Quotes and anectdotes from the wise to the foolish, and the courageous to the drunk

beauty

A sculptor wields The chisel, and the stricken marble grows To beauty. 5 more views from William C. Bryant

Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed. 32 other thoughts from William Blake

Beauty and the devil are the same thing. 10 quotes from Robert Mapplethorpe

Beauty is everlasting And dust is for a time. 5 sayings from Marianne Moore

Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man. 10 wisdom & wit from Fyodor Dostoevsky

Beauty is power a smile is its sword. 3 more quotes from John Ray

Exuberance is beauty. 32 sayings from William Blake

Faith goes out through the window when beauty comes in at the door. 3 wisdom & wit from George Edward Moore

Grace is the beauty of form under the influence of freedom. 29 more quotes from Friedrich Schiller

Grand opera is the most powerful of stage appeals and that almost entirely through the beauty of music. 3 wisdom & wit from John Philip Sousa

If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food, either. 7 quotes from Joseph Wood Krutch

It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it. 78 quotes from Voltaire

O human beauty, what a dream art thou, that we should cast our life and hopes away on thee! 3 more quotes from Barry Cornwall

The ideal has many names, and beauty is but one of them. 7 thoughts from Ninon de L'Enclos

The key to education is the experience of beauty. 29 wisdom & wit from Friedrich Schiller

Wealth, beauty, and fame are transient. When those are gone, little is left except the need to be useful. 12 more quotes from Gene Tierney

Beauty is nature's brag, and must be shown in courts, at feasts, and high solemnities, where most may wonder at the workmanship. 5 quotes from John Milton

Beauty is not caused. It is. 26 sayings from Emily Dickinson

Beauty may be skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone. 4 wisdom & wit from Redd Foxx

Beauty seen is never lost, God's colors all are fast. 7 quotes from John Greenleaf Whittier

Hold fast to youth and beauty. 2 quotes from Elizabeth Arden

I am a thing of beauty. 10 quotes from Frank Sinatra

I like the beauty of Faulkner's poetry. But I don't like his themes, not at all. 11 other sayings from Manuel Puig

I recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty - a sunken beauty. 5 wisdom & wit from Jean Genet

It is the addition of strangeness to beauty that constitutes the romantic character in art. 2 other quotes from Walter Hagen

Poetry a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty. 8 quotes from Matthew Arnold

San Francisco is a mad city - inhabited for the most part by perfectly insane people whose women are of a remarkable beauty. 12 other quotes from Rudyard Kipling

Secrecy is the element of all goodness even virtue, even beauty is mysterious. 58 wisdom & wit from Thomas Carlyle

Teach us that wealth is not elegance, that profusion is not magnificence, that splendor is not beauty. 75 wisdom & wit from Benjamin Disraeli

To give pain is the tyranny to make happy, the true empire of beauty. 68 wisdom & wit from Samuel Butler

A bachelor never quite gets over the idea that he is a thing of beauty and a boy forever. 23 thoughts from Helen Rowland

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise. 4 other views from Aldo Leopold

A woman's beauty is one of her great missions. 4 more wisdom & wit from Richard Le Gallienne

Beauty and folly are old companions. 96 thoughts from Benjamin Franklin

Beauty awakens the soul to act. 13 thoughts from Dante Alighieri

Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty. 37 quotes from Edmund Burke

Beauty is a radiance that originates from within and comes from inner security and strong character. 8 more quotes from Jane Seymour

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. 56 views from Khalil Gibran

Beauty is the lover's gift. 10 other quotes from William Congreve

Beauty is the promise of happiness. 37 sayings from Edmund Burke

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite. 67 wisdom & wit from Francis Bacon

Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. 19 sayings from Edgar Allan Poe

Familiarity is a magician that is cruel to beauty but kind to ugliness. 2 views from Ouida

For me the greatest beauty always lies in the greatest clarity. 3 more quotes from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

Heat cannot be separated from fire, or beauty from The Eternal. 13 other wisdom & wit from Dante Alighieri

I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty. 19 thoughts from Edgar Allan Poe

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process. 7 wisdom & wit from Max Eastman

It is well known that Beauty does not look with a good grace on the timid advances of Humour. 29 quotes from W. Somerset Maugham

Light, God's eldest daughter, is a principal beauty in a building. 45 more wisdom & wit from Thomas Fuller

Like charity, I believe glamour should begin at home. 14 sayings from Loretta Young

Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies. 10 wisdom & wit from John Donne

No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face. 10 other thoughts from John Donne

Nonsense and beauty have close connections. 26 more wisdom & wit from E. M. Forster

Of life's two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a laborer's hand. 56 quotes from Khalil Gibran

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words. 19 sayings from Edgar Allan Poe

Somehow a bachelor never quite gets over the idea that he is a thing of beauty and a boy forever. 23 quotes from Helen Rowland

