Beauty Quotes

A woman whose smile is open and whose expression is glad has a kind of beauty no matter what she wears.
– Anne Roiphe
Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.
– Rumi
You may keep your beauty and your health, unless you destroy them yourself, or discourage them to stay with you, by using them ill.
– William Temple
Every trait of beauty may be referred to some virtue, as to innocence, candor, generosity, modesty, or heroism. St. Pierre To cultivate the sense of the beautiful, is one of the most effectual ways of cultivating an appreciation of the divine goodness.
– Margaret Thatcher
I mean, what's wrong with being middle-class? I'm middle-class! However, I've got over it now. I'll be an aristocrat now if they want me to be. I suppose having an image as a brainy upper-class beauty is better than the alternative.
– Kristin Scott Thomas
A dog, I will maintain, is a very tolerable judge of beauty, as appears from the fact that any liberally educated dog does, in a general way, prefer a woman to a man.
– Francis Thompson
What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.
– Leo Tolstoy
If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in the library?
– Lily Tomlin
Angkor is not orchestral; it is monumental. It is an epic poem which makes its effect, like the Odyssey and like Paradise Lost, by the grandeur of its structure as well as by the beauty of the details. an epic in rectangular forms imposed upon the Cambodian jungle.
– Arnold J. Toynbee
There is an old-time toast which is golden for its beauty. When you ascend the hill of prosperity may you not meet a friend.
– Mark Twain
I have these slumber parties with my father [Steve Tyler], and when we can't sleep we stay up all night trading beauty tips. He knows all about the good creams and masks.
– Liv Tyler
Dreams are renewable. No matter what our age or condition, there are still untapped possibilities within us and new beauty waiting to be born.
– Dale E. Turner
We stand today poised on a pinnacle of wealth and power, yet we live in a land of vanishing beauty, of increasing ugliness, of shrinking open space and of an overall environment that is diminished daily by pollution and noise and blight. This, in brief, is the quiet conservation crisis.
– Stewart L. Udall
Production and consumption are the nipples of modern society. Thus suckled, humanity grows in strength and beauty; rising standard of living, all modern conveniences, distractions of all kinds, culture for all, the comfort of your dreams.
– Raoul Vaneigem
The one thing I look for everywhere is beauty. I find it everywhere, and in almost every person. A lovely painting, a good book, or music moves me. It has a life of its own. But I get just as satisfying a thrill when I look at streets wet with rain or see a typist's quick fingers traveling with precision over her keyboard.
– Conrad Veidt
The simplest conception of the origin and plan of the Iliad must, we think, prove the most correct. It originated, doubtless, in that desire, which every great poet must especially feel, of revealing to his age forms of nobler beauty and heroism than dwell in the minds of those around him.
– Jones Very
The art of procreation and the members employed therein are so repulsive, that if it were not for the beauty of the faces and the adornments of the actors and the pent-up impulse, nature would lose the human species.
– Leonardo da Vinci
It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.
– Voltaire
That which you create in beauty and goodness and truth lives on for all time to come. Don't spend your life accumulating material objects that will only turn to dust and ashes.
– Denis Waitley
Beauty? What's that?
– Larry Wall
Humanism was not wrong in thinking that truth, beauty, liberty, and equality are of infinite value, but in thinking that man can get them for himself without grace.
– Simone Weil
Beauty is the first present nature gives to women and the first it takes away.
– Fay Weldon
A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer... He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.
– E. B. White
No matter what a woman's appearance may be, it will be used to undermine what she is saying and taken to individualize - as her personal problem - observations she makes about the beauty myth in society.
– Naomi Wolf
Remember if you marry for beauty, thou bindest thyself all thy life for that which perchance, will neither last nor please thee one year: and when thou hast it, it will be to thee of no price at all.
– Virginia Woolf
This city now doth, like a garment, wear the beauty of the morning; silent bare, ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie open unto the fields and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
– William Wordsworth
After starting her career as a beauty queen on the fleshy fringes of show business, Imelda grew into bigger roles, playing Jackie to her husband's Jack, Bonnie to his Clyde, Evita to his strongman.
– Russell Watson
The city in winter is rich with the bittersweet nuance and somber beauty of the once-was.
– Terry Weeks
Tis midnight, falls the lamp-light dull and sickly, on a pale and anxious crowd, through the court, and round the judges, thronging thickly, with prayers none dare to speak aloud. Two youths, two noble youths, stand prisoners at the bar- You can see them through the gloom- In pride of life and manhood's beauty, there they are awaiting their death doom.
– Jane Wilde
He it was that first gave to the law the air of a science. He found it a skeleton, and clothed it with life, colour, and complexion; he embraced the cold statue, and by his touch it grew into youth, health, and beauty.
– Barry Yelverton
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a little better; whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is the meaning of success.
– Anonymous
Oh! snatched away in beauty's bloom,
On thee shall press no ponderous tomb;
But on thy turf shall roses rear
Their leaves, the earliest of the year.
