Quotes about beauty

There is nothing that makes its way more directly to the soul than beauty.

— Joseph Addison

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 Allen

What ever beauty may be, it has for its basis order, and for its essence unity.

— Father Andre

Beauty is one of the rare things that do not lead to doubt of God.

— Jean Anouilh

Things are beautiful if you love them.

— Jean Anouilh

Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference.

— Aristotle

Beauty depends on size as well as symmetry. No very small animal can be beautiful, for looking at it takes so small a portion of time that the impression of it will be confused. Nor can any very large one, for a whole view of it cannot be had at once, and so there will be no unity and completeness.

— Aristotle

Strange that the vanity which accompanies beauty --excusable, perhaps, when there is such great beauty, or at any rate understandable --should persist after the beauty was gone.

— Mary Arnim

I have learnt to love you late, Beauty at once so ancient and so new!

— St. Augustine

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.

— Francis Bacon

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

— Francis Bacon

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

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the infinite.

— George Bancroft

I'm not ugly, but my beauty is a total creation.

— Tyra Banks

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

All forms of beauty, like all possible phenomena, contain an element of the eternal and an element of the transitory -- of the absolute and of the particular. Absolute and eternal beauty does not exist, or rather it is only an abstraction creamed from the general surface of different beauties. The particular element in each manifestation comes from the emotions: and just as we have our own particular emotions, so we have our own beauty.

— Charles Baudelaire

There are as many kinds of beauty as there are habitual ways of seeking happiness.

— Charles Baudelaire

The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose.

— Hada Bejar

The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing.

— Walter Benjamin

Beauty is in the heart of the beholder.

— Al Bernstein

I spent a lot of time with a crown on my head. [On her beauty pageant days]

— Halle Berry

Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thou hast doves eyes within thy locks: thy hair is as a flock of goats, that appear from mount Gilead. [Song Of Solomon 4:1]

— Bible

Beauty. The power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.

— Ambrose Bierce

Exuberance is beauty.

— William Blake

There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness.

— Countess of Marguerite Gardiner Blessington

Every trait of beauty may be referred to some virtue, as to innocence, candor, generosity, modesty, or heroism. St. Pierre To cultivate the sense of the beautiful, is one of the most effectual ways of cultivating an appreciation of the divine goodness.

— Christian Nevell Bovee

The beauty seen, is partly in him who sees it.

— Christian Nevell Bovee

Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all.

— Andre Breton

Beauty can't amuse you, but brainwork -- reading, writing, thinking--can.

— Helen Gurley Brown

The beautiful seems right by force of beauty, and the feeble wrong because of weakness.

— Elizabeth Barrett Browning

In life, as in art, the beautiful moves in curves.

— Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.

— Albert Camus

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

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

— Confucius

Heat cannot be separated from fire, or beauty from the eternal.

— Dante Alighieri

Even with all my wrinkles! I am beautiful!

— Bessie Delaney

Beauty is not caused. It is.

— Emily Dickinson

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

It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the dear deceit of beauty.

— George Eliot

We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Beauty rests on necessities.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Beauty ought to look a little surprised: it is the emotion that best suits her face. The beauty who does not look surprised, who accepts her position as her due -- she reminds us too much of a prima donna.

— Edward M. Forster

The pursuit of beauty is much more dangerous nonsense than the pursuit of truth or goodness, because it affords a stronger temptation to the ego.

— Northrop Frye

There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.

— R. Buckminster Fuller

There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.

— John Kenneth Galbraith

Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.

— Edward Gibbon

Beauty in not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.

— Kahlil Gibran

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

— Kahlil Gibran

Beauty is composed of an eternal, invariable element whose quantity is extremely difficult to determine, and a relative element which might be, either by turns or all at once, period, fashion, moral, passion.

— Jean-Luc Godard

Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Beauty is a primeval phenomenon, which itself never makes its appearance, but the reflection of which is visible in a thousand different utterances of the creative mind, and is as various as nature herself.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

There have been many definitions of beauty in art. What is it? Beauty is what the untrained eyes consider abominable.

— Edmond and Jules De Goncourt

A beautiful woman should break her mirror early.

— Baltasar Gracian

The criterion of true beauty is that it increases on examination; if false, that it lessens. There is therefore, something in true beauty that corresponds with right reason, and is not the mere creation of fancy.

— Lord Greville

The plainer the dress, the greater luster does beauty appear.

— Edward F. Halifax

Being pretty on the inside means you don't hit your brother and you eat all your peas -- that's what my grandma taught me.

— Elizabeth Heller

There's beauty all around our paths, if but our watchful eyes can trace it midst familiar things, and through their lowly guise.

— Felicia D. Hemans

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, old Time is still a-flying: And this same flower that smiles today, tomorrow will be dying.

— Robert Herrick

Beauty is the index of a larger fact than wisdom.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

Nothing's beautiful from every point of view.

— Horace

Beauty is variable, ugliness is constant.

— Doug Horton

By cultivating the beautiful we scatter the seeds of heavenly flowers, as by doing good we cultivate those that belong to humanity.

— Vernon Howard

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

— Kin Hubbard

No woman can be handsome by the force of features alone, any more that she can be witty by only the help of speech.

— Langston Hughes

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

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

— Aldous Huxley

Beauty is worse than wine, it intoxicates both the holder and beholder.

— Immermann

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

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness; but still will keep a bower quiet for us, and a sleep full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing...

— John Keats

Beauty is truth, truth beauty -- that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

— John Keats

I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want --an adorable pancreas?

— Jean Kerr

Beauty is as relative as light and dark. Thus, there exists no beautiful woman, none at all, because you are never certain that a still far more beautiful woman will not appear and completely shame the supposed beauty of the first.

— Paul Klee

To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers.

— Paul Klee

My heart that was rapt away by the wild cherry blossoms -- will it return to my body when they scatter?

— Kotomichi

The esthete stands in the same relation to beauty as the pornographer stands to love, and the politician stands to life.

— Karl Kraus

That which is striking and beautiful is not always good; but that which is good is always beautiful.

— Ninon De L'Enclos

Sunsets are so beautiful that they almost seem as if we were looking through the gates of Heaven.

— Sir John Lubbock

O, thou art fairer than the evening air clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.

— Christopher Marlowe

Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger. There is really nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all.

— W. Somerset Maugham

The ideal has many names, and beauty is but one of them.

— W. Somerset Maugham

The essence of the beautiful is unity in variety.

— Felix Mendelssohn

Beauty is the first present nature gives to women and the first it takes away.

— George B. Mere

Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.

— Michelangelo

Too fair to worship, too divine to love.

— Milman

The beauty of stature is the only beauty of men.

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

How goodness heightens beauty!

— Hannah More

In every man's heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty.

— Christopher Morley

Few girls are as well shaped as a good horse.

— Christopher Morley

A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.

— Lewis Mumford

Beauty is ever to the lonely mind a shadow fleeting; she is never plain. She is a visitor who leaves behind the gift of grief, the souvenir of pain.

— Robert Nathan

Walk on a rainbow trail; walk on a trail of song, and all about you will be beauty. There is a way out of every dark mist, over a rainbow trail.

— Edward A. Navajo

Beauty is whatever gives joy.

— Hugh Nibley

Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man -- the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

In the beautiful, man sets himself up as the standard of perfection; in select cases he worships himself in it. Man believes that the world itself is filled with beauty --he forgets that it is he who has created it. He alone has bestowed beauty upon the world --alas! only a very human, an all too human, beauty.

— Friedrich Nietzsche