Beauty is but a vain and doubtful good; A shining gloss that fadeth suddenly; A flower that dies when first it ‘gins to bud, A brittle glass that’s broken presently.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
Exuberance is beauty.
—William Blake (1757–1827) English Poet, Painter, Printmaker
Beauty is power; a smile is its sword.
—Charles Reade (1814–84) English Novelist, Playwright
Beauty attracts us men; but if, like an armed magnet it is pointed, beside, with gold or silver, it attracts with ten-fold power.
—Jean Paul (1763–1825) German Novelist, Humorist
O! how much more doth beauty beauteous seem, by that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
Beauty rests on necessities.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
There is one purpose to life and one only: to bear witness to and understand as much as possible of the complexity of the world – its beauty, its mysteries, its riddles. The more you understand, the more you look, the greater is your enjoyment of life and your sense of peace. That’s all there is to it. If an activity is not grounded in ‘to love’ or ‘to learn,’ it does not have value.
—Anne Rice (1941–2021) American Author
Love is trusting, accepting, and believing, without guarantee. Love is patient and waits, but it’s an active waiting, not a passive one. For it is continually offering itself in a mutual revealing, a mutual sharing. Love is spontaneous and craves expression through joy, through beauty, through truth, even through tears.
—Leo Buscaglia (1924–98) American Motivational Speaker
Nothing’s beautiful from every point of view.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (65–8 BCE) Roman Poet
The ideal has many names, and beauty is but one of them.
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright
Our hearts are drunk with a beauty our eyes could never see.
—George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish Author, Poet, Editor, Critic, Painter
No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?
—Annie Dillard (b.1945) Essayist, Novelist, Poet, Naturalist, Mystic
No man receives the full culture of a man in whom the sensibility to the beautiful is not cherished; and there is no condition of life from which it should be excluded. Of all luxuries this is the cheapest, and the most at hand, and most important to those conditions where coarse labor tends to give grossness to the mind.
—William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) American Unitarian Theologian, Poet
Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone.
—Anonymous
Beauty is an omnipresence of death and loveliness, a smiling sadness that we discern in nature and all things, a mystic communion that the poet feels.
—Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British Actor
Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (1809–94) American Physician, Essayist
A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
Talent, like beauty, to be pardoned, must be obscure and unostentatious.
—Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789–1849) Irish Novelist, Writer
Beauty is desired in order that it may be befouled; not for its own sake, but for the joy brought by the certainty of profaning it.
—Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French Essayist, Intellectual
I have seen manners that make a similar impression with personal beauty, that give the like exhilaration and refine us like that; and in memorable experiences they are certainly better than beauty, and make that superfluous and ugly. But they must be marked by fine perception, and must always show control; you shall not be facile, apologetic, or leaky, but king over your word; and every gesture and action shall indicate power at rest. They must be inspired by the good heart. There is no beautifier of complexion, or form or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy, and not pain, around us.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Things are beautiful if you love them.
—Jean Anouilh (1910–87) French Dramatist
There is no more potent antidote to low sensuality than admiration of the beautiful.—All the higher arts of design are essentially chaste, without respect to the object.—They purify the thoughts, as tragedy purifies the passions.—Their accidental effects are not worth consideration; for there are souls to whom even a vestal is not holy.
—August Wilhelm Schlegel (1767–1845) German Poet, Literary Critic, Scholar
To me, fair friend, you never can be old. For as you were when first your eye I eyed. Such seems your beauty still.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
Whatever is beautiful is beautiful by necessity.
—Pindar (c.518–c.438 BCE) Greek Lyric Poet
Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744) English Poet
Few girls are as well shaped as a good horse.
—Christopher Morley (1890–1957) American Novelist, Essayist
Ugliness creates bitterness. Ugliness is an eroding force on the people of our land. We are all here to try to change that.
—Lady Bird Johnson (1912–2007) First Lady of the United States, Conservationist
By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower.
—Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali Poet, Polymath
That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful.
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49) American Poet
Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.
—Socrates (469BCE–399BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher