For she had eyes and chose me.
— Othello
Quotes About Beauty
Immanuel Kant noticed something odd about calling a thing beautiful: in such judgements we allow no one to be of another opinion. Nietzsche doubted that the world is really beautified by our thinking it beautiful, suggesting we have only humanized it. Lao Tzu kept beauty and truth apart, warning that the truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words the truth.
Others found beauty in particular things. Gandhi wrote that when he admired a sunset or the beauty of the moon, his soul expanded in worship of the creator. Victor Hugo described style as the shape the ideal takes, with rhythm as its movement. Salvador Dalí demanded that beauty be edible, or not at all. Hans Christian Andersen put the case for what lies underneath: it does not matter if you are born in a duck yard, so long as you are hatched from a swan's egg. Einstein counted beauty among the three ideals that filled him with joy.
Others found beauty in particular things. Gandhi wrote that when he admired a sunset or the beauty of the moon, his soul expanded in worship of the creator. Victor Hugo described style as the shape the ideal takes, with rhythm as its movement. Salvador Dalí demanded that beauty be edible, or not at all. Hans Christian Andersen put the case for what lies underneath: it does not matter if you are born in a duck yard, so long as you are hatched from a swan's egg. Einstein counted beauty among the three ideals that filled him with joy.
Your goodness must have some edge to it -- else it is none.
— Culture, Behavior, Beauty, Books, Art, Eloquence, Power, Wealth, Illusions
The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty, and to someone else if she is plain.
— The Importance of Being Earnest
Somewhere out in the darkness, a phoenix was singing in a way Harry had never heard before: a stricken lament of terrible beauty.
— Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
It is disgraceful for a philosopher to say: the good and the beautiful are one; if he adds 'also the true', one ought to beat him. Truth is ugly. We possess art lest we perish of the truth.
— The Will to Power
One should be a painter. As a writer, I feel the beauty, which is almost entirely colour, very subtle, very changeable, running over my pen, as if you poured a large jug of champagne over a hairpin.
— The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Volume Six, 1936-1941
My Emma, does not every thing serve to prove more and more the beauty of truth and sincerity in all our dealings with each other?
— Emma
The beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added after a moment’s silence, "Perhaps more so.
— Les Misérables
The prince says that the world will be saved by beauty! And I maintain that the reason he has such playful ideas is that he is in love.
— The Idiot
There is something divine in mindless beauty.
— A Happy Death
Every man had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness, beauty, and truth.
— War and Peace
That is her style of beauty.
— 1984
As the light upon the leaves of trees, as the voice of clear waters, as the stars above the mists of the world, such was her glory and her loveliness; and in her face was a shining light.
— The Silmarillion
Let us leave pretty women to men with no imagination.
— The Captive & The Fugitive
Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.
— The Vision: Reflections on the Way of the Soul
The world was beautiful when looked at in this way—without any seeking, so simple, so childlike.
— Siddhartha
And yet even in reaching for the beautiful there is beauty, and also in suffering whatever it is that one suffers en route.
— Phaedrus
Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.
— Meditations
I see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window.… Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.
— Speak, Memory
She wished to appear only in the full radiance of her beauty. Oh yes, she was quite vain! And her mysterious adornment had lasted days and days. And then one morning, precisely at sunrise, she showed herself.
— The Little Prince
She was as good as she was beautiful and as intelligent as she was good.
— The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter
Somewhere on the world was the Emperor's palace, set amid one hundred square miles of natural soil, rainbowed with flowers.
— Foundation
When people see some things as beautiful, other things become ugly. When people see some things as good, other things become bad.
— Tao Te Ching
One's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.
— Madame Bovary