Quotes about beauty
page 55

“Europe is only powerful; India is beautiful.”

Savitri Devi (1905–1982) Greek–French writer

Savitri Devi, L'Etang aux Lotus, p. 222, quoted in Koenraad Elst: The Saffron Swastika, p. 562

“Bide the storm ye canna hinder,
Mindin’ through the strife,
Hoo the luntin’ lowe o’ beauty
Lichts the grey o’ life.”

Helen Cruickshank (1886–1975) British poet

Sea Buckthorn

Life

“Does not the beauty of the artist's work lie for us in the accuracy with which his symbols resume innumerable facts of our past emotional experience? ... [A]esthetic judgment... how exactly parallel it is to the scientific judgment.”

Karl Pearson book The Grammar of Science

Introductory. Pearson refers the reader to William Wordsworth's preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1815) "General View of Poetry".
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Past, Lie

“That's the beauty of an art school: as long as you can pay the tuition, they will never, even in the gentlest way, suggest that you have no talent.”

David Sedaris Naked

Essay: "Something for everyone". (p.238)
Naked (1997)

Way, School, Art

“A new jewel in the crown of Goddess Earth,
You are a trove of sandalwood, beauty and gold.
Victory to you Mother Karnataka, the daughter of Mother India,
where Rama and Krishna had their incarnations.”

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

Jaya Bharata Jananiya Tanujate (1930)

Victory, Daughters

“The lustful who punish beauty would be wiser to control lust.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: The Fresco (2000), Chapter 24, p. 181

“We separate.

We oppose.

We dramatize.

We exaggerate.

We add colors.

We make it beautiful.

We make it ugly.

We separate.”

Alex Grey (1953) American artist

Art Psalms (2008), Let Love Draw the Line

Making love, Color

“Mystic Art affirms the holy mystery and the ideals of truth,
goodness and beauty. No other artistic ideal can fulfill the longing
soul like the creation and appreciation of relevant sacred art.”

Alex Grey (1953) American artist

Art Psalms (2008), Seven Statements on Mystic Art

Truth, Soul, Art

“CREATING SACRED SPACE MIRRORS GOD’S CREATION. OUR CHALLENGE AS CO-CREATORS IS TO MIRROR GOD’S LOVE AND BEAUTY IN ALL OUR CREATIONS.”

Alex Grey (1953) American artist

Art Psalms (2008), The Plan

Love, Making love, God

“I will gather the daughters. Let them help lay out the garden of beauty. Let them fill the garden to overflowing with new blossoms. I perceive that one can expect a rapid sprouting of life in the New World.”

Helena Roerich (1879–1955) Russian philosopher

449
Leaves of Morya’s Garden: Book One (The Call) (1924)

Help, Daughters, World, Life

“I thought at that moment, Wow, I've got it made. I'm just a new beautiful being — I'm just an inner self — all I'll ever need to do is look inside and I'll know what to do and I can always trust it, and here I'll be forever.”

Ram Dass book Be Here Now

But two or three days later I was talking about the whole thing in the past tense. I was talking about how I "experienced" this thing, because I was back being that anxiety-neurotic, in a slightly milder form, but still, my old personality was sneaking back up on me.
Be Here Now (1971)

Self-confidence

“Nature is beautiful and calm, but it can also be violent and deadly in an astronomical scale.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019

Nature

“We are the Roots of the tree on which you flourish. Go on rejoicing in your beauty! But remember there is this difference between us that with every autumn the old Leaves die, and with every spring new Leaves are born; but if the Roots once perish neither you nor the tree can live at all.”

Ivan Krylov (1769–1844) Russian writer

An argosy of fables, "The Leaves and the Roots" p. 398
The Fables (1883)

Autumn, Spring, Tree

“People like to hold onto life in many ways, but everything is transitory. This is it, right now. Youth doesn’t last forever, beauty doesn’t last forever, so appreciate it for the moment.”

Gronk (artist) (1954) American artist

On the loss of site-specific artwork in “Gronk by Marisela Norte” https://bombmagazine.org/articles/gronk/ in BOMB Magazine (2007 Jan 1)

People, Youth, Way, Life

“There are three great questions which in life we have over and over again to answer. Is it right or wrong? Is it true or false? Is it beautiful or ugly? Our education ought to help us to answer these questions.”

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury book The Use of Life

The Use of Life (1894), ch. VI: National Education Source: The Use of Life http://archive.org/details/uselife02lubbgoog/page/n114/mode/2up on Archive.Org, pages 102—103

Question, Help, Falseness, Education

“You want to know about the title, right. The most beautiful girl in the world. . . It was a straight publicity thing but it ballooned. Of course, I never could wear blue jeans to the market after that. I had a reputation to uphold.”

Yvonne De Carlo (1922–2007) Canadian-American actress, dancer, and singer

Source: As quoted in " A girl no longer, but . . . De Carlo's a beauty still https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/459624330/" (1975)

World, Girl

“The thing you know in the abstract, but which you have to see, is the vastness of the place and how little relationship one side of it has to another. Mostly, the landscape is just unbelievably beautiful. You do a lot of looking and not that much thinking.”

Kamila Shamsie (1973) Pakistani writer

Source: On living and travelling throughout the United States in “THE SRB INTERVIEW: Kamila Shamsie” https://www.scottishreviewofbooks.org/2018/08/the-srb-interview-kamila-shamsie/ in The Scottish Review of Books (2018 Aug 11)

Thinking

“Beauty, which the mirror of creation was beautifying,
with a hundred thousand suns each atom caressing,
despite its great glory was behind the unseen's veil...
it did not know itself until humanity was blossoming.”

Abdul-Qādir Bedil (1644–1720) Persian writer,poet

Bedil: Selected Poems, p. 59
Rubaʿiyat (Quatrains), Stanza

Sun

“The use of science in the practice of virtue, is considerable: the man who knows the beauty of virtue will follow it, however possible. Knowing the evil of wrong, he will avoid it, however possible. He listens to worthy praise, and keeps his distance from unworthy praise. From this is derived that science has a part in every virtue, and that ignorance has one in every vice. Man who is illiterate and who still practices virtue must be extremely pure, a virtuous being. This is the state of Prophets (PBUH) because God had conveyed goodness to them without they acquiring it from men.”

Ibn Hazm (994–1064) Arab theologian

ibid

God, Evil, Science, Parting

“I see and appreciate beauty in my weird little way. It’s easy to buy presents or make romantic gestures, but the more simple things demonstrate you really know someone – that’s what I find sexy and romantic. Being romantic is knowing what makes the person you love happy.”

Liv Tyler (1977) American actress, producer and former model

Liv Tyler reveals what she finds sexy and romantic about husband David Gardner https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/liv-tyler-reveals-what-finds-13970530 (February 10, 2019)

Personality, Happiness, Way, Love

“I love simple things, I’m not really that turned on by the grandiosity of celebrity and fame. I love beautiful things… and I so appreciate all of the amazing experiences I get to have, and the finer things in life. But the things that really make me happy and re-ally touch my heart are just incredibly simple. I think I’ve always been that way my whole life.”

Liv Tyler (1977) American actress, producer and former model

Happiness, Heart, Thinking, Way

“Asia gave us dowry deaths and the caste system. Africa elevated famine to an art form. North America cultivated chattel slavery for far longer than I would have dared hope; South America has done things with political oppression that I am obliged to call brilliant; Australia showed the world that the only good aborigine is a dead aborigine; and Antarctica has fabulous weather. Of all the continents that constitute Earth’s terrain, however, Europe remains dearest to my heart and closest to my soul.
I allude here not to the sweatshops, the world wars, or totalitarian socialism (though none of these innovations has escaped my notice) but to the fact that the European imagination endowed me with a degree of glamour—you might even say charm—that in pre-coma times enabled me to function with extraordinary effectiveness. The concept of an Evil One is intrinsic to Islam, of course; the ancient Hebrews had their “adversary,” their satan; the Egyptians feared a dark deity called Set; Zoroastrians believed in Ahriman, essence of destruction (forever warring with Ohrmazd, source of all things bright and beautiful). But only in Christian Europe did the Prince of Hell acquire a personality as vivid and endearing as any you will meet in a Dickens novel.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 11 (p. 253; spoken by the Devil)

Soul, Hell, Imagination, Time

“When you were here before,
Couldn't look you in the eye.
You're just like an angel,
Your skin makes me cry.
You float like a feather
In a beautiful world.
I wish I was special;
You're so fuckin' specialBut I'm a creep
I'm a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here
I don't belong here”

Thom Yorke (1968) English musician, philanthropist and singer-songwriter

Creep
Lyrics, Pablo Honey (1993)

Hell, Angels, Cry, World

“Cause, Principle, and One eternal
From whom being, life, and movement are suspended,
And which extends itself in length, breadth, and depth,
To whatever is in Heaven, on Earth, and Hell;
With sense, with reason, with mind, I discern,
That there is no act, measure, nor calculation, which can comprehend
That force, that vastness and that number,
Which exceeds whatever is inferior, middle, and highest;
Blind error, avaricious time, adverse fortune,
Deaf envy, vile madness, jealous iniquity,
Crude heart, perverse spirit, insane audacity,
Will not be sufficient to obscure the air for me,
Will not place the veil before my eyes,
Will never bring it about that I shall not
Contemplate my beautiful Sun.”

