Beauty
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
(1874–1965), British author. Ashenden, contesting the romanticization of
beauty, in Cakes and Ale, ch. 11 (1930).
Beauty
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
(1821–67), French poet. Curiosités Esthétiques, “Salon of 1846,”
sct. 18 (1868; repr. in The Mirror of Art, ed. by Jonathan Mayne, 1955).
Beauty
Beauty always promises,
but never gives anything.
Simone
Weil (1909–43),
French philosopher, mystic. “Human Personality” (written 1943; published in La
Table Ronde, Dec. 1950; repr. in Selected Essays, ed. by Richard
Rees, 1962).
Beauty
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.
Eugène
Ionesco (1912–94),
Rumanian-born French playwright. Present Past—
Past Present,
ch. 5 (1968).
Beauty
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 (1879–1940),
Swiss artist. The Diaries of Paul Klee 1898–1918, no. 871 (1957; tr.
1965), 1910 entry.
Beauty
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 (b. 1930),
French filmmaker, author. “Defence and Illustration of Classical
Construction,” in Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris, 15 Sept. 1952; repr. in Godard
on Godard, ed. and tr. by Tom Milne, 1968).
Beauty
Beauty is eternity gazing
at itself in a mirror.
Kahlil
Gibran (1883–1931),
Lebanese poet, novelist. The Prophet (1923).
Beauty
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 (1894–1985),
U.S. novelist. Beauty Is Ever to the Lonely Mind.
Beauty
Beauty is only the promise
of happiness.
Stendhal
(1783–1842), French author. De l’Amour, ch. 17, Footnote (1822).
Beauty
Beauty is the still birth
of suffering, every woman knows that.
Emily
Prager (b. 1948),
U.S. journalist, author. Lao Bing, in “A Visit from the Footbinder,” in Close
Company: Stories of Mothers and Daughters (ed. by Christine Park and
Caroline Heaton, 1987).
Beauty
Beauty of whatever kind,
in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.
Edgar
Allan Poe
(1809–45), U.S. poet, critic, short-story writer. “The Rationale of
Verse,” in The Pioneer (March 1843).
Beauty
Beauty. The power by which
a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
Ambrose
Bierce (1842–1914),
U.S. author. The Devil’s Dictionary (1881–1906).
Beauty
I have found that all ugly
things are made by those who strive to make something beautiful, and that all
beautiful things are made by those who strive to make something useful.
Oscar
Wilde (1854–1900),
Anglo-Irish playwright, author. The Value of Art in Modern Life (1884).
Beauty
I have often asked myself
what could be the point of this mystification we call life. It is to recognize
what is beautiful, it is to love. Those who do not love and do not recognize
beauty are really and truly the mystified ones. As for us, we have the right to
whistle at the great mystificator.
Hector
Berlioz (1803-69),
French composer. Letter to Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein, Paris, 20 June
1859, tr. Roger Nichols, in Selected Letters of Hector Berlioz, ed. Hugh
Macdonald, Faber and Faber Ltd, London, 1995.
Beauty
It is better to be
beautiful than to be good. But . . . it is better to be good than to be ugly.
Oscar
Wilde (1854–1900),
Anglo-Irish author. Lord Henry, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. 17
(1891).
Beauty
It is generally a feminine
eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the “dear deceit”
of beauty.
George
Eliot (1819–80),
English novelist. Adam Bede, bk. 1, ch. 15 (1859).
Beauty
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 (b. 1923), U.S.
author, playwright. The Snake Has All the Lines, “Mirror, Mirror on the
Wall” (1958).
Beauty
Taught from infancy that
beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming
round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
Mary
Wollstonecraft
(1759–97), English feminist writer. A Vindication of the Rights of Women,
ch. 3 (1792).
Beauty
The beauty myth moves for
men as a mirage; its power lies in its ever-receding nature. When the gap is
closed, the lover embraces only his own disillusion.
Naomi
Wolf (b. 1962), U.S.
author. The Beauty Myth, “Sex” (1990).
Beauty
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.
George
Sand (1804–76),
French novelist. Handsome Lawrence, ch. 1 (1872).
Beauty
The idea that happiness
could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing.
Walter
Benjamin
(1892–1940), German critic, philosopher. The Image of Proust, sct. 1
(1929; repr. in Illuminations, ed. by Hannah Arendt, 1968).
Beauty
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 (1912–91),
Canadian literary critic. Anatomy of Criticism, “Mythical Phase: Symbol
as Archetype” (1957).
Beauty
The real sin against life
is to abuse and destroy beauty, even one’s own— even
more, one’s own, for that has been put in our care and we are responsible for
its well-being.
Katherine
Anne Porter
(1890-1980), U.S. short-story writer, novelist. Herr Freytag, in Ship of
Fools, pt. 3 (1962).
Beauty
There are various orders
of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles . . . but
there is one order of beauty which seems made to turn the heads not only of men,
but of all intelligent mammals, even of women. It is a beauty like that of
kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft
bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and to engage in conscious mischief—
a beauty with which you
can never be angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend
the state of mind into which it throws you.
George
Eliot (1819–80),
English novelist. Adam Bede, bk. 1, ch. 7 (1859), describing the beauty
of Hetty Sorrel.
Beauty
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), English dramatist, poet. Sonnet 104.
Beauty
White teeth, white hands,
and neck as ivory white,
Black eyes, black brows,
black hairs that hide
delight:
Red lips, red cheeks, and
tops of nipples red,
Long legs, long fingers,
long locks of her head,
Short feet, short ears,
and teeth in measure short,
Broad front, broad
breast, broad hips in seemely
sort,
Straight legs, straight
nose and straight her
pleasures
place,
Full thighs, full
buttocks, full her belly’s space,
Thin lips, thin eyelids,
and hair thin and fine,
Small mouth, small waist,
small pupils of her
eyes.
John
Florio (c.
1553–1625), English author, translator. Second Frutes, ch. 8 (1591),
James’s notion of beauty in a woman.