Beauty Quotes

The shore is an ancient world, for as long as there has been an earth and sea there has been this place of the meeting of land and water. Yet it is a world that keeps alive the sense of continuing creation and of the relentless drive of life. Each time that I enter it, I gain some new awareness of its beauty and its deeper meanings, sensing that intricate fabric of life by which one creature is linked with another, and each with its surroundings... There is a common thread that links these scenes and memories -- the spectacle of life in all its varied manifestations as it has appeared, evolved, and sometimes died out. Underlying the beauty of the spectacle there is meaning and significance. It is the elusiveness of that meaning that haunts us, that sends us again and again into the natural world where the key to the riddle is hidden. It sends us back to the edge of the sea, where the drama of life played its first scene on earth and perhaps even its prelude; where the forces of evolution are at work today, as they have been since the appearance of what we know as life; and where the spectacle of living creatures faced by the cosmic realities of their world is crystal clear.

Rachel Carson

There is a limit to the number of lands of shoreline on the lakes; there is a limit to the number of lakes in existence; there is a limit to the mountainous area of the world, and... there are portions of natural scenic beauty which are God-made and... which of a right should be the property of all people.

Arthur Carhart†

The beauty of nature includes all that is called beautiful, as its flower, and all that is not called beautiful, as its stalk and roots. Indeed, when I go to the woods or the fields, or a send to the hilltop, I do not seem to be gazing upon beauty at all, but to be breathing it like the air. I am not dazzled or astonished; I am in no hurry to look lest it be gone. I would not have the litter and debris removed, or at the bands trimmed, or the ground painted. What I enjoy is commensurate with the earth and sky itself. It clings to the rocks and trees; it is kindred to the roughness and savagery; it arises from every tangle and chasm; it perches on the dry oakstubs with the hawks and buzzards; the crows shed it from their wings and weave it in to their nests of coarse sticks; the fox barks it, the cattle low it, and every mountain path leads to its haunts. I am not a spectator of, but a participator in it. It is not an adornment; its roots strike to the centre of the earth.

John Burroughs†

For the man sound in body and serene of mind there is no such thing as†bad weather; every sky has its beauty, and storms which whip the blood do but make it pulse more vigorously.

George Gissing

Pleased rather with some soft ideal scene, The work of Fancy, or some happy tone Of meditation, slipping in between The beauty coming and the beauty gone

William Wordsworth

For the man sound of body and serene of mind there is no such thing as bad weather; every day has its beauty, and storms which whip the blood do but make it pulse more vigorously.

George Gissing

Beauty is always the result of an accident. Of a violent lapse between acquired habits and those yet to be acquired. It baffles and disgusts. It may even horrify. Once the new habit has been acquired, the accident ceases to be an accident. It becomes classical and loses its shock value.

Jean Maurice Eugne Clment Cocteau

The mathematicians patterns, like the painters or the poets must be beautiful; the ideas like the colours or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.

Godfrey Harold Hardy

Affectation is an awkward and forced Imitation of what should be genuine and easy, wanting the Beauty that accompanies what is natural

John Locke

Teach us that wealth is not elegance, that profusion is not magnificence, that splendor is not beauty.

Benjamin Disraeli

If we do not permit the earth to produce beauty and joy, it will in the end not produce food, either.

Joseph Wood Krutch

I ask no more from mortals Than your beautiful face implies, The beauty the artist beholding Interprets and sanctifies. Who says that men have fallen, That life is wretched and rough? I say, the world is lovely, And that loveliness is enough. So my doubting days are ended, And the labour of life seems clear; And life hums deeply around me, Just like the murmur here, And quickens the sense of living, And shapes me for peace and storm, And dims my eyes with gladness When it glides into colour and form!

Robert Williams Buchanan

Upward my face I turn to you, I long for you, I yearn to you, The spectral vision trances me to utt'rance wild and weak; It is not that I mourn you, To mourn you were to scorn you, For you are one step nearer to the beauty singers seek. But I want, and cannot see you, I seek and cannot find you, And, see! I touch the book of songs you tenderly left behind you!

Robert Williams Buchanan

Tho' the world could turn from you, This, at least, I learn from you: Beauty and Truth, tho' never found, are worthy to be sought, The singer, upward-springing, Is grander than his singing, And tranquil self-sufficing joy illumes the dark of thought. This, at least, you teach me, In a revelation: That gods still snatch, as worthy death, the soul in its aspiration.

Robert Williams Buchanan

Under the dominion of the priests our earth became the ascetic planet; a squalid den careering through space, peopled by discontented and arrogant creatures, who were disgusted with life, abhorred their globe as a vale of tears, and who in their envy and hatred of beauty and joy did themselves as much harm as possible.

Georg Morris Cohen Brandes
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