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) Italian philosopher, mathematician and astronomer

"Of Love" as translated in The Infinite in Giordano Bruno : With a Translation of His Dialogue, Concerning the Cause, Principle, and One (1978) by Sidney Thomas Greenburg, p. 89
Variant translation:
Cause, Principle and One, the Sempiterne,
On whom all being, motion, life, depend.
From whom, in length, breadth, depth, their paths extend
As far as heaven, earth, hell their faces turn :
With sense, with mind, with reason, I discern
That not, rule, reckoning, may not comprehend
That power and bulk and multitude which tend
Beyond all lower, middle, and superne. Blind error, ruthless time, ungentle doom,
Deaf envy, villain madness, zeal unwise,
Hard heart, unholy craft, bold deeds begun,
Shall never fill for one the air with gloom,
Or ever thrust a veil before these eyes,
Or ever hide from me my glorious sun.
As quoted in "Giordano Bruno" by Thomas Davidson, The Index Vol. VI. No. 36 (4 March 1886), p. 429
Cause, Principle, and Unity (1584)

Life, Hell, Time, Sun

“It is thought that women inspire by their beauty; more often they do so by their longings.”

Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973) Irish writer

Source: A Time in Rome (1960), Ch. IV, p. 132

Women

“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”

movie Dead Poets Society

1989

Reading, Law, Business, Passion

“The admiration of the beautiful always has relation to the Divinity.”

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël (1766–1817) Swiss author

Pt. 4, ch. 1
De l’Allemagne [Germany] (1813)
Original: (fr) L'admiration pour le beau se rapporte toujours à la Divinité.

Relation ships

“We may pretend that beauty is only skin deep, but Aristotle was right when he observed that "beauty is a far greater recommendation than any letter of introduction.””

Diane Ackerman book A Natural History of the Senses

The sad truth is that attractive people do better in school, where they receive more help, better grades, and less punishment; at work, where they are rewarded with higher pay, more prestigious jobs, and faster promotions; in finding mates, where they tend to be in control of the relationships and make most of the decisions; and among total strangers, who assume them to be interesting, honest, virtuous, and successful. After all, in fairy tales, the first stories most of us hear, the heroes are handsome, the heroines are beautiful, and the wicked sots are ugly. Children learn implicitly that good people are beautiful and bad people are ugly, and society restates that message in many subtle ways as they grow older. So perhaps it’s not surprising that handsome cadets at West Point achieve a higher rank by the time they graduate, or that a judge is more likely to give an attractive criminal a shorter sentence.
Source: A Natural History of the Senses (1990), Chapter 5 “Vision” (pp. 271-272)

“I am so surprised by New York City. I thought New York must be ugly and unpleasant, you know, I saw all those movies about New York….But New York is beautiful and the people here are really nice.”

Rina Mor (1956) Israeli lawyer and former Miss Universe

"Miss Universe Captivates New York" (1976)

People

“you are beautiful in your own way”

Yahia Lababidi (1973)

Way

“The beauty in her lover's eyes
Was admiration of her own.”

Coventry Patmore (1823–1896) English poet

Book II, Canto II, III Lais and Lucretia.
The Angel In The House (1854)

Lovers

“I tell you again that the recollection of the manner in which I saw the Queen of France in the year 1774 and the contrast between that brilliancy, Splendour, and beauty, with the prostrate Homage of a Nation to her, compared with the abominable Scene of 1789 which I was describing did draw Tears from me and wetted my Paper. These Tears came again into my Eyes almost as often as I lookd at the description. They may again. You do not believe this fact, or that these are my real feelings, but that the whole is affected, or as you express it, 'downright Foppery.'”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

My friend, I tell you it is truth—and that it is true, and will be true, when you and I are no more, and will exist as long as men—with their Natural feelings exist.
Letter to Philip Francis (20 February 1790), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789–December 1791 (1967), p. 91
1790s

Feeling, Drawing, Tear

“Oh it’s very beautiful to have a very rich heritage from my Indian ancestors. My mother is Mixtec [a native tribe of Oaxaca], and my father was Scottish American. Growing up with those cultures has been enriching. Though, at first very difficult because I was rejected by one culture — in the Mexican Nation there is a lot of discrimination towards the Indian groups. So I struggled with that and with being discriminated as a Mexican. But I think music has been able to erase those boundaries. I think it’s easier to stop talking about those borders, and talk more about the music — to make music so that those borders are erased in a poetic way.”

Lila Downs (1968) Mexican American singer-songwriter

On her racial heritage in “Q&A: Lila Downs, A Sin and A Miracle” https://remezcla.com/music/lila-downs-sin-miracle-pecados-milagros-interview/ in Remezcla (c. 2011) Heritage and indigenous peoples

Music, Thinking, Way, Making love

“Buddha, as the source, and Maitreya, as a universal hope, will unite the austere followers of the Teaching of the South with the multiformity of the North. That which is most essential for the immediate future will definitely manifest itself. Instead of swelling the Teaching with commentaries, it will again be restored to the beauty of the value of concise conviction. The new time of the Era of Maitreya is in need of conviction.”

Helena Roerich (1879–1955) Russian philosopher

Source: Foundations of Buddhism (1930)

Time, Future, Hope, Universe

“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 happiness. 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.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Source: Brave New World (1932), Mustapha Mond, in Ch. 16

Imagination, Reading, Time, War

“I always think it’s exciting to be a part of a story that is set in such a beautiful aesthetic setting that is so far away!”

Ashleigh Brewer (1990) Australian actress

Source: B&B's Ashleigh Brewer Interview: Could This Forrester Gal Turn Into "Poison Ivy" To Keep Liam? https://michaelfairmantv.com/bbs-ashleigh-brewer-interview-could-this-forrester-gal-turn-into-poison-ivy-to-keep-liam/2014/11/25/ (November 25, 2014)

Thinking, Parting

“The beauty of the forests of Indiana in the rich and lovely month of May surpasses all description. The rivers, swollen by the rains, flow through long lanes of verdure, caressing the islands they seem to carry with them in their course and which look like floating nosegays. The trees raise their straight trunks to the height of more than a hundred and twenty feet and are crowned with tops of admirable beauty. The magnolia, the dog-wood, the catalpa, covered with white flowers, the permed snow of the springtime, intermingle with the delicate green of the other trees.”

Théodore Guérin (1798–1856) Catholic saint and nun from France

Third Journal of Travel (1844-1845)

Tree, Dogs, Flowers, Love

“Time is truly elastic. If you just rock what you have to do, you'll get it done. And another thing, too, that I learned recently, it kind of put me more at ease with the day-to-day, is just there's some kind of energy and balance and something beautiful in the ups and downs of the day-to-day. You'll get great news and you'll get bad news, and this will all be in the same day, but there's something cohesive and the balance of that is comforting. Learning to be comfortable with the ups and downs of every day and knowing that's just the mystery of life and how it is, you know?”

Booboo Stewart (1994) American actor

Booboo Stewart on the Adorable Gift His GF Gave Him and the Last Thing He Watched https://www.popsugar.com/celebrity/booboo-stewart-last-call-interview-47953476 (November 9, 2020)

Time, Bad luck, Learning, Life

“We will rebuild, reconcile and recover in every known nook of our nation,
in every corner called our country our people diverse and beautiful
will emerge battered and beautiful.
When day comes, we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid.
The new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light.
If only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.”

Amanda Gorman The Hill We Climb

The Hill We Climb (2020)

Light, People, Country

“God, our loving Creator, created two sexes. So, femininity and masculinity are linked to the design of God. You see this in a good marriage; each partner anticipates the other’s needs, and appreciates the other’s gifts. I’ve seen this in the marriage of my own parents, who have been married for 72 years. Their love is so beautiful, and their complementarity so evident.”

Thomas Olmsted (1947) Roman Catholic prelate; 4th Bishop of the Diocese of Phoenix, Arizona

A Bishop Speaks to the Men of His Flock https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2016/01/26/a-bishop-speaks-to-the-men-of-his-flock/ (January 26, 2016)

God, Marriage, Sex, Parent

“For the truly creative mind in any field is no more than this — a human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create — to create — to create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of beauty and meaning his very breath is cut off from him. He must create. He must pour out creation. By some strange unknown pressing inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

"The Creative Mind at Work," William Vaughn Moody Foundation Lecture at the University of Chicago (1935), as quoted in Pearl S. Buck: A Biography, Volume 2 - Her Philosophy as Expressed in Her Letters (1971) by Theodore F. Harris, p. 217.

God, Music, Joy, Books

“She is one from the mountains
She is one from the plains
She is one with the woodlands
And she's at home on the range
And all these things of beauty
They left a kiss on her
I'll tell you, sirI say Lord she's as sweet as one of her pecan pies
Listenin' to her laughter I get hypnotized
Goodness knows I love my Angel Eyes
I love my Angel Eyes oh, yes I do”

Willis Allan Ramsey (1951) American singer-songwriter

Angel Eyes

Home, Mountain, Kiss, Angels

“It should also be remembered that the Bible is written in the language of symbols, a special category of literature designed both to conceal and to reveal spiritual truths. Blindness is a symbol for temporary unawareness of spiritual light. The Christ partly represents spiritual intuitiveness. When one who is spiritually blind becomes intuitively awakened and active or, symbolically, enters the presence of the Christ and is healed by him, the scales are said to have fallen from his eyes. This I believe to be the true symbolical interpretation; for I look upon the story as one of the many beautiful miniature mystery dramas to be found in the Bible, portraying in allegory and symbol the soul’s awakening from darkness to light. Nevertheless, symbolism apart, the answer given by the Lord was, as stated above, doctrinally and technically correct.”

