“Beauty least adorned is most adorned”

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 35

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 "Beauty least adorned is most adorned" by John Lancaster Spalding?
John Lancaster Spalding photo
John Lancaster Spalding 202
Catholic bishop 1840–1916

Related quotes

Ludovico Ariosto photo

“Who seems most hideous when adorned the most.”

Che quant' era più ornata, era più brutta.
Canto XX, stanza 116 (tr. W. S. Rose)
Compare:
Beauty when most unclothed is clothed best.
Phineas Fletcher, Sicelides (1614), Act II, scene iv
In naked beauty more adorned,
More lovely than Pandora.
John Milton, Paradise Lost (1674), Book IV, line 713
For Loveliness
Needs not the foreign aid of ornament,
But is, when unadorned, adorned the most.
James Thomson, The Seasons, "Autumn" (1730), line 204
Orlando Furioso (1532)

James Thomson (poet) photo

“For loveliness
Needs not the foreign aid of ornament,
But is when unadorned adorned the most.”

Source: The Seasons (1726-1730), Autumn (1730), l. 208-210.

Saint Peter photo
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield photo

“He adorned whatever subject he either spoke or wrote upon, by the most splendid eloquence.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

Character of Bolingbroke; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Francesco Petrarca photo

“Your high beauty, which has no equal in the world, is painful to you except insofar as it seems to adorn and set off your lovely treasure of chastity.”

L'alta beltà ch'al mondo non à pare
noia t'è, se non quanto il bel thesoro
di castità par ch'ella adorni et fregi.
Canzone 263, st. 4
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Life

Mary Wollstonecraft photo
George Santayana photo

“I like to walk about amidst the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

"The Irony of Liberalism"
Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922)

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti photo

“We affirm that the world's magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of explosive breath – a roaring car that seems to run on grapeshot is more beautiful than The Victory of Samoth-race”

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) Italian poet and editor, founder of the Futurist movement

1910
1900's
Source: 'Le Figaro', 20 February 1909, as quoted in Futurist Manifestos, ed. Umbro Appolonio, Thames and Hudson, London, 1973

William Hazlitt photo

Related topics