Quotations about Beauty

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. ~John Muir


Our hearts are drunk with a beauty our eyes could never see. ~George W. Russell


I've never seen a smiling face that was not beautiful. ~Author Unknown


By plucking her petals, you do not gather the beauty of the flower. ~Rabindrath Tagore


Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart. ~Kahlil Gibran


Against Him those women sin who torment their skin with potions, stain their cheeks with rouge and extend the line of their eyes with black coloring. Doubtless they are dissatisfied with God's plastic skill. In their own persons they convict and censure the Artificer of all things. ~Tertullian


That which is striking and beautiful is not always good, but that which is good is always beautiful. ~Ninon de L'Enclos


Had the price of looking been blindness, I would have looked. ~Ralph Ellison, "Battle Royal"


Some people, no matter how old they get, never lose their beauty - they merely move it from their faces into their hearts. ~Martin Buxbaum


Tell them dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for being
~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Rhodora"


Close your eyes and see the beauty. ~Author Unknown


It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. ~Leo Tolstoy


In every man's heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty. ~Christopher Morley


Beauty always promises, but never gives anything. ~Simone Weil


What humbugs we are, who pretend to live for Beauty, and never see the Dawn! ~Logan Pearsall Smith


The most beautiful view is the one I share with you. ~Author Unknown


When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other. ~Chinese Proverb


Beauty comes in all sizes, not just size 5. ~Roseanne


I don't like standard beauty - there is no beauty without strangeness. ~Karl Lagerfeld


There is a road from the eye to the heart that does not go through the intellect. ~Gilbert Keith Chesterton


Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting - a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Beauty and folly are generally companions. ~Baltasar Gracian


Beauty comes as much from the mind as from the eye. ~Grey Livingston


We ascribe beauty to that which is simple; which has no superfluous parts; which exactly answers its end; which stands related to all things; which is the mean of many extremes. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. ~Confucius


Plainness has its peculiar temptations quite as much as beauty. ~George Eliot


As we grow old, the beauty steals inward. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone. ~Johann von Goethe


A woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful. ~Karl Kraus


Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadows ceases to be enjoyed as light. ~John Ruskin


Beauty in the flesh will continue to rule the world. ~Florenz Ziegfeld


Do I love you because you're beautiful,
Or are you beautiful because I love you?
~Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, Cinderella


Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance. ~John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, 1851


Beauty is the promise of happiness. ~Stendhal


Beauty, to me, is about being comfortable in your own skin. That, or a kick-ass red lipstick. ~Gwyneth Paltrow


Beauty can be coaxed out of ugliness. ~Dr. SunWolf


One summer night, out on a flat headland, all but surrounded by the waters of the bay, the horizons were remote and distant rims on the edge of space. Millions of stars blazed in darkness, and on the far shore a few lights burned in cottages. Otherwise there was no reminder of human life. My companion and I were alone with the stars: the misty river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky, the patterns of the constellations standing out bright and clear, a blazing planet low on the horizon. It occurred to me that if this were a sight that could be seen only once in a century, this little headland would be thronged with spectators. But it can be seen many scores of nights in any year, and so the lights burned in the cottages and the inhabitants probably gave not a thought to the beauty overhead; and because they could see it almost any night, perhaps they never will. ~Rachel Carson


Flowers... are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1844


A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. ~Walt Whitman


Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes


Beauty... is the shadow of God on the universe. ~Gabriela Mistral, Desolacíon


Beauty... when you look into a woman's eyes and see what is in her heart. ~Nate Dircks


You can take no credit for beauty at sixteen. But if you are beautiful at sixty, it will be your soul's own doing. ~Marie Stopes


Beauty - in projection and perceiving - is 99.9% attitude. ~Grey Livingston


Beauty?... To me it is a word without sense because I do not know where its meaning comes from nor where it leads to. ~Pablo Picasso


I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being only skin-deep. That's deep enough. What do you want - an adorable pancreas? ~Jean Kerr, The Snake Has All the Lines


Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked. ~Saint Augustine


Taking joy in living is a woman's best cosmetic. ~Rosalind Russell


I hope you have lost your good looks, for while they last any fool can adore you, and the adoration of fools is bad for the soul. No, give me a ruined complexion and a lost figure and sixteen chins on a farmyard of Crow's feet and an obvious wig. Then you shall see me coming out strong. ~George Bernard Shaw, to Mrs. Patrick Campbell


Beauty isn't worth thinking about; what's important is your mind. You don't want a fifty-dollar haircut on a fifty-cent head. ~Garrison Keillor