Geoffrey Hodson (1886–1983) New Zealand occultist

Reincarnation & Christianity (1967)

Soul, Light, Truth, Christ

“Of true benevolence, its charms divine,
With other motives to call forth its power,
And its grand triumphs, multiplied beyond
All former bounds, in this its golden age,
Humbly I sing, awed by the holy theme;
A theme exalted, though as yet unsung,
In beauty rich, of inspiration full,
And worthy of a nobler harp than that
From which heroic strains sublimely sound.”

Carlos Wilcox (1794–1827) American poet

Remains of the Rev. Carlos Wilcox: with a memoir of his life (1828), p. 99 https://archive.org/details/remainsofrevcarl00wilc/page/100/mode/2up Poetry

Motivation, Singing, Age

“I do not delete any day of my life, the beautiful days have given me happiness, the bad ones have given me experience... the worst ones have taught me never to give up.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Non cancello nessun giorno della mia vita, i giorni belli mi hanno regalato felicità, quelli brutti mi hanno dato esperienza... i peggiori, mi hanno insegnato a non mollare mai.
Source: prevale.net

Happiness, Bad luck, Life

“I’m not a lesbian. I don’t want to be either. I’ve always thought of myself as a male homosexual (try and figure that one out—I can’t)... I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for transvestite and gay men becuz they seemed to me to be the most beautiful inside—the most able to abandon stereotypes which, for men, I think, is a lot harder. I think they are one group that knows better than anyone that there’s no difference between men and women... But I’m not trying to deny my “femininity”, Dorothy, I’m just trying to sneak up on it thru the back door. The front door Avon lady approach didn’t even work. I’d like to get the best of both worlds . . . what I’m trying to do now is find out how to get them.”

Lou Sullivan (1951–1991) American author and activist known for his work on behalf of trans men

Source: "A Transvestite Answers a Feminist" (2006), p. 164

Heart, Thinking, World, Women

“For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone. People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone”

Audrey Hepburn (1929–1993) British actress

Knowledge, People

“Why should films not be used for Irish-Ireland purposes and for the proper appreciation of scenery and beauty?”

Timothy Quill (1901–1960) Early Dáil member, cooperative organiser, agriculturalist

Irish Independent (1943)
By Quill:, 1940s

“My relationship with Italy is really a relationship of memory... of colors and shapes whose roots are in my childhood. I am convinced that anyone raised in Italy has unconsciously received a very incisive visual education. Having constantly been exposed to artistic masterpieces of incredible beauty, one implicitly receives an education in taste that remains unmatched.”

Vincenzo Amato (1966) Italian actor and sculptor

The Artist's Iron Man: a Life in Sculpture and Film http://www.iitaly.org/magazine/focus/art-culture/article/artists-iron-man-life-in-sculpture-and-film (June 30, 2008)

Childhood, Memory, Color, Education

“One side of the soul is carried away by the passionate part in man, and we are then captivated by the good things of this life, but the other side of the soul frequently delights in the activity of the intellect and, as a result, when we practice self-restraint, the intellect longs to pursue heavenly beauty.”

Diadochos of Photiki (400–486) Byzantine saint

§ 28
On Spiritual Knowledge and Discrimination (480 AD)

Soul, Self-confidence, Passion, Life

“When one sees, the variety and abundance of beautiful and bloodless fruits that gorge the markets of civilisation and considers the amount of art available for cooking and compounding this abundance, and considers, too, what might be still further accomplished in the production and preparation of foods by scientific attention to the matter, it seems so strange, so sad, and so frightful, that man, elected by the accidents of evolution to be the model and schoolmaster of the world, and adapted so signally to a guiltless diet, should continue to perpetrate in the daylight of the twentieth century the barbarous, blood-sucking atrocities of the reptile.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), Is Man a Plant-Eater?, p. 130

Food, Art, World, Sadness

“From the standpoint of economy alone, the diet of the fields and orchards ought to appeal successfully to every one possessed of undoubted sanity. One acre devoted to wheat will support ten times as many men as one devoted to grazing. If men would take the beautiful products of the soil fresh from Nature's hand, instead of sitting down and devouring, in the form of the accumulated residuum or ruminants^ an acre at a meal, the problems o human poverty and over-population would be immensely simplified.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), What Shall We Eat?, p. 92

