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Quotes about beauty

144 quotes from 110 people

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Thy grace, thy more than beauty,
Shall be an endless theme of praise,
And love — a simple duty.
Edgar Allan Poe1809–1849“To Frances S. Osgood” (1845).
- Love
Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless: peacocks and lilies, for instance.
John Ruskin1819–1900The Stones of Venice (1853), Volume I, chapter II, section 17
It seems that if one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one’s equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress.
Paul Dirac1902–1984The Evolution of the Physicist’s Picture of Nature (1963)
- Science
There are all kinds of interesting questions that come from a knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.
Richard Feynman1918–1988What Do You Care What Other People Think? (1988), “The Making of a Scientist,” p. 11: video
- Science
Perfection and imperfection are names which do not differ much from the names beauty and ugliness.
Baruch Spinoza1632–1677Letter to Hugo Boxel (October 1674) The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza (1891) Tr. R. H. M. Elwes, Vol. 2, Letter 58 (54).
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.
Edgar Allan Poe1809–1849To Helen, st. 2 (1831; these lines as revised in 1843)In context
- History
I am one who tells the truth and exposes evil and seeks with Beauty and for Beauty to set the world right.
W. E. B. Du Bois1868–1963“Criteria of Negro Art”, The Crisis (October 1926)
- Truth & Lies
If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.
William Morris1834–1896“The Beauty of Life”, a lecture before the Birmingham Society of Arts and School of Design (19 February 1880), later published in Hopes and Fears for Art: Five Lectures Delivered in Birmingham, London, and Nottingham, 1878–1881 (1882)
- Advice
The beauty of the world consists wholly of sweet mutual consents, either within itself or with the supreme being.
Jonathan Edwards1703–1758“The Beauty of the World” (c.1725), from the notebook The Images of Divine Things, The Shadows of Divine Things, The Language and Lessons of Nature (published 1948).
I think of few heroic actions, which cannot be traced to the artistical impulse. He who does great deeds, does them from his innate sensitiveness to moral beauty.
Walt Whitman1819–1892“Talk to an Art-Union (A Brooklyn fragment)”, in Complete Prose Works (1892)
- Art
The beautiful, which is perhaps inseparable from art, is not after all tied to the subject, but to the pictorial representation. In this way and in no other does art overcome the ugly without avoiding it.
Paul Klee1879–1940Diary entry (December 1905), # 733, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, 1898-1918; University of California Press, 1968
- Art
Beauty is something that disappears when you try to define it.
Iain Banks1954–2013The State of the Art (1991), “State of the Art” (p. 128)
A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.
Raymond Chandler1888–1959Farewell, My Lovely (1940), chapter 13
- Comedy
Good-looking girls break hearts, and good-hearted girls mend them.
MMMignon McLaughlin1913–1983The Complete Neurotic’s Notebook (1981), Women & men
- Women
The first effect of modernism was to make high culture difficult: to surround beauty with a wall of erudition.
Roger Scruton1944–2020Modern Culture (2000), “Avant-garde and Kitsch” (p. 85)
- Art