The beautiful seems right by force of beauty, and the feeble wrong because of weakness. 30 other views from Virginia Woolf

The beauty of the world, which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder. 30 other views from Virginia Woolf

The beauty we love is very silent. It smiles softly to itself, but never speaks. 4 other quotes from Richard Le Gallienne

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express. 67 more thoughts from Francis Bacon

There is in true beauty, as in courage, something which narrow souls cannot dare to admire. 10 sayings from William Congreve

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. 67 more thoughts from Francis Bacon

There is no personal achievement in being born beautiful. 14 wisdom & wit from Loretta Young

Wit is more necessary than beauty and I think no young woman ugly that has it, and no handsome woman agreeable without it. 3 quotes from William Wycherley

Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love. 56 wisdom & wit from Khalil Gibran

A witty woman is a treasure a witty beauty is a power. 4 more views from George Meredith

Beauty always promises, but never gives anything. 25 thoughts from Simone Weil

Beauty for some provides escape, who gain a happiness in eyeing the gorgeous buttocks of the ape or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying. 7 quotes from Langston Hughes

Beauty is merciless. You do not look at it, it looks at you and does not forgive. 7 sayings from Nikos Kazantzakis

Beauty is whatever gives joy. 5 other views from Edna St. Vincent Millay

Beauty makes idiots sad and wise men merry. 12 more sayings from George Jean Nathan

Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all. 5 quotes from Andre Breton

Dear God! how beauty varies in nature and art. In a woman the flesh must be like marble in a statue the marble must be like flesh. 73 quotes from Victor Hugo

Design is not making beauty, beauty emerges from selection, affinities, integration, love. 3 wisdom & wit from Louis Kahn

Endurance is nobler than strength, and patience than beauty. 45 other thoughts from John Ruskin

Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers. 73 more quotes from Victor Hugo

I also became close to nature, and am now able to appreciate the beauty with which this world is endowed. 8 wisdom & wit from James Dean

Let us live for the beauty of our own reality. 10 quotes from Charles Lamb

The absence of flaw in beauty is itself a flaw. 16 views from Havelock Ellis

The ideal and the beautiful are identical the ideal corresponds to the idea, and beauty to form hence idea and substance are cognate. 73 more quotes from Victor Hugo

To love beauty is to see light. 73 views from Victor Hugo

What would be ugly in a garden constitutes beauty in a mountain. 73 more sayings from Victor Hugo

A healthful hunger for a great idea is the beauty and blessedness of life. 4 views from Jean Ingelow

Art ought never to be considered except in its relations with its ideal beauty. 2 other quotes from Alfred de Vigny

Beauty attracts us men but if, like an armed magnet it is pointed, beside, with gold and silver, it attracts with tenfold power. 18 views from Jean Paul

Beauty is only skin deep, but it's a valuable asset if you're poor or haven't any sense. 8 quotes from Vernon Howard

Beauty is the oracle that speaks to us all. 5 wisdom & wit from Luis Barragan

Beauty, of course, is the most important requirement and the paramount asset of the applicant. 2 more quotes from Florenz Ziegfeld

Every beauty which is seen here by persons of perception resembles more than anything else that celestial source from which we all are come. 16 quotes from Michelangelo

Life deprived of beauty is not worthy of being called human. 5 views from Luis Barragan

The beautiful seems right by force of beauty and the feeble wrong because of weakness. 9 quotes from Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives. 105 other quotes from Albert Einstein

Truth is a thing immortal and perpetual, and it gives to us a beauty that fades not away in time. 2 quotes from Frank Norris

Always think of what is useful and not what is beautiful. Beauty will come of its own accord. 2 views from Nikolai Gogol

Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them. 16 thoughts from David Hume

Beauty is an outward gift which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused. 14 quotes from Edward Gibbon

Beauty is the sole ambition, the exclusive goal of Taste. 25 wisdom & wit from Charles Baudelaire

Beauty, whether moral or natural, is felt, more properly than perceived. 16 wisdom & wit from David Hume

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. 13 more quotes from John Muir

Grace in women has more effect than beauty. 38 quotes from William Hazlitt

I am little concerned with beauty or perfection. I don't care for the great centuries. All I care about is life, struggle, intensity. 6 other views from Emile Zola

I can barely conceive of a type of beauty in which there is no Melancholy. 25 other quotes from Charles Baudelaire

In art economy is always beauty. 10 other quotes from Henry James

In the 19th century, you had bourgeois art without politics - an almost frozen idea of what beauty is. 2 quotes from Douglas Sirk

It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance... and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process. 10 quotes from Henry James

It is very necessary to have markers of beauty left in a world seemingly bent on making the most evil ugliness. 12 more sayings from Thornton Wilder

It would be difficult for me not to conclude that the most perfect type of masculine beauty is Satan, as portrayed by Milton. 25 quotes from Charles Baudelaire