Time, Support, Nature, Problem

“Furs just as warm and beautiful as murderous sealskin may be made of plush; and vegetal silk as fine and lustrous as ever was spun by the oak-eating babes of Polyphemus can be made of wood. Vegetal leather has been manufactured in London with the polish and durability of calfskin. And when the demand becomes strong enough to turn human attention profitably to the task, foot-wear just as comely and lasting, and more sanitary and comfortable, will be made at even less cost from plant products.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), The Cost of a Skin, pp. 74–75

Strong

“I sleep poorly. This long abstinence is destroying me. My nature needs frequent contacts with the beautiful gender. I don't understand how priests can live like this.”

Leopold II of Belgium (1835–1909) King of the Belgians

Source: Leopold II, Het hele Verhaal, Johan Op De Beeck Horizon, 2020 https://klara.be/leopold-ii-aflevering-2-0 ISBN 9789463962094 Prince Leopold II in a letter to his father Leopold I on may 1861 when recovering from a cold on vacation in villa Solitude in Austria complaining how he misses female company.

Sleep, Understanding, Nature

“Ah! this beautiful world!”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

said Flemming, with a smile. "Indeed, I know not what to think of it. Sometimes it is all gladness and sunshine, and Heaven itself lies not far off. And then it changes suddenly; and is dark and sorrowful, and clouds shut out the sky. In the lives of the saddest of us, there are bright days like this, when we feel as if we could take the great world in our arms and kiss it. Then come the gloomy hours, when the fire will neither burn on our hearths nor in our hearts; and all without and within is dismal, cold, and dark. Believe me, every heart has its secret sorrows, which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad." Hyperion http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5436, Bk. III, Ch. IV (1839).

World

“Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll;
Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.”

Alexander Pope The Rape of the Lock

Canto V, line 33
The Rape of the Lock (1712, revised 1714 and 1717)

Soul

“Such laughter, like sunshine on the deep sea, is very beautiful to me.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Poet

Sea, Laughter

“Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars — mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere."”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination — stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old light. A vast pattern — of which I am a part... What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
volume I; lecture 3, "The Relation of Physics to Other Sciences"; section 3-4, "Astronomy"; p. 3-6
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)

Science, Star

“It’s beautiful when you have the opportunity to change from a completely inward role to a very organic, present role.”

Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey (1986) Franco-Spanish actress

Astrid Bergès-Frisbey's prismatic peepers https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/21865/1/astrid-berges-frisbeys-prismatic-peepers (September 26, 2014)

Change

“The whole underside of our society has always been violence and still is. Churches, laws--everybody seems to think that man is a noble savage. But he's only an animal. A meat-eating, talking animal. Recognize it. He also has grace and love and beauty. But don't say to me we're not violent.”

Sam Peckinpah (1925–1984) American film director and screenwriter

Playboy, August 1972

Animals, Thinking, Law, Making love

“When the light of the sun shines through a prism it is broken into beautiful colours, and when the prism is shattered, still the light remains. So does the life of life shine resplendent in the forms of our friends, and so, when their forms are broken, still their life remains; and in that life we are united with them; for the life of their life is also our life, and we are one with them by ties indissoluble.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 8 : Suffering and Consolation
Life and Destiny (1913)

Sun, Life, Light

“You're beautiful, it's true.”

James Blunt (1974) English singer-songwriter

"You're Beautiful"
Song lyrics, Back to Bedlam (2004)

“It also permitted me to understand the vicious character of money, the inhuman character of the power of money that renders man practically useless for society and for himself. And I think that the experience that I have lived is an experience that comforts me in our struggle to make the life of man more human, more beautiful and rich. I think that we can win this fight, but not alone. We can win it together, in unity.”

Basile Mvé Engone (1941) Catholic bishop

Reflections of bishops after our week of study on Social Credit https://www.michaeljournal.org/articles/pilgrims-of-st-michael/item/reflections-of-bishops-after-our-week-of-study-on-social-credit-3 (1 October 2011)

Money, Thinking, Understanding, Fight

“Today’s fashion magazines may carry an article about the dangers of anorexia while bombarding its readers with images of emaciated young bodies representing the height of beauty and desirability.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

As quoted in Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics (2014), p.34

Fashion

“When we saw the most beautiful fishes of the sea, the dolphin and bonito, in pursuit of the flying fish, and when these forsook their native element to seek for shelter in air, the application to human nature was obvious. What empire is not like a tumultuous ocean, where the great in all the magnificence and pomp of power, continually persecute and contrive the destruction of the defenceless?”

