Percy Bysshe Shelley on beauty

Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age.

Gold is a living god and rules in scorn,
All earthly things but virtue.

Love’s very pain is sweet,
But its reward is in the world divine
Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.

John Keats1795–1821Ode on a Grecian Urn, Stanza 5. The final lines of this poem have been rendered in various ways in different editions, some placing the entire last two lines within quotation marks, others only the statement “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” …In context

• Truth & Lies

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