Quotes about beauty
page 53

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk photo
Sophia Loren photo
Sophia Loren photo
Christian Morgenstern photo

“Faith is a beautiful thing. So are forest fires, and the color of gangrene. I think faith—especially capital-F Faith—is more dangerous and more disgusting than either. It is a substitute for thought.”

Theodore Sturgeon (1918–1985) American speculative fiction writer

How to Avoid a Hole in the Head in Marvel Science Stories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_Science_Stories (May 1951), p. 115

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad photo
Hendrik Willem Mesdag photo

“I have rented a room in Scheveningen to make studies from nature. It is a room with view on the sea; I hope to make there beautiful things, and to keep moving forward.”

Hendrik Willem Mesdag (1831–1915) painter from the Northern Netherlands

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
(original Dutch: citaat van Hendrik Willem Mesdag's brief, in het Nederlands:) ..ik heb een kamer gehuurd in Scheveningen om er studies naar de natuur te maken. Het is een kamer met uitzicht op zee; ik hoop er mooie dingen te maken, en steeds vooruit te gaan.
In a letter to his Belgium friend A. Verwee, 28 Mai 1871; as cited in Hendrik Willem Mesdag 1831 – 1915; De Schilder van de Noordzee, Johan Poort; Mesdag Documentaire Stichting cop, ISBN 90-74192-14-9; 2001, p. 17
before 1880

Robbert Dijkgraaf photo

“The last two years have seen the emergence of a beautiful new subject in mathematical physics. It manages to combine a most exotic range of disciplines: two-dimensional quantum field theory, intersection theory on the moduli space of Riemann surfaces, integrable hierarchies, matrix integrals, random surfaces, and many more. The common denominator of all these fields is two-dimensional quantum gravity or, more general, low-dimensional string theory.”

Robbert Dijkgraaf (1960) Dutch mathematical physicist and string theorist

[1992, Intersection Theory, Integrable Hierarchies and Topological Field Theory by Robbert Dijkgraaf, Fröhlich J., ’t Hooft G., Jaffe A., Mack G., Mitter P.K., Stora R. (eds.), New Symmetry Principles in Quantum Field Theory, NATO ASI Series (Series B: Physics), vol. 295, 95–158, Springer, Boston, MA, 10.1007/978-1-4615-3472-3_4]

Mary Wollstonecraft photo
Hu Shih photo
George Adamski photo
Joseph Addison photo
John Ruskin photo
Charles Darwin photo

“It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

Last paragraph of the first edition (1859). Only use of the term "evolve" or "evolution" in the first edition.
In the second http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=508&itemID=F376&viewtype=image (1860) through sixth (1872) editions, Darwin added the phrase "by the Creator" to read:
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
Source: On the Origin of Species (1859), chapter XIV: "Recapitulation and Conclusion", page 489-90 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=508&itemID=F373&viewtype=image

Haruki Murakami photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Kakuzo Okakura photo

“Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of social order.”

The Book of Tea. Kakuzo Okakura, in Green Gold: The Empire of Tea (30 November 2011) http://books.google.co.in/books?id=4SCZJFFf6ZsC&pg=PT64, p. 64.

Yukio Mishima photo
Léon Bloy photo
Natalie Wynn photo
Richard Montoya photo

“Luis Valdez said it long ago: The beauty and the frustration of theater is it is one permanent long shot…You never get up close in someone’s eyes. And that kind of blew me away (while shooting) a close-up. That was all new storytelling for me, and I had to figure it out on a very fast learning curve.”

Richard Montoya (1959) actor

On how he transitioned into filmmaking in “Culture Clash’s Richard Montoya becomes a movie multitasker” https://www.sacbee.com/entertainment/movies-news-reviews/article18414926.html in The Sacramento Bee (2015 Apr 13)

Hippolytus of Rome photo
Benjamin Bratt photo
Jamaica Kincaid photo
Juan Felipe Herrera photo

“Beauty, suffering, power and culture are all related. We cannot tear away from reality. It is better to live with all things, then to cut ourselves off and fester in a segmented mind.”

Juan Felipe Herrera (1948) American writer

On the role of beauty in poetry in “Poetry is Built for Compassion: An Interview with Juan Felipe Herrera” https://thi.ucsc.edu/poetry-built-compassion-interview-juan-felipe-herrera/ (Humanities Institute, UC Santa Cruz; 2019 Feb 27)

Juan Felipe Herrera photo

“I believe in beautiful messes…I like to splatter a lot.”

Juan Felipe Herrera (1948) American writer

On his creative process in “Juan Felipe Herrera On Poetry In Tough Times” https://www.npr.org/2017/04/12/523466543/juan-felipe-herrera-on-poetry-in-tough-times in NPR (2017 Apr 12)

Tomi Adeyemi photo

“I saw the opportunity to show the beauty in the culture and show that these words sound magical. We’re so used to using Latin, but if J.K. Rowling saw magic in that, you can see magic in your own culture. And if you can see it, you can help other people to see it.”