Georg Forster book A Voyage Round the World

Sometimes we saw this picture continued still farther, when the poor fugitives met with another set of enemies in the air, and became the prey of birds, by endeavouring to escape the jaws of fishes.
Book I, ch. II, The Passage from Madeira to the Cape Verd Islands, and from thence to the Cape of Good Hope.
A Voyage Round the World (1777)

Sea, Flying, Fish, Nature

“Salem was beautiful and historical, but something about being continually reminded of the witch trials didn’t sit well with her. She’d fight a man wielding a machete way before fighting witch hunters.”

Jason Tanamor (1975) Filipino-American Author and Writer

Source: Novels, Vampires of Portlandia (2020), Chapter 15

Way, Fight

“Truth, and goodness, and beauty are but different faces of the same all.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Truth

“Every virtue is a participation in the Beauty of the One and a response to His Love.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2012, Echoes of Perennial Wisdom, World Wisdom, 20, 978-1-93659700-0]
Spiritual path, Virtue

Love

“The desire to vanquish faults because it is "I" who have them is ineffectual, since it falls within the same category as the faults themselves. Indeed, every fault is a form of egoism or even pride. We must tend towards Perfection because we understand it and therefore love it, and not because we desire that our ego should be perfect. In other terms, we must love and realize a virtue because it is true and beautiful, and not because it would become us if we possessed it; and we must hate and fight against a fault because it is false and ugly, and not because it is ours and because it disfigures us. To possess a virtue is first and foremost to be without the fault which is contrary to it, for God created us virtuous. He created us in His image; faults are superimposed. Moreover it is not we who possess virtue, it is virtue which possesses us.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2012, Echoes of Perennial Wisdom, World Wisdom, 65, 978-1-93659700-0]
Spiritual path, Virtue

God, Hate, Perfection, Falseness

“Virtue is a ray of the divine Beauty, in which we participate through our nature or through our will, with ease or with difficulty, but always by the grace of God.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2012, Echoes of Perennial Wisdom, World Wisdom, 16, 978-1-93659700-0]
Spiritual path, Virtue

God, Nature

“Virtue consists in allowing free passage, in the soul, to the Beauty of God.”

Frithjof Schuon (1907–1998) Swiss philosopher

[2019, Esoterism as Principle and as Way, World Wisdom, 87, 978-1-93659765-9]
Spiritual path, Virtue

Soul, God

“Hope is the vision of God in His perfect Beauty.”

Al-Qushayri (986–1072) philosopher

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2002), p. 104

Perfection, God, Hope

“Elegance is not a matter of good taste. Every culture has its own idea of beauty, which is often completely different from ours.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), About Elegance

Idea

“True lovers will be able to enter the garden of beauty without fear of being judged. They will no longer be two bodies and two souls meeting, but a single fountain out of which pours the true water of life.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), About sex

Life, Soul, Water, Lovers

“Lecco is a country that I would call one of the most beautiful in the world.”

Alessandro Manzoni (1785–1873) Italian poet and novelist

Original: (it) Lecco è Un paese che chiamerei uno dei più belli al mondo.

Country, World

“Music is timeless. A good piece of yesterday, it's beautiful today and it will be beautiful tomorrow.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) La musica è senza tempo. Un bel brano di ieri, è bello oggi e sarà bello domani.
Source: prevale.net

Music

“Beauty is observed, intelligence attracts, sympathy intrigues, sweetness conquers, but simplicity falls in love.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) La bellezza si osserva, l'intelligenza attrae, la simpatia incuriosisce, la dolcezza conquista, ma la semplicità innamora.
Source: prevale.net

Intelligence, Love

“Strong personality, ingenuity and extreme beauty intrigue the mind, seduce the soul, the senses and dominate your essence.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Forte personalità, creatività ed estrema bellezza intrigano la mente, seducono l'anima, i sensi e dominano la tua essenza.
Source: prevale.net

Soul, Strong, Personality, Sense

“Extreme beauty, seduces the soul.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) L'estrema bellezza, seduce l'anima.
Source: prevale.net

Soul

“She, of a particular and unique beauty. The features of his face and her body are of a subtle transgression that blends between sweetness and sensuality. Her charm smells of woman.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Lei, di una particolare ed unica bellezza. I lineamenti del suo volto e del suo corpo sono di una sottile trasgressione che si fonde tra dolcezza e sensualità. Il suo fascino profuma di donna.
Source: prevale.net

“The beauty of a woman attracts you, her intelligence fascinates you, sympathy intrigues you, but the difficulty in having her seduces you.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) La bellezza di una donna ti attrae, la sua intelligenza ti affascina, la simpatia ti incuriosisce, ma la difficoltà ad averla ti seduce.
Source: prevale.net

Intelligence

“I have no other desire than to leave Belgium bigger, stronger and more beautiful.”

