“How beautiful was the spectacle of nature not yet touched by
the often perverse wisdom of man!”
Umberto Eco book The Name of the Rose
Source: The Name of the Rose
“The spectacle of the beauty which embodies itself in a living being is infinitely more touching than that of the work the most grandiose.”
— Michel Henry, book L'Amour les yeux fermés
L'amour les yeux fermés (1976)
Original: (fr) Le spectacle de la beauté qui s'incarne dans un être vivant est infiniment plus émouvant que celui de l'œuvre la plus grandiose.
Michel Henry, L'Amour les yeux fermés, éd. Gallimard, 1976, p. 48
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Michel Henry45
French writer 1922–2002Related quotes
Giacomo Leopardi book Zibaldone
260, 5th October 1820. Translation by Michael Caesar and Franco D'Intino et al. [Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010, ISBN 9780141194400], p. 177
Zibaldone (1898)
“Beauty Itself Is But The Sensible Image Of The Infinite”
George Bancroft (1800–1891) American historian and statesman
Literary and Historical Miscellanies (1855), The Necessity, the Reality, and the Promise of the Progress of the Human Race (1854)
Context: The unchanging character of law is the only basis on which continuous action can rest. Without it man would be but as the traveller over endless morasses; the builder on quicksands; the mariner without compass or rudder, driven successively whithersoever changing winds may blow. The universe is the reflex and image of its Creator. "The true work of art," says Michael Angelo, "is but a shadow of the Divine perfections." We may say in a more general manner, that Beauty Itself Is But The Sensible Image Of The Infinite; that all creation is a manifestation of the Almighty; not the result of caprice, but the glorious display of his perfection; and as the universe thus produced, is always in the course of change, so its regulating mind is a living Providence, perpetually exerting itself anew. If his designs could be thwarted, we should lose the great evidence of his unity, as well as the anchor of our own hope.
Harmony is the characteristic of the intellectual system of the universe; and immutable laws of moral existence must pervade all time and all space, all ages and all worlds.
Olaf Stapledon book Star Maker
Source: Star Maker (1937), Chapter XIII: The Beginning and the End; 3. The Supreme Moment and After (p. 164)
E.M. Forster book Where Angels Fear to Tread
Source: Where Angels Fear to Tread (1905), Ch. 8
Context: I never expect anything to happen now, and so I am never disappointed. You would be surprised to know what my great events are. Going to the theatre yesterday, talking to you now — I don't suppose I shall ever meet anything greater. I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it — and I'm sure I can't tell you whether the fate's good or evil. I don't die — I don't fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I'm just not there. You are quite right; life to me is just a spectacle, which — thank God, and thank Italy, and thank you — is now more beautiful and heartening than it has ever been before.
“A grandiose subject is not an assurance of a grandiose effect but, most likely, of the opposite.”
Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet
Opus Posthumous (1955), Adagia
“Life is beautiful, and this work is even more beautiful than life.”
Kees van Dongen (1877–1968) Dutch painter
Source: Modern Dutch painting: an introduction, Netherlands Information Service, (1960), p. 26