„Among both the Northern and Eastern Hamites are to be found some of the most beautiful types of humanity.“
[Ashley, Montagu, An Introduction to Physical Anthropology – Third Edition, 1977/2011, 456]
Ashley Montagu8
British-American anthropologist 1905 - 1999Related quotes
„Not that it was beautiful, but that I found some order there.“
— Anne Sexton poet from the United States 1928 - 1974
Source: To Bedlam and Part Way Back
„The most magnificent drama in the last thousand years of human history is the transportation of ten million human beings out of the dark beauty of their mother continent into the new-found Eldorado of the West.“
— W.E.B. Du Bois, book Black Reconstruction
Source: Black Reconstruction in America (1935), p. 727
Context: The most magnificent drama in the last thousand years of human history is the transportation of ten million human beings out of the dark beauty of their mother continent into the new-found Eldorado of the West. They descended into Hell; and in the third century they arose from the dead, in the finest effort to achieve democracy for the working millions which this world had ever seen. It was a tragedy that beggared the Greek; it was an upheaval of humanity like the Reformation and the French Revolution. Yet we are blind and led by the blind. We discern in it no part of our labor movement; no part of our industrial triumph; no part of our religious experience. Before the dumb eyes of ten generations of ten million children, it is made mockery of and spit upon; a degradation of the eternal mother; a sneer at human effort; with aspiration and art deliberately and elaborately distorted. And why? Because in a day when the human mind aspired to a science of human action, a history and psychology of the mighty effort of the mightiest century, we fell under the leadership of those who would compromise with truth in the past in order to make peace in the present and guide policy in the future.
„I have found the most beautiful side of the flowers in the fallen flowers.“
— Antonio Porchia Italian Argentinian poet 1885 - 1968
Voces (1943)
„Cars are some of the most intoxicating, most beautiful things ever forged by mankind.“
— Jeremy Clarkson English broadcaster, journalist and writer 1960
Voice-over introduction to Forza Motorsport 5 (2013)
Context: Cars. To some, they're just transport. A convenient alternative to highly-flammable dirigibles or walking. But you- you understand that cars are far more than this. They are our history. They mark the moments by which we define decades. Cars are some of the most intoxicating, most beautiful things ever forged by mankind. They represent the glory of technology, the essence of freedom, and have been the weapons in some of our most gripping sporting battles. They grip us, they cheer us on, they hold us up as heroes. So this is about the love of all things four-wheeled and fast. This is a shrine to power, to speed, to metal made beautiful. This is where dreams are driven. Welcome to Forza.
„The most wonderful of all things in life, I believe, is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a glowing depth, beauty, and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing, it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of Divine accident.“
— Hugh Walpole New Zealand writer 1884 - 1941
As quoted in Wisdom for the Soul : Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) by Larry Chang, p. 597
„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.“
— Kakuzo Okakura, book The Book of Tea
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.
„One type of paradise that is portrayed for mankind is streams, beautiful nymphs and greeneries. But there is another kind of paradise. ... The warfront was the lost paradise of the human beings, indeed.“
— Qasem Soleimani Iranian senior military officer 1957 - 2020
In a 2009 interview
Quoted in "Soleimani, a General Who Became Iran Icon by Targeting US" https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/01/02/world/middleeast/ap-ml-iran-qassem-soleimani.html. The Associated Press
„I can scarcely conceive (would my brain be a spellbound mirror?) a type of beauty without unhappiness. Supported by — others would say, obsessed by — these notions, one may conceive it would be difficult for me not to conclude that the most perfect type of masculine beauty is Satan, — as rendered by Milton.“
— Charles Baudelaire French poet 1821 - 1867
Je ne conçois guère (mon cerveau serait-il un miroir ensorcelé?) un type de Beauté où il n'y ait du Malheur. Appuyé sur — d'autres diraient: obsédé par — ces idées, on conçoit qu'il me serait difficile de en pas conclure que le plus parfait type de Beauté virile est Satan, — à la manière de Milton.
XVI http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Fus%C3%A9es#XVI
Journaux intimes (1864–1867; published 1887), Fusées (1867)
„[…] knowledge is our greatest wealth and the love of others the most beautiful human value.“
— Jacques Dubochet Nobel prize winning Swiss chemist 1942
French: [...] la connaissance est notre plus grande richesse et l'amour d'autrui la plus belle valeur humaine.
Source, in French: Jacques Dubochet, Parcours, Éditions Rosso, 2018, page 9 (ISBN 9782940560097).
„The materials, the colors, were like friendship and love, both wanting to fulfill themselves in the most beautiful form.“
— Emil Nolde German artist 1867 - 1956
undated quotes
„Beauty is not the goal of competitive sports, but high-level sports are a prime venue for the expression of human beauty. The relation is roughly that of courage to war. The human beauty we’re talking about here is beauty of a particular type; it might be called kinetic beauty. Its power and appeal are universal. It has nothing to do with sex or cultural norms. What it seems to have to do with, really, is human beings’ reconciliation with the fact of having a body.“
— David Foster Wallace American fiction writer and essayist 1962 - 2008
Federer as Religious Experience, New York Times, August 20, 2006
Essays
„I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy.“
— Charles Baudelaire French poet 1821 - 1867
Variant: I can barely conceive a type of beauty in which there is no melancholy.
„Some say an army on horseback,
some say on foot, and some say ships
are the most beautiful things
on this black earth,
but I say
it is whatever you love.“
— Stanley Lombardo Philosopher, Classicist 1943
Frag. 31
Translations, Sappho's Poems and Fragments (2002)
„Love, who is most beautiful among the immortal gods, the melter of limbs, overwhelms in their hearts the intelligence and wise counsel of all gods and all men.“
— Hesiod Greek poet
Original: (el) Ἠδ᾽ Ἔρος, ὃς κάλλιστος ἐν ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσι,
λυσιμελής, πάντων δὲ θεῶν πάντων τ᾽ ἀνθρώπων
δάμναται ἐν στήθεσσι νόον καὶ ἐπίφρονα βουλήν.
Source: The Theogony (c. 700 BC), line 120.
„The most perfectly constructed object in nature, and also the most beautiful object in nature, is the human form as it approaches perfection. This, then, is the criterion of construction as it is of design. The study of its beauties is the veritable key to art…“
— Ernest Flagg American architect 1857 - 1947
Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
„It’s quite possible that my work represents a search for beauty in the most prosaic and ordinary places. One doesn’t have to be in some faraway dreamland in order to find beauty.“
— Saul Leiter American photographer 1923 - 2013
Context: I never thought of the urban environment as isolating. I leave these speculations to others. It’s quite possible that my work represents a search for beauty in the most prosaic and ordinary places. One doesn’t have to be in some faraway dreamland in order to find beauty. I realize that the search for beauty is not highly popular these days. Agony, misery and wretchedness, now these are worth perusing.
„I know that I found it beautiful. But I cannot recapture it's beauty.“
— Bernhard Schlink, book The Reader
Source: The Reader