“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)

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 "Perfectly beautiful: let it be granted her: where is the fault? All that I saw (for her eyes were downcast, not to be …" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson?
Alfred, Lord Tennyson photo
Alfred, Lord Tennyson 213
British poet laureate 1809–1892

Related quotes

James Thomson (poet) photo

“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.

Joaquin Miller photo

“I only saw her as she pass'd —
A great, sad beauty, in whose eyes
Lay all the loves of Paradise.”

Joaquin Miller (1837–1913) American judge

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.

Nick Cave photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
John Keats photo
Matthew Prior photo

“Be to her virtues very kind;
Be to her faults a little blind;
Let all her ways be unconfined;
And clap your padlock — on her mind!”

Matthew Prior (1664–1721) British diplomat, poet

An English Padlock (1707).

Kazuo Ishiguro photo
William Hazlitt photo

“Those who aim at faultless regularity will only produce mediocrity, and no one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

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

George Sand photo

“Immodest creature, you do not want a woman who will accept your faults, you want the one who pretends you are faultless – one who will caress the hand that strikes her and kiss the lips that lie to her.”

George Sand (1804–1876) French novelist and memoirist; pseudonym of Lucile Aurore Dupin

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

Related topics