“Beauty lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized.”
Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles
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Thomas Hardy 171
English novelist and poet 1840–1928Related quotes

Comment on her sex symbol status, quoted in Ms. magazine (August 1972) p. 40

“A sex symbol becomes a thing. I hate being a thing.”
Comment on her sex symbol status, quoted in Ms. magazine (August 1972) p. 40
Context: That's the trouble, a sex symbol becomes a thing. But if I'm going to be a symbol of something, I'd rather it be sex than some of the things we've got symbols of... I just hate to be a thing.

“I somehow see what's beautiful
In things that are ephemeral”
"I Thought I Saw Your Face Today".
She & Him : Volume One (2008)
Context: I somehow see what's beautiful
In things that are ephemeral
I'm my only friend of mine
And love is just a piece of time
in the world
in the world.
And I couldn't help but fall in love again.

“What indeed is more beautiful than heaven, which of course contains all things of beauty.”
Introduction to Book 1, as quoted/translated by Edward Rosen, Nicholas Copernicus on the Revolutions (1978) ed. Jerzy Dobrzycki, Edward Rosen.
De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543)

Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), Ch. 4: Beauty

Source: 20th century, The Analysis of Sensations (1902), p. 23, as quoted in Lenin as Philosopher: A Critical Examination of the Philosophical Basis of Leninism (1948) by Anton Pannekoek, p. 454