“There is nothing ugly; I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may, — light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.”
Quoted in C.R. Leslie, Memoirs of the Life of John Constable, Composed Chiefly of His Letters (1843), (Phaidon, London, 1951), p. 280
Reply "to a lady who, looking at an engraving of a house, called it an ugly thing"
posthumous, undated
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John Constable 53
English Romantic painter 1776–1837Related quotes
“Out of ugly, I think the most important thing to do in life is to make something beautiful.”
Source: Behind The Spangles, Weir Is A Man In Full, Trey Graham, National Public Radio, 2010-02-26 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124121023&ft=1&f=1008, ; In response to gibes from Quebec sports announcers
As quoted in New York World Telegram & Sun (21 August 1960); also in Threads: My Life Behind the Seams in the High-Stakes World of Fashion (2004) by Joseph Abboud, p. 79
First Homily, as translated by John Burnaby (1955), p. 262
Ten Homilies on the First Epistle of John (414)
Freeman (1948), p. 161
Variant: The good things of life are produced by learning with hard work; the bad are reaped of their own accord, without hard work.
Il n'y a de vraiment beau que ce qui ne peut servir à rien; tout ce qui est utile est laid.
Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835; Paris: Charpentier, 1866), Préface, p. 21; Burton Rascoe (trans.) Mademoiselle de Maupin, and One of Cleopatra's Nights (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1925) p. xxv.