– George Gordon Byron
To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the rank of devoutly religious men.
– Albert Einstein
Tell them dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for being:
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never sought to ask, I never knew:
But, in my simple ignorance suppose
The selfsame power that brought me there brought you.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
I am taught the poorness of our invention, the ugliness of towns and palaces. Art and luxury have early learned that they must work as enhancement and sequel to this original beauty. I am over instructed for my return. Henceforth I shall be hard to please. I cannot go back to toys. I am grown expensive and sophisticated. I can no longer live without elegance: but a countryman shall be my master of revels. He who knows the most, he who knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the waters, the plants, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments, is the rich and royal man. Only as far as the masters of the world have called in nature to their aid, can they reach the height of magnificence.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
– Richard Buckminster Fuller
I long for the solitude
of a sunset at sea,
and the chill of the breeze
coming in with the eve.
For the motion of my boat,
as she swings on her rode,
and the beauty of the stars,
in the evenings last glow.
– R.C. Gibbons
I slept and dreamed that life was beauty.
I awoke -- and found that life was duty.
– Ellen Sturgis Hooper
While I know that the beautiful, the spiritual and the sublime are suspect today, I have begun to stop resisting the constant urge to deny that beauty has a valid right to exist in contemporary art.
– Ian Hornak
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' -- that is all
Ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.
– John Keats
The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window.
– Stephen King
People are like stained-glass windows.
They sparkle and shine when the sun is out,
but when the darkness sets in,
their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.
– Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
The practice of conservation must spring from a conviction of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right only when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the community, and the community includes the soil, waters, fauna, and flora, as well as people.
– Aldo Leopold
When the waves are round me breaking,
As I pace the deck alone,
And my eye in vain is seeking
Some green leaf to rest upon;
What would not I give to wander
Where my old companions dwell?
Absence makes the heart grow fonder,
Isle of Beauty, fare thee well!
– John Milton
Beauty is but a flower,
Which wrinkles will devour;
Brightness falls from the air;
Queens have died young and fair;
Dust hath closed Helen's eye.
I am sick, I must die;
Lord have mercy on us.
– Thomas Nash
The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.
– George Santayana
He has achieved success
who has lived well,
laughed often, and loved much;
who has enjoyed the trust of pure women,
the respect of intelligent men
and the love of little children;
who has filled his niche and accomplished his task;
who has left the world better than he found it
whether by an improved poppy,
a perfect poem, or a rescued soul;
who has never lacked appreciation of Earth's beauty
or failed to express it;
who has always looked for the best in others
and given them the best he had;
whose life was an inspiration;
whose memory a benediction.
– Bessie Anderson Stanley
Death is the mother of Beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams
And our desires.
– Wallace Stevens
I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength, and I stand and watch until at last she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says, 'There she goes!'
Gone where? Gone from my sight ... that is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says, 'There she goes!' there are other eyes watching her coming and their voices ready to take up the glad shouts 'Here she comes!'
– Henry Van Dyke
And beauty is a form of genius -- is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.
– Oscar Wilde
You shall go with me, newly-married bride,
And gaze upon a merrier multitude.
White-armed Nuala, Aengus of the Birds,
Feachra of the hurtling form, and him
Who is the ruler of the Western Host,
Finvara, and their Land of Heart's Desire.
Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood,
But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.
– William Butler Yeats
Truth has beauty, power and necessity.
– Sylvia Ashton-Warner
I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!
– Louise Bogan
We all carry around so much pain in our hearts. Love and pain and beauty. They all seem to go together like one little tidy confusing package. It's a messy business, life. It's hard to figure--full of surprises. Some good. Some bad.
– Henry Bromel
It is foolish to wish for beauty. Sensible people never either desire it for themselves or care about it in others. If the mind be but well cultivated, and the heart well disposed, no one ever cares for the exterior.
– Anne Bronte
Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it.
– Confucius
If a man withdraws his mind from the love of beauty, and applies it as sincerely to the love of the virtuous; if, in serving his parents, he can exert his utmost strength; if, in serving his prince, he can devote his life; if in his intercourse with his friends, his words are sincere - although men say that he has not learned, I will certainly say that he has.
– Confucius
I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale.
– Marie Curie
Modesty is the citadel of beauty.
– Demades
The pride of youth is in strength and beauty, the pride of old age is in discretion.
– Democritus
The beauty of a statue is in its outward form; of a man in his conduct.
– Demophilus
The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. The trite subjects of human efforts, possessions, outward success, luxury have always seemed to me contemptible.
– Albert Einstein
Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.
– George Eliot
Don't waste yourself in rejection, nor bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
When the people of the world all know beauty as beauty,
There arises the recognition of ugliness.
When they all know the good as good,
There arises the recognition of evil.
– Lao Tzu
When beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang.
– Herman Melville
Man is never honestly the fatalist, nor even the stoic. He fights his fate, often desperately. He is forever entering bold exceptions to the rulings of the bench of gods. This fighting, no doubt, makes for human progress, for it favors the strong and the brave. It also makes for beauty, for lesser men try to escape from a hopeless and intolerable world by creating a more lovely one of their own.
