“I believe Beauty is the condition of the perfect life, just as important as Virtue and Truth.”

"Credo"

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I believe Beauty is the condition of the perfect life, just as important as Virtue and Truth." by Stuart Merrill?

Stuart Merrill4

American poet, who wrote mostly in the French language 1863–1915

Related quotes

“What the virtues are to existential perfection, truths are to intellectual perfection; virtue is essentially simplicity, inward beauty, generosity, whereas truth, for its part, lies entirely in the discernment between the Real and the illusory or between the Absolute and the contingent.”

Frithjof Schuon book The Transfiguration of Man

[2005, The Transfiguration of Man, World Wisdom, 72, 978-0-94153219-8]
Spiritual life, Truth

“I have seen the truth; I have seen and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the power of living on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind. And it is just this faith of mine that they laugh at.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

Source: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), V
Context: I have seen the truth; I have seen and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the power of living on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind. And it is just this faith of mine that they laugh at. But how can I help believing it? I have seen the truth — it is not as though I had invented it with my mind, I have seen it, seen it, and the living image of it has filled my soul for ever. I have seen it in such full perfection that I cannot believe that it is impossible for people to have it.

“A mathematician is only perfect insofar as he is a perfect man, sensitive to the beauty of truth.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Maxim 609, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

“He knew that the whole mystery of beauty can never be comprehended by the crowd, and that while clearness is a virtue of style, perfect explicitness is not a necessary virtue.”

Arthur Symons book The Symbolist Movement in Literature

Gérard de Nerval.
The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899)

“To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.”

John Locke (1632–1704) English philosopher and physician

Letter to Anthony Collins (29 October 1703) http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1726#lf0128-09_head_098

“I believe that love of truth is the basis of all real virtue, and that virtues based upon lies can only do harm.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1920s, The Prospects of Industrial Civilization (1923)
Context: The governors of the world believe, and have always believed, that virtue can only be taught by teaching falsehood, and that any man who knew the truth would be wicked. I disbelieve this, absolutely and entirely. I believe that love of truth is the basis of all real virtue, and that virtues based upon lies can only do harm.