“What distressed me most — more even than my own folly — was the perplexing question, How can beauty and ugliness dwell so near?”

“What we have loved, others will love, and we will teach them how; instruct them how the mind of man becomes a thousand times more beautiful than the earth on which he dwells…”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

“Believe nothing of me
except that I felt your beauty
more closely than my own.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

“What good is modesty? — It makes us seem more beautiful when we are beautiful, and less ugly when we are ugly.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

“There is often more psychic appeal in a so-called ugly woman than there is in a pretty one; and, in my ideal, I reconstruct her to bring that beauty forth in terms of line or volume.”

André Derain (1880–1954) French painter and engraver

“If you permit your thoughts to dwell on evil you yourself will become ugly. Look only for the good in everything so you absorb the quality of beauty.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

“Physical beauty wasn't the same as True Beauty, any more than pretty ugly meant truly ugly or Magnetic North meant True North.”

Justina Chen (1968) American writer

“The light will not shame you, if it shows you your own ugliness, and that ugliness so offends you that you perceive the beauty of the light.”

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

“One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty another's ugliness; one man's wisdom another's folly.”

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

“Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist