It’s beauty that captures your attention; personality which captures your heart.
—Anonymous
The loveliest faces are to be seen by moonlight, when one sees half with the eye, and half with the fancy.
—Christian Nestell Bovee (1820–1904) American Writer, Aphorist
As we grow old, the beauty steals inward.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Where beauty is worshipped for beauty’s sake as a goddess, independent of and superior to morality and philosophy, the most horrible putrefaction is apt to set in. The lives of the aesthetes are the far from edifying commentary on the religion of beauty.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Essayist, Short Story Writer, Satirist
An appearance of delicacy, and even of fragility, is almost essential to beauty.
—Edmund Burke (1729–97) British Philosopher, Statesman
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 but a vain and doubtful good; a shining gloss that fadeth suddenly; a flower that dies when it begins to bud; a doubtful good, a gloss, a glass, a flower, lost, faded, broken, dead within an hour. –
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
It is the beautiful bird that gets caged.
—Chinese Proverb
Flowers… are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty out-values all the utilities of the world.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
The ever-present phenomenon ceases to exist for our senses. It was a city dweller, or a prisoner, or a blind man suddenly given his sight, who first noted natural beauty.
—Remy de Gourmont (1858–1915) French Poet, Novelist, Critic
Beauty hath so many charms one knows not how to speak against it; and when a graceful figure is the habitation of a virtuous soul—when the beauty of the face speaks out the modesty and humility of the mind, it raises our thoughts up to the great Creator; but after all, beauty, like truth, is never so glorious as when it goes the plainest.
—Laurence Sterne (1713–68) Irish Anglican Novelist, Clergyman
Let there be nothing within thee that is not very beautiful and very gentle, and there will be nothing without thee that is not beautiful and softened by the spell of thy presence.
—James Lane Allen (1849–1925) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Beauty is a precious trace that eternity causes to appear to us and that it takes away from us. A manifestation of eternity, and a sign of death as well.
—Eugene Ionesco (1909–94) Romanian-born French Dramatist
Warriors of the light are not perfect. Their beauty lies in accepting this fact and still desiring to grow and to learn.
—Paulo Coelho (b.1947) Brazilian Songwriter, Novelist
It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.
—Frank O’Hara (1926–66) American Poet, Art Critic
Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked.
—Ralph Ellison (1914–1994) American Novelist
If the nose of Cleopatra had been a little shorter, it would have changed the history of the world.
—Blaise Pascal (1623–62) French Mathematician, Physicist, Theologian
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
Never regard study as a duty but as an enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later works belong.
—Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born Physicist
Talent, like beauty, to be pardoned, must be obscure and unostentatious.
—Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789–1849) Irish Novelist, Writer
Remember how in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may.
—Plato (428 BCE–347 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator
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
Art is an invention of aesthetics, which in turn is an invention of philosophers…. What we call art is a game.
—Octavio Paz (1914–98) Mexican Poet, Diplomat
Beauty and sadness always go together.
Nature thought beauty too rich to go forth
Upon the earth without a meet alloy.
—George MacDonald (1824–1905) Scottish Novelist, Lecturer, Poet
Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity.
—Plato (428 BCE–347 BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Mathematician, Educator
The beautiful is a phenomenon which is never apparent of itself, but is reflected in a thousand different works of the creator.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
I know the world is filled with troubles and many injustices. But reality is as beautiful as it is ugly. I think it is just as important to sing about beautiful mornings as it is to talk about slums. I just couldn’t write anything without hope in it.
—Oscar Hammerstein II (1895–1960) American Songwriter, Composer, Theater Producer, Writer
The beauty of the soul shines out when a man bears with composure one heavy mischance after another, not because he does not feel them, but because he is a man of high and heroic temper.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
There are women who have an indefinable charm in their faces which makes them beautiful to their intimates, but a cold stranger who tried to reason the matter out and find this beauty would fail.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
Real strength never impairs beauty or harmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.
—Herman Melville (1819–91) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Essayist, Poet
It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.
—Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian Novelist
Every beauty which is seen here below by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all come…
—Michelangelo (1475–1564) Italian Painter, Sculptor, Architect, Poet, Engineer
Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all.
—Andre Breton (1896–1966) French Poet, Essayist, Critic
Beauty always promises, but never gives anything.
—Simone Weil (1909–1943) French Philosopher, Political Activist
Some thoughts always find us young, and keep us so. Such a thought is the love of the universal and eternal beauty.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
And beauty is a form of genius—is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
Beauty is the mark God sets on virtue. Every natural action is graceful; every heroic act is also decent, and causes the place and the bystanders to shine.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
One summer night, out on a flat headland, all but surrounded by the waters of the bay, the horizons were remote and distant rims on the edge of space. Millions of stars blazed in darkness, and on the far shore a few lights burned in cottages. Otherwise there was no reminder of human life. My companion and I were alone with the stars: the misty river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky, the patterns of the constellations standing out bright and clear, a blazing planet low on the horizon. It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century, this little headland would be thronged with spectators. But it can be seen many scores of nights in any year, and so the lights burned in the cottages and the inhabitants probably gave not a thought to the beauty overhead; and because they could see it almost any night, perhaps they never will.
—Rachel Carson (1907–64) American Naturalist, Science Writer
Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.
—Anne Frank (1929–45) Holocaust Victim
At the heart of all beauty lies something inhuman, and these hills, the softness of the sky, the outline of these trees at this very minute lose the illusory meaning with which we had clothed them, henceforth more remote than a lost paradise… that denseness and that strangeness of the world is absurd.
—Albert Camus (1913–60) Algerian-born French Philosopher, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist, Author
I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful?. One must speak of problems in painting!
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Artist
A beautiful form is better than a beautiful face; it gives a higher pleasure than statues or pictures; it is the finest of the fine arts.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
Beauty is but the sensible image of the Infinite.—Like truth and justice it lives within us; like virtue and the moral law it is a companion of the soul.
—George Bancroft (1800–91) American Historian, Politician
Every year of my life I grow more convinced that it is wisest and best to fix our attention on the beautiful and the good, and dwell as little as possible on the evil and the false.
—Richard Cecil
There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
Love beauty; it is the shadow of God on the universe.
—Gabriela Mistral (1889–1957) Chilean Poet, Educator, Diplomat
Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.
—Edmund Burke (1729–97) British Philosopher, Statesman
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
—Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese-born American Philosopher, Poet, Painter, Theologian, Sculptor
Far away, there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations; I may not reach them but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.
—Louisa May Alcott (1832–88) American Novelist