Beauty Quotes

1. "A dominant impulse on encountering beauty is to wish to hold on to it, to possess it and give it weight in one's life. There is an urge to say, ‘I was here, I saw this and it mattered to me."
Author: Alain De Botton

2. "What breadth, what beauty and power of human nature and development there must be in a woman to get over all the palisades, all the fences, within which she is held captive!"
Author: Alexander Herzen

3. "Love, truth, beauty, wisdom, and consolation against death. - Anatole Broyard in his dislike of "Lending Books" from editor Rabinowitz's collection "A Passion for Books"
Author: Anatole Broyard

4. "Although her father had told her of the nature of the one who waited for her, she could not control an instinctual shudder of fear when she saw him, for a lion is a lion and a man is a man and, though lions are more beautiful by far than we are, yet they belong to a different order of beauty and, besides, they have no respect for us: why should they? Yet wild things have a far more rational fear of us than is ours of them, and some kind of sadness in his agate eyes, that looked almost blind, as if sick of sight, moved her heart."
Author: Angela Carter

5. "And she thought then how strange it was that disaster--the sort of disaster that drained the blood from your body and took the air out of your lungs and hit you again and again in the face--could be at times, such a thing of beauty."
Author: Anita Shreve

6. "That which tears open our souls, those holes that splatter our sight, may actually become the thin, open places to see through the mess of this place to the heart-aching beauty beyond. To Him. To the God whom we endlessly crave."
Author: Ann Voskamp

7. "Will there be no more irisesin your garden tomorrow morning,or perhaps any rainbows that covetyour roof will melt into Rorschach pastelsin your gutters and birdsongs in your windowsturn into shrill shriekings as you recallhow, for one moment, you were as braveand equal to beauty as that which you feel?Can't a world end gloriously?"
Author: B.J. Ward

8. "Then the soul, freed from vice, purged by studies of true philosophy, versed in spiritual life, and practised in matters of the intellect, devoted to the contemplation of her own substance, as if awakened from deepest sleep, opens those eyes which all possess but few use, and sees in herself a ray of that light which is the true image of the angelic beauty communicated to her, and of which she then communicates a faint shadow to the body."
Author: Baldassare Castiglione

9. "Philosophy, for Plato, is a kind of vision, the 'vision of truth'...Everyone who has done any kind of creative work has experienced, in a greater or less degree, the state of mind in which, after long labour, truth or beauty appears, or seems to appear, in a sudden glory - it may only be about some small matter, or it may be about the universe. I think that most of the best creative work, in art, in science, in literature, and in philosophy, has been a result of just such a moment."
Author: Bertrand Russell

10. "An Airstream is a lot like a first love: you are lured by her charm, seduced by her beauty, and once bitten, you are forever chasing after her mystique."
Author: Bruce Littlefield

11. "Relate comic things in pompous fashion. Irregularity, in other words the unexpected, the surprising, the astonishing, are essential to and characteristic of beauty. Two fundamental literary qualities: supernaturalism and irony. The blend of the grotesque and the tragic are attractive to the mind, as is discord to blasé ears. Imagine a canvas for a lyrical, magical farce, for a pantomime, and translate it into a serious novel. Drown the whole thing in an abnormal, dreamy atmosphere, in the atmosphere of great days … the region of pure poetry."
Author: Charles Baudelaire

12. "Dear Human:You've got it all wrong.You didn't come here to master unconditional love. This is where you came from and where you'll return.You came here to learn personal love.Universal love.Messy love.Sweaty Love.Crazy love.Broken love.Whole love.Infused with divinity.Lived through the grace of stumbling.Demonstrated through the beauty of... messing up.Often.You didn't come here to be perfect, you already are.You came here to be gorgeously human. Flawed and fabulous.And rising again into remembering.But unconditional love? Stop telling that story.Love in truth doesn't need any adjectives.It doesn't require modifiers.It doesn't require the condition of perfection.It only asks you to show up.And do your best.That you stay present and feel fully.That you shine and fly and laugh and cry and hurt and heal and fall and get back up and play and work and live and die as YOU.Its enough.It's Plenty."
Author: Courtney A. Walsh

13. "O sweet spontaneous earth how often have the doting fingers of prurient philosophers pinched and poked thee , has the naughty thumb of science prodded thy beauty . how often have religions taken thee upon their scraggy knees squeezing and buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive gods (but true to the incomparable couch of death thy rhythmic lover thou answerest them only with spring)"
Author: E.E. Cummings

14. "It is only that people are far more different than is pretended. All over the world men and women are worrying because they cannot develop as they are supposed to develop. Here and there they have the matter out, and it comforts them. Don't fret yourself, Helen. Develop what you have; love your child. I do not love children. I am thankful to have none. I can play with their beauty and charm, but that is all - nothing real, not one scrap of what there ought to be. And others - others go farther still, and move outside humanity altogether. A place, as well as a person, may catch the glow. Don't you see that all this leads to comfort in the end? It is part of the battle against sameness. Differences - eternal differences, planted by God in a single family, so that there may always be colour; sorrow, perhaps, but colour in the daily grey."
Author: E.M. Forster

15. "Beauty is whatever gives joy."
Author: Edna St. Vincent Millay

16. "There is divine beauty in learning... To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps. The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples. I am the sum total of their experiences, their quests. And so are you."
Author: Elie Wiesel

17. "Upon it floated swans like boats and boats like swans, both lost in the nothingness of the heartless beauty."
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

18. "And Neverfell started to understand the beauty of flaws, those places where up and down secretly gave up their argument and shook hands, where compass points spun like a dervish and where space itself was twisted like a wrung-out flannel. These places were the dimples for Caverna's glittering smile, her foibles, her signature. To understand them was to steal a smile, a twisted rose from her hand, a bone from between her thousand teeth."
Author: Frances Hardinge

19. "All you Westerosi make a shame of loving. There is no shame in loving. If your septons say there is, your seven gods must be demons. In the isles we know better. Our gods gave us legs to run with, noses to smell with, hands to touch and feel. What mad cruel god would give a man eyes and tell him he must forever keep them shut, and never look at all the beauty in the world?"
Author: George R.R. Martin

20. "Beauty is a relation, and the apprehension of it a comparison."
Author: Gerard Manley Hopkins

21. "Awww... and so it is... Beauty fades away but while you have it, use it well, wear it well. It is a treasure to be spent quickly before the magic spell is broken..."
Author: Gloria Smith

22. "The beauty of Goodreads is that you know you're sowing in a field where everyone, by definition and self-selection, loves to read."
Author: Guy Kawasaki

23. "A horrible coma call'd living So now in this coma call'd living I view the bright phantoms of beauty; The false hollow phantoms of beauty"
Author: H.P. Lovecraft

24. "Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance."
Author: Hans Urs Von Balthasar

25. "If beauty is a pillow,You're a transparentPillowcase."
Author: James Josue

26. "To speak of these things and to try to understand their nature and, having understood it, to try slowly and humbly and constantly to express, to press out again, from the gross earth or what it brings forth, from sound and shape and colour which are the prison gates of our soul, an image of the beauty we have come to understand—that is art."
Author: James Joyce

27. "Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued."
Author: Jean Rostand

28. "Had you but seen it, I promise you, your high-minded principles would have melted like candle wax. Never would you have wished such beauty away."
Author: Jennifer Donnelly

29. "Cooking is like playing a violin. The bow is a tool used to play, as is the knives and other tools you use to prepare. (a chef's knife is even held in the same manner) Spices are the notes used in the score. The way the food is cooked and prepared is the rhythm and tempo. The ingredients are the violin themselves, ready to be played upon. The finished dish is the music played to its best melody. All of these things must be applied together at the right pace, manner, and time in order to create a flavourful rush of artwork and beauty."
Author: Jennifer Megan Varnadore

30. "Our plans and designs should be so perfect in truth and beauty, that in touching them the world could only mar. We should thus have the advantage of setting right what is wrong, and restoring what is destroyed."
Author: Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

31. "...I don't just wish you rain, Beloved - I wish you the beauty of storms..."
Author: John Geddes

32. "...you can be talented as a wolf is breathtakingly fierce...silver and gray, like smoke in the trees - but what do you do with terrible beauty?..."
Author: John Geddes