Leopold II of Belgium (1835–1909) King of the Belgians

Pierre Vercauteren: A king unjustly maligned. (Page 18) https://www.memoiresducongo.be/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Leo2-Vercauteren.pdf Leopold II on the evening of his accession in 1865 confided to the baron Lambermont. Léopold II, Count Louis de Lichtervelde (p.55). Quotes related to Belgium

“You are the reincarnation of every beautiful woman that ever lived.”

Suraj Sani (1996) Nigerian writer, Spoken word artist

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10937457-you-are-the-reincarnation-of-every-beautiful-woman-that-ever

“You’re a queen, your crown doesn’t have a bloodline It’s only passed on to someone more beautiful.”

Suraj Sani (1996) Nigerian writer, Spoken word artist

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10937453-you-re-a-queen-your-crown-doesn-t-have-a-bloodline-it-s

“I never want to make beautiful pictures. I just want to make sure it’s right. Every set up, every shot, represents a choice: what you want to see, and what you don’t want to see.”

Wong Kar-wai (1958) Hong Kong screenwriter, film producer and film director

"Interview: Wong Kar-wai on The Grandmaster" in Slant (15 August 2013) https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/interview-wong-kar-wai/

“You can always find a shock of beauty or meaning in what life you have left.”

BJ Miller (1971) palliative caregiver

Life

“A book is like a man — clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly. For every flowering thought there will be a page like a wet and mangy mongrel, and for every looping flight a tap on the wing and a reminder that wax cannot hold the feathers firm too near the sun.”

John Steinbeck book Journal of a Novel

From a letter to Pascal Covici (1952)
Journal of a Novel (1969)

Flowers, Books, Sun

“A woman’s beauty lies in her piety and loyalty. When a man leaves the house, he leaves his trust, wealth, love and respect in her hands and if she opens that up to another man, then I’m sorry to say, I don’t consider that a woman but rather a non-woman.”

Khalil-ur-Rehman Qamar (1961) Pakistani writer

Housing, Loyalty, Love, Wealth

“I don't call every woman a woman, whether you like it or not... There's only one thing that makes a woman beautiful and that's haya (modesty) and wafa (loyalty). If you don't have those, I call you non-women.”

Khalil-ur-Rehman Qamar (1961) Pakistani writer

Loyalty, Women

“Though it seemed so beautiful, the world around us was eternally dangerous. The price of spiritual freedom, we learnt, was eternal vigilance. Such a high price for so long.”

Tim Winton book The Turning

Short story, 'Damaged Goods' - p.60
Short stories, The Turning (2004)

Freedom, World

“True beauty lies in lap of the nature. When you see mysterious view of the nature, you find the real hidden beauty of the nature. Then you get to know about beauty everything better.”

Shabdon Ka Jahan

Nature

“I love cooking and learning more every day in cooking. I look at food as I would languages or art and my vocabulary and palate keep expanding. I continue to do pastry and have been doing savory all along and it's a beautiful marriage.”

Elizabeth Falkner (1966) American television chef

discussing her interest in both pastry and savory cooking Justluxe Article - Interview by Sara Cardoza - Top Chef Interviews: Elizabeth Falkner https://www.justluxe.com/lifestyle/dining/feature-1844413.php - October 2012 - Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20211003105247/https://www.justluxe.com/lifestyle/dining/feature-1844413.php

Marriage, Learning, Cooking, Food

“If you are stupid they’ll humiliate you, if you’re wise they’ll hate you, if you’re beautiful they’ll kill you, and nor the virtues nor the weaknesses of a woman are ever forgiven. Men are blind of rage for being born as monsters, for not being capable to be loved and to love themselves.”

Menotti Lerro (1980) Italian poet

Brunella, Act II, scene ii.
Theater Quotes

Hate, Stupidity, Rage, Love

“Art is most simply and most usually defined as an attempt to create pleasing forms. Such forms satisfy our sense of beauty and the sense of beauty is satisfied when we are able to appreciate a unity or harmony of formal relations among our sense-perceptions.”

Herbert Read (1893–1968) English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art

The Meaning of Art, London : Faber & Faber, 1931
Other Quotes

Art, Sense

“I'm missing my halo
Where did today go?
Why does it rain so much when it says so?
Let me show you all the beautiful things
What do they know?
Come taste the rainbow
Always gonna live like it's my last day”

Example (musician) (1982) English rapper and singer

"Come Taste the Rainbow" (song) ("Come Taste the Rainbow" on YouTube (with lyrics)) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr1pq9-AYbM Studio albums, The Evolution of Man (2012)