860's; as cited in 'Zó Hollands - Het Hollandse landschap in de Nederlandse kunst sinds 1850', Antoon Erftemeijer https://www.franshalsmuseum.nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/zohollands_eindversie_def_1.pdf; Frans Hals museum | De Hallen, Haarlem 2011, p. 31
1860's

Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo

“The most general definition of beauty … Multeity in Unity.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

On the Principles of Genial Criticism (1814)

Jeet Thayil photo
Van Morrison photo
George William Russell photo

“The hope lives on age after age,
Earth with its beauty might be won
For labor as a heritage,
For this has Ireland lost a son.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

To the Memory of Some I knew Who are Dead and Who Loved Ireland (1917)

Dylan Moran photo
Wassily Kandinsky photo
Daniel Handler photo
Ben Gibbard photo

“I feel like there's a lot of beauty in the darkness of Narrow Stairs, but that's not really a place I'm ready to go to for a while. I'm interested in taking a different approach and having the next record be different in tone — I'm just not interested in making another dark, dark album.”

Ben Gibbard (1976) American singer, songwriter and guitarist

Death Cab's Ben Gibbard: "The Next Record Will Be Softer" in SPIN magazine (8 October 2008) http://www.spin.com/articles/death-cabs-ben-gibbard-next-record-will-be-softer

Jeff Morrow photo
Marisa Miller photo

“Well, beauty’s in the eye of the beholder… It’s all subjective. I’m kind of shy about it, but I’ll take it.”

Marisa Miller (1978) American model

http://www.maxim.com/girls/girls-of-maxim/44921/marisa-miller.html

Imelda Marcos photo

“I've always maintained that the only things to uphold are the good, the true and the beautiful. We have to reject what's ugly.”

Imelda Marcos (1929) Former First Lady of the Philippines

"Her Greatest Admirer" in TIME (2004)

Bill Edrich photo
André Maurois photo
Louis Pasteur photo

“The Greeks understood the mysterious power of the underside of things. They are the ones who gave us one of the most beautiful words in our language, the word enthusiasm.”

Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) French chemist and microbiologist

Εν Θεος - A God within.

Variant translation: "The Greeks have given us one of the most beautiful words of our language, the word "enthusiasm" Εν Θεος .— a God within. The grandeur of the acts of men are measured by the inspiration from which they spring. Happy is he who bears a God within." (As quoted in Spiritual Literacy : Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life (1998) by Frederic Brussat and Mary Ann Brussat)

Original: Les Grecs avaient compris la mystérieuse puissance de ce dessous de choses. Ce sont eux qui nous ont légué un des plus beaux mots de notre langue, le mot enthousiasme. —Εν Θεος. — Un Dieu intérieur.
Discours de réception de Louis Pasteur (1882)

Miguel de Unamuno photo
William Wordsworth photo
Victor Villaseñor photo
Warren Farrell photo
Bill Whittle photo

“Any idiot can build bombs. Our Trinity sits not on some desert sand seared into glass at an abandoned, sad pillar of stones. It's in our heads and our hearts, it's in our genes, this beautiful, gorgeous marriage of money, freedom and ingenuity.”

Bill Whittle (1959) author, director, screenwriter, editor

TRINITY (part 2) https://web.archive.org/web/20030801081841/http://www.ejectejecteject.com:80/archives/000057.html (4 July 2003)
2000s

“We are a species in which both sexes have their equivalents of the peacock’s tail. Indeed, when it comes to physical beauty, the usual sex difference has arguably been reversed: Females are the “showier” sex.”

Source: The Ape that Thought It Was a Peacock: Does Evolutionary Psychology Exaggerate Human Sex Differences? (2013), p. 139

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo

“A mathematician is only perfect insofar as he is a perfect man, sensitive to the beauty of truth.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Maxim 609, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

José Martí photo

“All is beautiful and unceasing,
all is music and reason,
and all, like diamond,
is carbon first, then light.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

I (Yo soy un hombre sincero) as translated by Esther Allen in José Martí : Selected Writings (2002), p. 275
Simple Verses (1891)

Walter Raleigh photo
Kunti photo

“Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, leadership is in the eyes of the led.”

Kent Thiry (1956) Business; CEO of DaVita

Leadership Is in the Eyes of the Led, Says Thiry http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/headlines/vftt_thiry.html (2007)

André Maurois photo
Milton Friedman photo
Andrei Tarkovsky photo
Gregory Benford photo
Slavoj Žižek photo
Harriet Winslow Sewall photo

“Why thus longing, thus forever sighing
For the far-off, unattained, and dim,
While the beautiful all round thee lying
Offers up its low, perpetual hymn?”

Harriet Winslow Sewall (1819–1889) American poet

Why thus longing?, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

John Buchan photo

“Fire was everything Joey wanted to be. Exciting. Dangerous. Beautiful. Destructive. And yet he controlled it. Other people were too boring, too afraid to do what he did.”

Lis Wiehl (1961) American legal scholar

Source: Heart of Ice A Triple Threat Novel with April Henry (Thomas Nelson), p. 81

Orson Scott Card photo

“Peggy chose her words to be true, and therefore beautiful, and therefore good.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Prentice Alvin (1989), Chapter 10.

John Godfrey Saxe photo
Tom Robbins photo
Muhammad bin Tughluq photo
Frances Kellor photo
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti photo

“We affirm that the world's magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of explosive breath – a roaring car that seems to run on grapeshot is more beautiful than The Victory of Samoth-race”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) Italian poet and editor, founder of the Futurist movement

1910
1900's
Source: 'Le Figaro', 20 February 1909, as quoted in Futurist Manifestos, ed. Umbro Appolonio, Thames and Hudson, London, 1973

Robert Penn Warren photo
Charles Baudelaire photo

“All beauties, like all possible phenomena, have something of the eternal and something of the ephemeral — of the absolute and the particular.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Toutes les beautés contiennent, comme tous les phénomènes possibles, quelque chose d'éternel et quelque chose de transitoire — d'absolu et de particulier.
"De l'héroïsme de la vie moderne," Salon de 1846, XVIII (1846) http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Salon_de_1846_%28Curiosit%C3%A9s_esth%C3%A9tiques%29#XVIII._.E2.80.94_De_l.E2.80.99h.C3.A9ro.C3.AFsme_de_la_vie_moderne

Theodor Herzl photo
Jean Sibelius photo

“Music is for me like a beautiful mosaic which God has put together. He takes all the pieces in his hand, throws them into the world, and we have to recreate the picture from the pieces.”

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) Finnish composer of the late Romantic period

Quoted by Jalmari Finne, June 28, 1905. http://www.sibelius.fi/english/omin_sanoin/ominsanoin_16.htm

Gideon Mantell photo
Martin Firrell photo

“There is nothing beautiful or noble about death or fear.”

Martin Firrell (1963) British artist and activist

"Complete Hero" (2009)

Nathaniel Hawthorne photo
Kent Hovind photo

“I think what happened: the mammoths were up there chopping on their tropical flowers. It was a beautiful day, and it began to snow super cold snow. They had never seen snow before. One of the mammoths looked at his buddy and said, "Herman, this is peculiar weather we're having here. What is this white stuff falling out of the sky?" "I don't know, but let's get out of here." They started running around trying to find a place to hide and the snow got deeper and deeper and deeper and they got stuck in the snow standing up, and they couldn't even fall down. How many of you have ever been in a snow drift so deep you couldn't even fall over? Ever been in one of those? I think that's what happened to the mammoths. People say, "Well the mammoths have long hair. They're designed for cold weather." No, mammoths are not designed for cold weather. A lot of animals in the jungle have long hair. It is hot there. If the temperature is seventy degrees, long hair is just simply a decoration. There's a lot of things about the mammoth that shows that they were not designed for cold weather. There's a whole section just in this book about mammoths showing that they were not designed for cold weather. You can read all about that. For the mammoths, some of them ended frozen standing up. It was in super cold ice, perhaps 300 degrees below zero!”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Hovind theory

Josh Groban photo
Henry James photo
`Abdu'l-Bahá photo

“Love is the mystery of divine revelations!
Love is the effulgent manifestation!
Love is the spiritual fulfillment!
Love is the breath of the Holy Spirit inspired into the human spirit!
Love is the cause of the manifestation of the Truth (God) in the phenomenal world!
Love is the necessary tie proceeding from the realities of things through divine creation!
Love is the means of the most great happiness in both the material and spiritual worlds!
Love is a light of guidance in the dark night!
Love is the bond between the Creator and the creature in the inner world!
Love is the cause of development to every enlightened man!
Love is the greatest law in this vast universe of God!
Love is the one law which causeth and controleth order among the existing atoms!
Love is the universal magnetic power between the planets and stars shining in the loft firmament!
Love is the cause of unfoldment to a searching mind, of the secrets deposited in the universe by the Infinite!
Love is the spirit of life in the bountiful body of the world!
Love is the cause of the civilization of nations in this mortal world!
Love is the highest honor to every righteous nation!
The people who are confirmed therein are indeed glorified by the Supreme Concourse, the angels of heaven and the dwellers of the Kingdom of El-Abha! But if the hearts of the people become devoid of the Divine Grace — the Love of God — they wander in the desert of ignorance, descend to the depths of ruin and fall to the abyss of despair where there is no refuge! They are like insects living in the lowest plane.
O beloved of God! Be ye the manifestations of God and the lamps of guidance throughout all regions shining with the light of love and union!
How beautiful the effulgence of this light!”

`Abdu'l-Bahá (1844–1921) Son of Bahá'u'lláh and leader of the Bahá'í Faith

“O thou who art attracted by the Fragrances of God!…” in Tablets of Abdul-Baha Abbas (1909), p. 730 http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/ab/TAB/tab-573.html