Tomi Adeyemi (1993) American author

On showcasing the Yoruba culture in Children of Blood and Bone in “Meet Tomi Adeyemi: the politically-charged author you need to know about in 2019” https://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/culture/culture-news/a26933188/tomi-adeyemi-interview/ in Harper’s Bazaar (2019 Mar 26)

Lupita Nyong'o photo
Baruch Spinoza photo
Chögyam Trungpa photo

“Even if our state of being is disgusting we should look into it. It is beautiful to see it.”

Chögyam Trungpa (1939–1987) Tibetan Buddhist lama and writer

Source: Glimpses of Abhidharma, p. 66

Peter Matthiessen photo
Helena Roerich photo
Helena Roerich photo
Helena Roerich photo
Patañjali photo

“Asanas bring perfection in body, beauty in form,grace, strength, compactness, and the harness and brilliance of a diamond.”

Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises

Patanjali, in “The Little Red Book of Yoga Wisdom”, p. 135.

David Chariandy photo

“I’m often inspired by the everyday beauty and resilience of black and brown families caught up in deeply challenging circumstances. I wanted to capture this ordinary beauty in its variations and intensity.”

David Chariandy (1969) Canadian writer

On the inspiration for his novel Brother in “Interviews: David Chariandy” https://bookpage.com/interviews/22971-david-chariandy-fiction#.XfgMUulKjcs in BookPage (2018 Aug 1)

Newton Lee photo
Jon Pineda photo

“I think it’s relative to the story you’re writing. Some novels are filled with summary and some are filled with scenes. Others are a beautiful, confusing mix, of course. Ultimately, I wanted to write a novel that I’d want to read later.”

Jon Pineda (1971) American writer

On choosing a story writing method in “7 QUESTIONS WITH JON PINEDA” https://hyphenmagazine.com/blog/2018/06/7-questions-jon-pineda in Hyphen Magazine (2018 Jun 7)

William Blake photo
Carmen Lomas Garza photo
Morgan Parker (writer) photo

“Leaning into the subject of suffering, leaning into the subject of mortality, was directly therapeutic for me. It wasn’t an intellectual interest or a recreational thought...Getting through my day required me to lean into it, and that’s where I just saw all this beauty that comes from it.”

BJ Miller (1971) palliative caregiver

On learning to deal with suffering in “How Nearly Losing His Life Made This Author Embrace Death” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bj-miller-beginners-guide-to-the-end-death_l_5d518495e4b0c63bcbeb38e5 in HuffPost (2019 Aug 14)

Daniel Abraham photo
Sarojini Naidu photo

“Her work has a real beauty. Some of her lyrical work is likely, I think, to survive among the lasting things in English literature and by these, even if they are fine rather than great, she may take her rank among the immortals.”

Sarojini Naidu (1879–1949) Indian politician, governor of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh from 1947 to 1949

Aurobindo said on her poetry quoted in Critical Response To Indian Poetry In English, p123/xxxx

Edmonia Lewis photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Chris Martin photo

“Life is beautiful in all its colors, even the darker ones, they’re here for a reason.”

Chris Martin (1977) musician, co-founder of Coldplay

On the Live 2012 concert documentary.

Theobald Wolfe Tone photo

“Impressed as we are with a deep sense of the excellence of our Constitution, as it exists in theory, we rejoice that we are not, like our brothers in France, reduced to the hard necessity of tearing up inveterate abuse by the roots, even where utility was so intermixed as to admit of separation. Ours is an easier and a less unpleasing task; to remove with a steady and a temperate resolution the abuses which the lapse of many years, inattention and supineness in the great body of the people, and unremitting vigilance in their rulers to invade and plunder them of their rights, have suffered to overgrow and to deform that beautiful system of government so admirably suited to our situation, our habits and our wishes. We have not to innovate but to restore. The just prerogatives of our monarch we respect and will maintain. The constitutional powers of the peers of the realms we wish not to invade. We know that in the exercise of both, abuses have grown up; but we also know that those abuses will be at once corrected, so as never again to recur, by restoring to us the people what we for ourselves demand as our right, our due weight and influence in that estate which is our property, the representation of the people in parliament.”

Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763–1798) Irish politician

Address of the Volunteers assembled at Belfast to the people of Ireland (14 July 1792), quoted in T. W. Moody, R. B. McDowell and C. J. Woods (eds.), The Writings of Theobold Wolfe Tone, 1763–98, Volume I: Tone's career in Ireland to June 1795 (1998), p. 218

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu photo

“I am not insensible to natural beauty, but my emotional joys center on the improbable yet sometimes wondrous works of that tiny and accidental evolutionary twig called Homo sapiens.”

Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) American evolutionary biologist

And I find, among these works, nothing more noble than the history of our struggle to understand nature—a majestic entity of such vast spatial and temporal scope that she cannot care much for a little mammalian afterthought with a curious evolutionary invention, even if that invention has, for the first time in some four billion years of life on earth, produced recursion as a creature reflects back upon its own production and evolution. Thus, I love nature primarily for the puzzles and intellectual delights that she offers to the first organ capable of such curious contemplation.
Prologue, p. 13
Bully for Brontosaurus (1991)

Nathan Seiberg photo
Matthew Lopez (playwright) photo
Rick Yune photo
John Adams photo
Charles Stross photo

“Nobody taught me how to say no when a beautiful naked woman begs me to take my clothes off.”

Source: The Laundry Files, The Jennifer Morgue (2006), Chapter 7, “Nightmare Beach” (p. 144)

Marjane Satrapi photo
John Updike photo
Don Cherry photo

“The Flames and Canucks, this one was the toughest series of all folks. No prisoners were taken in this one. Whoa! Are they hittin’? And they’re hittin’ to hurt, I’ll tell ya. Watch these beauty hits. You better keep your head up in this series I’ll tell ya!”

Don Cherry (1934) ice hockey coach, television commentator

In the "Flames-Canucks" segment (profiling the 1994 Western Conference Quarterfinal Series between the Calgary Flames and the Vancouver Canucks) of the <i>Rock'Em Sock'Em Six</i> hockey highlights video.

Don Cherry photo

“Cam Neely! Is he a beauty? Fifty goals in 49 games.”

Don Cherry (1934) ice hockey coach, television commentator

In the "Slapshots" segment of the <i>Rock'Em Sock'Em Six</i> hockey highlights video.

Mary McCarthy photo
Mary McCarthy photo
J. Howard Moore photo
J. Howard Moore photo
J. Howard Moore photo
Albert Einstein photo
Albert Einstein photo
Assata Shakur photo
Jack Vance photo
Jack Vance photo

“Candor is never indiscreet. Truth, which is to say, the reflection of life, is beautiful.”

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Palace of Love (1967), Chapter 9 (p. 381)

Jack Vance photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“That is the meaning of love. In the final analysis, love is not this sentimental something that we talk about. It’s not merely an emotional something. Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system.”

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

[“Loving Your Enemies,” Sermon Delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, King, Jr., Martin Luther, 1957-11-17, https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/loving-your-enemies-sermon-delivered-dexter-avenue-baptist-church, http://www.webcitation.org/6x5ROMlxu, 2018-02-08]
1950s, Loving Your Enemies (November 1957)

Jair Bolsonaro photo
Jair Bolsonaro photo

“For the first time in a while, a pro-America Brazilian president arrives in DC. It’s the beginning of a partnership focused on liberty and prosperity, something that all of us Brazilians have long wished for. You have a president who is a friend of the United States who admires this beautiful country.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

On Twitter, on 17 March 2019. Bolsonaro chega a Washington e comemora proximidade com os EUA https://br.reuters.com/article/topNews/idBRKCN1QY0YX-OBRTP. Reuters, 17 March 2019.

Mahatma Gandhi photo
Chris Cornell photo
Charles Webster Leadbeater photo
Alice A. Bailey photo
Alice A. Bailey photo
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto photo
Jesse Jackson photo

“To affirm a person is to see the good in them that they cannot see in themselves and to repeat it in spite of appearances to the contrary. Please, this is not some Pollyanna optimism that is blind to the reality of evil, but rather like a fine radar system that is tuned in to the true, the good, and the beautiful.”

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

The Furious Longing of God https://books.google.com/books?id=n17xNZ-aCj0C&pg=PA82&dq=%22To+affirm+a+person+is+to+see+the+good%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi6n8OW-JTkAhVJ2FkKHQN4AEIQ6AEwAnoECAEQAg#v=onepage&q=%22To%20affirm%20a%20person%20is%20to%20see%20the%20good%22&f=false (2009), pp. 82–83
2000s

Fidel Castro photo

“Kim Il-sung, one of the most prominent, bright and heroic socialist leaders of the present day, whose history is one of the most beautiful thing a revolutionary may have written in the service of the cause of socialism.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

Speech (19 April 1966) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1966/esp/f190466e.html

Seneca the Younger photo
Marcus Aurelius photo
Peter Greenaway photo

“I suppose I have a concern for this extraordinary, beautiful, amazing, exciting, taxonomically brilliant world that we live in, but we keep fucking it up all the time.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

In an interview in the Washington DC City Paper, 6 Apr 1990
Interviews

Hermann von Keyserling photo
Charles Sumner photo
Gianfranco Ravasi photo