BEAUTY QUOTES V

quotations about beauty

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.

LEO TOLSTOY

The Kreutzer Sonata


If you dear little girls would only learn what real beauty is, and not pinch and starve and bleach yourselves out so, you'd save an immense deal of time and money and pain. A happy soul in a healthy body makes the best sort of beauty for man or woman.

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

Eight Cousins


There isn't any way that one can get rid of the guilt of having a nice body by saying that one can serve society with it, because that would end up with oneself as what? There simply doesn't seem to be any moral place for flesh.

MARGARET DRABBLE

A Summer Bird-Cage


Unexpected intrusions of beauty. That is what life is.

SAUL BELLOW

Herzog


Beauty is only two finger’s-breadth from goodness.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

"Montaigne," The Common Reader


Oft as by chance, a little while apart
The pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn,
Sweet Beauty, opening on the impoverished heart,
Beams like a jewel on the breast of dawn.

ALAN SEEGER

"Sonnet VIII"


When beauty fires the blood, how love exalts the mind!

JOHN DRYDEN

Cymon and Iphigenia


It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But ... it is better to be good than to be ugly.

OSCAR WILDE

The Picture of Dorian Gray


Ah, ah, thy beauty! like a beast it bites,
Stings like an adder, like an arrow smites.
Ah sweet, and sweet again, and seven times sweet,
The paces and the pauses of thy feet!
Ah sweeter than all sleep or summer air
The fallen fillets fragrant from thine hair!
Yea, though their alien kisses do me wrong,
Sweeter thy lips than mine with all their song;
Thy shoulders whiter than a fleece of white,
And flower-sweet fingers, good to bruise or bite
As honeycomb of the inmost honey-cells,
With almond-shaped and roseleaf-coloured shells
And blood like purple blossoms at the tips
Quivering; and pain made perfect in thy lips
For my sake when I hurt thee; O that I
Durst crush thee out of life with love, and die,
Die of thy pain and my delight, and be
Mixed with thy blood and molten into thee!

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

"Anactoria"


It has been said that the beauties of the mind are valuable because they are more lasting than those of the body; but I do not remember to have heard it said that the beauties of the mind are valuable because they make those of the body more lasting.

FULKE GREVILLE

Maxims


Beauty walks in bravest dress,
And, fed with April's mellow showers,
The earth laughs out with sweet May-flowers,
That flush for very happiness.

GERALD MASSEY

"The Ballad of Babe Christabel"


Our world oft turns in gloom, and Life both many a perilous way,
Yet there's no path so desolate and thorny, cold and gray,
But Beauty like a beacon burns above the dark of strife,
And like an Alchemist aye turns all things to golden life.

GERALD MASSEY

"The Chivalry of Labour Exhorted to the Worship of Beauty"


E'en Beauty mourns in her decaying bower,
That Time upon her angel brow should set
His crooked autograph, and mar the jet
Of glossy locks. Lo! how her chaplet green,
The hoar frost and the canker worm destroy.
Decay's dull film obscures those matchless eyes.

ISAAC MCLELLAN

"Musings"


The kind of beauty I want is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within--strength, courage, dignity.

RUBY DEE

Woman's Day Magazine, Sep. 1, 2009


Beauty had this penalty -- it came too readily, came too completely. It stilled life -- froze it. One forgot the little agitations; the flush, the pallor, some queer distortion, some light or shadow, which made the face unrecognisable for a moment and yet added a quality one saw for ever after. It was simpler to smooth that all out under the cover of beauty.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

To the Lighthouse


The pageant of a former hour,
Is Beauty in the Grave.

WILLIAM B. TAPPAN

"Beauty in the Grave"


There should be, methinks, as little merit in loving a woman for her beauty, as in loving a man for his prosperity; both being equally subject to change.

ALEXANDER POPE

"Thoughts on Various Subjects"


Beauty has the more ardent, but worth the more discriminating lovers.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought


Beauty is but a lease from nature.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good.

GEORGE SANTAYANA

The Sense of Beauty