Many a genius has been slow of growth. Oaks that flourish for a thousand years do not spring up into beauty like a reed. 9 more views from George Henry Lewes

The study of beauty is a duel in which the artist cries with terror before being defeated. 25 other quotes from Charles Baudelaire

There are as many kinds of beauty as there are habitual ways of seeking happiness. 25 quotes from Charles Baudelaire

Whether you come from heaven or hell, what does it matter, O Beauty! 25 views from Charles Baudelaire

Wisdom I know is social. She seeks her fellows. But Beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a rival. 70 quotes from Thomas Jefferson

All cities are mad: but the madness is gallant. All cities are beautiful: but the beauty is grim. 15 other quotes from Christopher Morley

As we grow old, the beauty steals inward. 135 quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

At fifteen, beauty and talent do not exist there can only be promise of the coming woman. 53 more thoughts from Honore de Balzac

Beauty can come in strange forms. 22 thoughts from James Dyson

Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused. 135 views from Ralph Waldo Emerson

Beauty is truth's smile when she beholds her own face in a perfect mirror. 35 more quotes from Rabindranath Tagore

Beauty without expression is boring. 135 wisdom & wit from Ralph Waldo Emerson

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait. 135 other quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower. 35 quotes from Rabindranath Tagore

Children, dear and loving children, can alone console a woman for the loss of her beauty. 53 more quotes from Honore de Balzac

Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world. 135 quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

I hold that the perfection of form and beauty is contained in the sum of all men. 4 sayings from Albrecht Durer

I trust in nature for the stable laws of beauty and utility. Spring shall plant and autumn garner to the end of time. 22 views from Robert Browning

If you get simple beauty and naught else, you get about the best thing God invents. 22 quotes from Robert Browning

In every man's heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty. 15 sayings from Christopher Morley

Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art. 135 quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

No single man can be taken as a model for a perfect figure, for no man lives on earth who is endowed with the whole of beauty. 4 sayings from Albrecht Durer

The beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears, the figure that she carries or the way she combs her hair. 14 more quotes from Audrey Hepburn

The beauty of a woman must be seen from in her eyes, because that is the doorway to her heart, the place where love resides. 14 more quotes from Audrey Hepburn

The beauty of independence, departure, actions that rely on themselves. 30 quotes from Walt Whitman

The terrifying and edible beauty of Art Nouveau architecture. 11 quotes from Salvador Dali

There is nothing that makes its way more directly into the soul than beauty. 24 quotes from Joseph Addison

We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body. 135 quotes from Ralph Waldo Emerson

What beauty is, I know not, though it adheres to many things. 4 sayings from Albrecht Durer

What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness. 8 sayings from Joseph Brodsky

A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language. 5 quotes from Gaston Bachelard

Art requires philosophy, just as philosophy requires art. Otherwise, what would become of beauty? 4 thoughts from Paul Gauguin

Beauty is one of the rare things which does not lead to doubt of God. 14 sayings from Jean Anouilh

Coming in solemn beauty like slow old tunes of Spain. 2 views from John Masefield

For I must tell you that we artists cannot tread the path of Beauty without Eros keeping company with us and appointing himself as our guide. 11 thoughts from Thomas Mann

For the mind disturbed, the still beauty of dawn is nature's finest balm. 3 more quotes from Edwin Way Teale

Imagination disposes of everything it creates beauty, justice, and happiness, which are everything in this world. 57 thoughts from Blaise Pascal

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring. 53 quotes from Marilyn Monroe

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting. 6 other wisdom & wit from Charles Kingsley

Order is the shape upon which beauty depends. 18 quotes from Pearl S. Buck

So much has been said and sung of beautiful young girls, why doesn't somebody wake up to the beauty of old women. 7 quotes from Harriet Beecher Stowe

Taking joy in living is a woman's best cosmetic. 4 thoughts from Rosalind Russell

The difference between utility and utility plus beauty is the difference between telephone wires and the spider web. 3 more sayings from Edwin Way Teale

The expression of beauty is in direct ratio to the power of conception the artist has acquired. 2 views from Gustave Courbet

The love of beauty in its multiple forms is the noblest gift of the human cerebrum. 5 quotes from Alexis Carrel

Things are beautiful if you love them. 14 quotes from Jean Anouilh

When everything else physical and mental seems to diminish, the appreciation of beauty is on the increase. 2 quotes from Bernard Berenson

Where is there beauty when you see deprivation and starvation? 4 quotes from Rosalind Russell

Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape! 117 sayings from Henry David Thoreau

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. 12 quotes from Franz Kafka

As long as I love Beauty I am young. 2 quotes from W. H. Davies

Beauty doesn't need ornaments. Softness can't bear the weight of ornaments. 3 more wisdom & wit from Munshi Premchand

