Rachel Carson on beauty

In our own lifetime we are witnessing a startling alteration of climate.

The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history or fiction. It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science.

Over increasingly large areas of the United States, spring now comes unheralded by the return of the birds, and the early mornings are strangely silent where once they were filled with the beauty of bird song.

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