“Perfectly beautiful: let it be granted her: where is the fault?
All that I saw (for her eyes were downcast, not to be seen)
Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null,
Dead perfection, no more.”
Part I, section ii
Maud; A Monodrama (1855)
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Alfred, Lord Tennyson 213
British poet laureate 1809–1892Related quotes

“He saw her charming, but he saw not half
The charms her downcast modesty conceal'd.”
Source: The Seasons (1726-1730), Autumn (1730), l. 229.

“I only saw her as she pass'd —
A great, sad beauty, in whose eyes
Lay all the loves of Paradise.”
IV, p. 25.
The Ship in the Desert (1875)
Context: I only saw her as she pass'd —
A great, sad beauty, in whose eyes
Lay all the loves of Paradise....
You shall not know her — she who sat
Unconscious in my heart all time
I dream'd and wove this wayward rhyme,
And loved and did not blush thereat.

"Thoughts on Taste", Edinburgh Magazine (July 1819), final paragraph

Mais, fat impudent, tu ne veux pas qu'on te pardonne, tu veux qu'on croie ou qu'on prétende n'avoir rien à te pardonner. Tu veux qu'on baise la main qui frappe et la bouche qui ment.
Source: Letter (17 June 1837) in The Intimate Journal of George Sand (1929) translated and edited by Marie Jenney Howe; also quoted in The Quotable Woman, 1800-1975 (1978) by Elaine Partnow