John Keats on beauty

Love in a hut, with water and a crust,
Is — Love, forgive us! — cinders, ashes, dust.

Here lies one whose name was writ in water.

Ever let the Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home.

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.

Helen Keller1880–1968Letter to Rev. Phillips Brooks (8 June 1891)

It is hard, if not impossible, to snub a beautiful woman⁠—they remain beautiful and the rebuke recoils.

Winston Churchill1874–1965

• Women

It was when I was happiest that I longed most…The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing…to find the place where all the beauty came from.

C. S. Lewis1898–1963Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold (1956), Pt. 1, VII (Psyche)

• Happiness