An aphorism is nothing else but the slightest
QUOTES AND APHORISMS ON BEAUTY 1
Beauty soon grows familiar to the lover, fades in his eye, and palls upon the sense.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719, British essayist, poet, statesman)
There is nothing that makes its way more directly to the soul than beauty.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719, British essayist, poet, statesman)
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 (1864-1912, British-born American essayist, author, "As A Man Thinketh")
Beauty: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914, American author, editor, journalist, "The Devil's Dictionary")
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 (1910-1987, French playwright)
Things are beautiful if you love them.
Jean Anouilh (1910-1987, French playwright)
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 (BC 384-322, Greek philosopher)
Personal beauty is a greater recommendation than any letter of reference.
Aristotle (BC 384-322, Greek philosopher)
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 (1866-1941, Australian-born British novelist)
The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626, British philosopher, essayist, statesman)
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626, British philosopher, essayist, statesman)
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 (1800-1891, American historian)
Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the infinite.
George Bancroft (1800-1891, American historian)
I'm not ugly, but my beauty is a total creation.
Tyra Banks (1973-, American model)
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 novelist, critic)
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 (1821-1867, French poet)
There are as many kinds of beauty as there are habitual ways of seeking happiness.
Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867, French poet)
It doesn't help your five-iron if you're pretty.
Laura Baugh
The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing.
Walter Benjamin (1982-1940, German critic, philosopher)
I've never sought success in order to get fame and money; it's the talent and the passion that count in success.
Ingrid Bergman (1915-1982, Swedish-born American screen, stage actress)
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 (1968-, American actress)
We all lose our looks eventually, better develop your character and interest in life.
Jacqueline Bisset (1946-, American screen actor)
Exuberance is beauty.
William Blake (1757-1827, British poet, painter)
There is no cosmetic for beauty like happiness.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789-1849, Irish writer and socialite)
Every trait of beauty may be referred to some virtue, as to innocence, candor, generosity, modesty, or heroism.
John Christian Bovee (1820-1904, American author, lawyer)
The beauty seen, is partly in him who sees it.
John Christian Bovee (1820-1904, American author, lawyer)
There is only one history of any importance, and it is the history of what you once believed in, and the history of what you came to believe in.
Kay Boyle
Beauty will be convulsive or will not be at all.
Andre Breton (1989-1966, French surrealist)
The beautiful seems right by force of beauty, and the feeble wrong because of weakness.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861, British poet)
In life, as in art, the beautiful moves in curves.
Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873, British novelist, poet)
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 (1913-1960, French existential writer)
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 (1913-1960, French existential writer)
Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings; but those who are in a state of mediocrity are best flattered upon their beauty, or at least their graces: for every woman who is not absolutely ugly, thinks herself handsome.
Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield (1694-1773, British statesman, author)
The only thing that makes one place more attractive to me than another is the quantity of heart I find in it.
Jane Welsh Carlyle (1801-1866, British diarist)
All kinds of beauty don't inspire love; there is a kind that pleases only the sight, but does not captivate the affections.
Miguel De Cervantes (1547-1616, Spanish novelist, dramatist, poet)
The measure of achievement is not winning awards. It's doing something that you appreciate, something you believe is worthwhile. I think of my strawberry souffle. I did that at least twenty-eight times before I finally conquered it.
Julia Child (1912-2004, American gourmet cook, author, and television personality)
Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.
Confucius (BC 551-479, Chinese ethical teacher, philosopher)
Heat cannot be separated from fire, or beauty from the eternal.
Alighieri, Dante (1265-1321, Italian philosopher, poet)
Even with all my wrinkles! I am beautiful!
Bessie Delaney
Beauty is not caused. It is.
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886, American poet)
Duties are what make life most worth living. Lacking them, you are not necessary to anyone.
Marlene Dietrich (1904-1992, German-born American film actor)
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 (1945-, American author, poet)
There is certainly no absolute standard of beauty. That precisely is what makes its pursuit so interesting.
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-, American economist)
It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the "dear deceit" of beauty.
George Eliot (1819-1880, British novelist)
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 (1819-1880, British novelist)
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 (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
As soon as beauty is sought not from religion and love, but for pleasure, it degrades the seeker.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
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 (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
Beauty is the pilot of the young soul.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
Beauty rests on necessities.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
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 (1822-1896, French writers)
The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
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 (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)
Toughness doesn't have to come in a pinstripe suit.
Dianne Feinstein (1933-, American senator)
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 (1879-1970, British novelist, essayist)
Neither woman nor man lives by work, or love, alone....The human self defines itself and grows through love AND work: All psychology before and after Freud boils down to that.
Betty Friedan (1921-, American feminist writer)
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 (1912-1991, Canadian literary critic)
There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly.
R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983, American inventor, designer, poet, philosopher)
Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794, British historian)
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931, Lebanese poet, novelist)
Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.
Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931, Lebanese poet, novelist)
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 (1930-, French filmmaker, author)
Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832, German poet, dramatist, novelist)
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 (1749-1832, German poet, dramatist, novelist)
Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832, German poet, dramatist, novelist)
A woman may develop wrinkles and cellulite, lose her waistline, her bustline, her ability to bear a child, even her sense of humor, but none of that implies a loss of her sexuality, her femininity.
Barbara Gordon
A beautiful woman should break her mirror early.
Baltasar Gracian (1601-1658, Spanish philosopher, writer)
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 (1902-1967, American poet, short-story writer, playwright)
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 (1554-1628, British poet)
The plainer the dress, the greater luster does beauty appear.
Edward F. Halifax (1881-1959, British conservative statesman)
How long can you be cute?
Goldie Hawn (1945-, American actress)
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 (1794-1835, British poet)
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 (1591-1674, British poet)
Work is creativity accompanied by the comforting realization that one is bringing forth something really good and necessary, with a conviction that a sudden, arbitrary cessation would cause a sensitive void, produce a loss.
Jenny Heynrichs
Beauty is the index of a larger fact than wisdom.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894, American author, wit, poet)
Nothing's beautiful from every point of view.
Horace (BC 65-8, Italian poet)
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 (1935-1992, American author, speaker)
Beauty is only skin deep, but it's a valuable asset if you're poor or haven't any sense.
Kin Hubbard (1868-1930, American humorist, journalist)
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 (1795-1821, British poet)
Beauty is truth, truth beauty -- that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
John Keats (1795-1821, British poet)
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
Beauty for some provides escape, who gain a happiness in eyeing the gorgeous buttocks of the ape or Autumn sunsets exquisitely dying.
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963, British author)
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, British author)
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 (1912-1994, Romanian-born French playwright)
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 (1923-, American author, playwright)
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)
To emphasize only the beautiful seems to me to be like a mathematical system that only concerns itself with positive numbers.
Paul Klee (1879-1940, Swiss artist)
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 (1874-1936, Austrian satirist)
O, thou art fairer than the evening air clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593, British dramatist, poet)
The beauty of stature is the only beauty of men.
Michel Eyquem De Montaigne (1533-1592, French philosopher, essayist)
There are fine things that are more brilliant when they are unfinished than when finished too much.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680, French classical writer)
The most beautiful thing in the world is the conjunction of learning and inspiration.
Alice Wanda Landowski
All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable.
Fran Lebowitz (1951-, American journalist)
That which is striking and beautiful is not always good; but that which is good is always beautiful.
Ninon De L'Enclos (1620-1705, French courtesan)
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