“She was dazzling-- alight; it was agony to comprehend her beauty in a glance.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

Source: The Beautiful And Damned

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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F. Scott Fitzgerald 411

American novelist and screenwriter 1896–1940

John Webster The Duchess of Malfi

Act IV, scene ii.
Duchess of Malfi (1623)
Source: The Duchess of Malfi

“Who on earth could blame them? Ah, no wonder
the men of Troy and Argives under arms have suffered
years of agony all for her, for such a woman.
Beauty, terrible beauty!
A deathless goddess—so she strikes our eyes!”

Homér Iliad

III. 156–158 (tr. Robert Fagles); of Helen.
Richmond Lattimore's translation:
: Surely there is no blame on Trojans and strong-greaved Achaians
if for long time they suffer hardship for a woman like this one.
Terrible is the likeness of her face to immortal goddesses.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“She wanted him to see all of her and also none of her. She wanted him to be dazzled by the bits and blinded by the whole. She wanted him to see her whole and not in pieces. She had hopes that were hard to satisfy.”

Ann Brashares book The Last Summer

Source: The Last Summer

“My true single consolation is that she is not present to see me in my agony of her death.”

Albert Cohen (1895–1981) Swiss writer

Le livre de ma mère [The Book of My Mother] (1954)

“As a little girl my mother used to take me with her to her fittings with her very expensive seamstress. I was dazzled by the beauty of the fabrics and the whole procedure. I still remember the feel of expensive taffeta.”

Angelique Rockas South African actress and founder of Internationalist Theatre, London

On the beauty of fabrics
Interview on Helenism .net (September 2011)

“There is a fair woman in the west,
who is as bright as sunlight.
She wears a dress of the finest silk
and jewelry shines from her left, her right.
Her face is a charm, so full of grace,
lightly perfuming the breeze.
Climbing upward, she keeps watch for her loved one,
holding her sleeves, she faces the morning sun.
She hovers, she drifts through the sky,
waving her sleeves, she dances,
flies like the wind, like a cloud, in [a] trance.
Every so often, she glances at me,
but for me this beauty is out of reach.
Left alone, I lament my fate.”

Ruan Ji (210–263) One of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove

Poem XIX, translated by Wu Fusheng and Graham Hartill in The Poem of Ruan Ji (2006), p. 39, as reported in Constructing Irregular Theology (2009) by Paul S. Chung, p. 13

“"But tell me how it is that she could be so beautiful without any heart at all — without any place even for a heart to live in." "I cannot quite tell," she said; "but I am sure she would not look so beautiful if she did not take means to make herself look more beautiful than she is. And then, you know, you began by being in love with her before you saw her beauty … But the chief thing that makes her beautiful is this: that, although she loves no man, she loves the love of any man; and when she finds one in her power, her desire to bewitch him and gain his love (not for the sake of his love either, but that she may be conscious anew of her own beauty, through the admiration he manifests), makes her very lovely—with a self-destructive beauty…"”

George MacDonald book Phantastes

On the Alder Tree
Phantastes (1858)

“Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Diary of an Unknown (1988), On Invisibility

“calls her beautiful, but she cannot hear…”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“She thought of herself as an ugly duckling, but she walked in beauty in the ghettos of the world, bringing with her the reminder of her beloved St. Francis, "It is in the giving that we receive." And wherever she walked beauty was forever there.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Paying tribute to the late Eleanor Roosevelt in a speech to the Democratic National Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey (27 August 1964); as quoted in Adlai Stevenson (1966) by Lillian Ross, p. 28; reproduced in America's Political Dynasties: From Adams to Clinton https://books.google.com/books?id=fk3DCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA203&lpg=PA203&dq=%22she+thought+of+herself+as+an+ugly+duckling%22&source=bl&ots=zS_p_jcEUk&sig=VKkYj1KNceIA3Yf2oqV3h6-f8Go&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjP69yckJLTAhWDYyYKHaooC68Q6AEIITAB#v=onepage&q=%22she%20thought%20of%20herself%20as%20an%20ugly%20duckling%22&f=false (2015) by Stephen Hess, p. 203

“She was dazzling-- alight; it was agony to comprehend her beauty in a glance.”

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F. Scott Fitzgerald 411

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