33. "And he didn't get tired or sleepy, for the beauty burned in him like fire."
Author: John Steinbeck

34. "A soul connection is a resonance between two people who respond to the essential beauty of each other's individual natures, behind their facades, and who connect on this deeper level. This kind of mutual recognition provides the catalyst for a potent alchemy. It is a sacred alliance whose purpose is to help both partners discover and realize their deepest potentials. While a heart connection lets us appreciate those we love just as they are, a soul connection opens up a further dimension -- seeing and loving them for who they could be, and for who we could become under their influence. This means recognizing that we both have an important part to play in helping each other become more fully who we are....A soul connection not only inspires us to expand, but also forces us to confront whatever stands in the way of that expansion."
Author: John Welwood

35. "God sees nothing but beauty in you."
Author: Kate Wicker

36. "IMBECILE!" the chef shouted. "Next time why don't you just put your whole HAND in the food, hey? Yes, your whole hand, or maybe your FACE! I arrange the food on plates with care, are you understanding what I am telling you? It is part of the art form of cooking, yes? A lovely plate of food is a thing of beauty! And then you, NUMBSKULL, come along and put your fat greasy FINGERS all over my plate, and SHAKE the plate, and move my food all around the plate until it looks like pigs' vomit!""Chef Vlad!" I cried out in delight."
Author: Kenneth Oppel

37. "Would a man nourished by beauty look like this? You have nothing but desolation and desperation here, you say? I bring you more of the same!"
Author: Kurt Vonnegut

38. "Talent, like beauty, to be pardoned, must be obscure and unostentatious."
Author: Marguerite Gardiner

39. "Gratior est pulchro veniens de corpore virtus—Virtue appears peculiarly graceful when associated with beauty."
Author: Matthew Henry

40. "To me, 'beauty' means to be natural, creative, honest - to say the truth."
Author: Nawal El Saadawi

41. "Social networks are these intricate things of beauty, and they're so elaborate and so complex and so ubiquitous that one has to ask what purpose they serve."
Author: Nicholas A. Christakis

42. "I'm not a man easily moved to displays of emotion, but tonight I am weak, I am vulnerable. It must be from being inside her, so close to her, breathing in her pain, and love, and light, and blossoming vulnerable beauty"
Author: Poppet

43. "Capturing the beauty of the conversion of the water into wine, the poet Alexander Pope said, "The conscious water saw its Master and blushed." That sublime description could be reworked to explain each one of these miracles. Was it any different in principle for a broken body to mend at the command of its Maker? Was it far-fetched for the Creator of the universe, who fashioned matter out of nothing, to multiply bread for the crowd? Was it not within the power of the One who called all the molecules into existence to interlock them that they might bear His footsteps?"
Author: Ravi Zacharias

44. "To feel the tender skin of sensitive child-fingers thicken; to feel the sex organs develop and call loudly to the flesh; to become aware of school, exams (the very words as unlovely as the sound of chalk shrilling on the blackboard,) bread and butter, marriage, sex, compatibility, war, economics, death and self. What a pathetic blighting of the beauty and reality of childhood."
Author: Sylvia Plath

45. "We have become so obsessed by numbers and by bottom lines that beauty and truth has been knocked aside."
Author: Tom Hodgkinson

46. "I think 20th century media were about tricking people - and the beauty of the Internet is you can't lie anymore."
Author: Tucker Max

47. "But sometimes that can make a girl so much more appealing. The beauty who doesn't know she's beautiful."
Author: Victoria Scott

48. "Beauty is that little something that fills the whole world, and is contained neither in a single straight nose, a long eyelash, nor a blue mountain. Some see it in a leg of mutton, others in a compound fracture; and to expect others to accept one's own definition of it is as absurd as to expect all humanity to use the same toilet-brush."
Author: William Morris Hunt

49. "Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,But sad mortality o'er-sways their power, How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower? O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out Against the wreckful siege of battering days, When rocks impregnable are not so stout, Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?O fearful meditation! where, alack, Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest lie hid?Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back? Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid? O, none, unless this miracle have might, That in black ink my love may still shine bright"
Author: William Shakespeare

50. "True beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys."
Author: Yukio Mishima

Beauty Quotes Pictures