– H. L. Mencken
Remember, that if thou marry for beauty, thou bindest thyself all thy life for that which perchance will neither last nor please thee one year; and when thou hast it, it will be to thee of no price at all; for the desire dieth when it is attained, and the affection perisheth when it is satisfied.
– Sir Walter Raleigh
The universe seems wondrous to me, with or without God. It has powerful lines and uncompromising ways. Patience and time sit like sages on the planets, strong and impersonal. There is a stark beauty to all of this.
– Real Live Preacher
Mathematics, rightly viewed, posses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.
– Bertrand Russell
The renown which riches or beauty confer is fleeting and frail; mental excellence is a splendid and lasting possession.
– Sallust
Do not read beauty magazines. They only make you feel ugly.
– Mary Schmich
There is no mystery, at least not the kind you want. In real life there are no fogbound moors or clues on matchbooks or fifth columnists waiting to be unmasked. it would be nice if here were, because then there would be solutions to things in life, but it doesn't always work that way. Everyone likes a good detective story. I went through my Hammett phase in college. I think the attraction is, in life our mysteries aren't exciting. You know? They're just intractable and depressing and enervating. Like, why do we always hurt the ones we love. Where does the money go? ...in a detective story, at least the universe makes sense. It was him. He did it. The natural order is disturbed, but the beauty of it is that it's restored again.
– Rogers Turrentine
Use harms and even destroys beauty. The noblest function of an object is to be contemplated.
– Miguel de Unamuno
Beauty is power like money is power like a gun is power.
– Chuck Palahniuk
You can muck around with different guitars for certain bits, but you have to have your own sound. That's your benchmark, that's your sound. I also play a Black Beauty. It sounds amazing.
– Dan Hawkins
What matters poverty? What matters anything to him who is enamoured of our art? Does he not carry in himself every joy and every beauty?
– Sarah Bernhardt
The difference between Marilyn Monroe and the early Pamela Anderson is not that great. What's amazing is that the taste of American men and international tastes in terms of beauty have essentially stayed the same. Styles change, but our view of beauty stays the same.
– Hugh Hefner
The development of beauty in chess never depends on you alone. No matter how much imagination and creativity you invest, you still do not create beauty. Your opponent must react at the same highest level.
– Vladimir Kramnik
The beauty one can find in art is one of the pitifully few real and lasting products of human endeavor.
– J. Paul Getty
Surely being a Professional Beauty - let alone an ageing one - is one of the most insecure and doomed careers imaginable.
– Julie Burchill
Proportions are what makes the old Greek temples classic in their beauty. They are like huge blocks, from which the air has been literally hewn out between the columns.
– Arne Jacobsen
Our scientific age demands that we provide definitions, measurements, and statistics in order to be taken seriously. Yet most of the important things in life cannot be precisely defined or measured. Can we define or measure love, beauty, friendship, or decency, for example?
– Dennis Prager
Light, God's eldest daughter, is a principal beauty in a building.
– Dr. Thomas Fuller
It is not the beauty of a building you should look at its the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time.
– David Allan Coe
I'm very accepting with my age. It's like notches on your belt: experience, wisdom, and a different kind of beauty. There comes a day when you've become comfortable in your skin.
– Zoe Saldana
I think one of the things that language poets are very involved with is getting away from conventional ideas of beauty, because those ideas contain a certain attitude toward women, certain attitudes toward sex, certain attitudes toward race, etc.
– Diane Wakoski
I envy the sensibility in Europe, appreciating beauty in women as they age. I'm going to go that way. I might dye my gray hair for a bit, but beyond that the buck stops. I'm not having any work done.
– Rachel Bilson
First, there is the bare beauty of the logs themselves with their long lines and firm curves. Then there is the open charm felt of the structural features which are not hidden under plaster and ornament, but are clearly revealed, a charm felt in Japanese architecture.
– Gustav Stickley
Every one who has a heart, however ignorant of architecture he may be, feels the transcendent beauty and poetry of the mediaeval churches.
– Goldwin Smith
Dear God! how beauty varies in nature and art. In a woman the flesh must be like marble in a statue the marble must be like flesh.
– Victor Hugo
Comics are so full of amazing work. And I can't look at a drawing of a woman without thinking of, for instance, Wallace Wood and his amazing way of capturing beauty.
– Frank Miller
Children, dear and loving children, can alone console a woman for the loss of her beauty.
– Honore de Balzac
Be sure what you want and be sure about yourself. Fashion is not just beauty, it's about good attitude. You have to believe in yourself and be strong.
– Adriana Lima
Art ought never to be considered except in its relations with its ideal beauty.
– Alfred de Vigny
Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers - and never succeeding.
– Gian Carlo Menotti
Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed.
– William Blake
Sometimes you gotta take a break from all the noise to appreciate the beauty of silence.
– Robert Tew