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny. 115 views from George Bernard Shaw

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny. 115 thoughts from George Bernard Shaw

Beauty is all very well at first sight but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days? 115 other sayings from George Bernard Shaw

Beauty is only skin deep, and the world is full of thin skinned people. 3 more quotes from Richard Armour

Beauty is variable, ugliness is constant. 16 quotes from Douglas Horton

Beauty is worse than wine, it intoxicates both the holder and beholder. 45 views from Aldous Huxley

Find beauty not only in the thing itself but in the pattern of the shadows, the light and dark which that thing provides. 2 views from Junichiro Tanizaki

For, when with beauty we can virtue join, We paint the semblance of a form divine. 2 quotes from Matthew Prior

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love. 115 quotes from George Bernard Shaw

Rarely do great beauty and great virtue dwell together. 3 more quotes from Petrarch

The beauty that addresses itself to the eyes is only the spell of the moment the eye of the body is not always that of the soul. 9 other quotes from George Sand

The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing. 7 quotes from Walter Benjamin

The perception of beauty is a moral test. 117 quotes from Henry David Thoreau

We Orientals find beauty not only in the thing itself but in the pattern of the shadows, the light and darkness which that thing provides. 2 sayings from Junichiro Tanizaki

Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. 12 thoughts from Franz Kafka

Art is beauty, the perpetual invention of detail, the choice of words, the exquisite care of execution. 3 wisdom & wit from Theophile Gautier

Beauty, more than bitterness, makes the heart break. 6 other wisdom & wit from Sara Teasdale

I think love and beauty are what life is all about. 2 other quotes from John Derek

I'm not ugly, but my beauty is a total creation. 9 other thoughts from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Oh who can tell the range of joy or set the bounds of beauty? 6 quotes from Sara Teasdale

Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar. 19 quotes from Percy Bysshe Shelley

Strength of character may be learned at work, but beauty of character is learned at home. 4 quotes from Henry Drummond

The South is very beautiful but its beauty makes one sad because the lives that people live here, and have lived here, are so ugly. 3 other quotes from James Baldwin

There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness. 8 thoughts from Maria Mitchell

We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry. 5 other quotes from Maria Montessori

We no longer dare to believe in beauty and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it. 2 other thoughts from Hans Urs von Balthasar

What a man does for pay is of little significance. What he is, as a sensitive instrument responsive to the world's beauty, is everything! 6 thoughts from H. P. Lovecraft

Beauty is in the heart of the beholder. 19 sayings from H. G. Wells

Competence, like truth, beauty, and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder. 21 more wisdom & wit from Laurence J. Peter

I'm not trying to stump anybody... it's the beauty of the language that I'm interested in. 2 sayings from Buddy Holly

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. 21 views from Leo Tolstoy

It is conventional to call 'monster' any blending of dissonant elements. I call 'monster' every original inexhaustible beauty. 3 other quotes from Alfred Jarry

We are learning, too, that the love of beauty is one of Nature's greatest healers. 2 views from Ellsworth Huntington

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. 19 views from John Keats

A beauty is a woman you notice a charmer is one who notices you. 24 quotes from Adlai E. Stevenson

A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases it will never pass into nothingness. 19 wisdom & wit from John Keats

Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued. 13 views from Jean Rostand

By its very nature the beautiful is isolated from everything else. From beauty no road leads to reality. 9 quotes from Hannah Arendt

Death is the mother of Beauty hence from her, alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams and our desires. 16 other views from Wallace Stevens

Do you know the difference between a beautiful woman and a charming one? A beauty is a woman you notice, a charmer is one who notices you. 24 quotes from Adlai E. Stevenson

I believe that true beauty of chess is more than enough to satisfy all possible demands. 3 views from Alexander Alekhine

I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections, Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling, Or just after. 16 other wisdom & wit from Wallace Stevens

Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works. 19 quotes from John Keats

She got her looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon. 29 quotes from Groucho Marx

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. 30 other wisdom & wit from Eleanor Roosevelt

The truth, the absolute truth, is that the chief beauty for the theatre consists in fine bodily proportions. 6 other thoughts from Sarah Bernhardt

They saw me, those reckless seekers of beauty, and in a night I was famous. 6 quotes from Lillie Langtry

What is man's ultimate direction in life? It is to look for love, truth, virtue, and beauty. 4 quotes from Shinichi Suzuki

What matters poverty? What matters anything to him who is enamoured of our art? Does he not carry in himself every joy and every beauty? 6 sayings from Sarah Bernhardt

What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth. 19 quotes from John Keats

When I admire the wonders of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in the worship of the creator. 100 quotes from Mahatma Gandhi

With a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration. 19 quotes from John Keats

You may keep your beauty and your health, unless you destroy them yourself, or discourage them to stay with you, by using them ill. 6 thoughts from William Temple