Beauty quotations

Lee Nathaniel c.1653-1692

The Rival Queens

„Tis beauty calls and glory leads the way.

Lewes G.H. 1817-1878

The Spanish Drama

Many a genius has been slow of growth. Oaks that flourish for a thousand years do not spring up into beauty like a reed.

Macaulay Baron(Thomas Babington)1800-1859

The English Bible, a book which, if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the
whole extent of its beauty and power.

Marlowe Christopher 1564-1593

Doctor Faustus

Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.

Masefield John 1878-1967

„C.L.M."

In the dark womb where I began
My mother's life made me a man.
Through all the months of human birth
Her beauty fed my common earth.
I cannot see, nor breathe, nor stir,
But through the death of some of her.

Maugham W. Somerset 1874-1965

Beauty is an ecstasy; it is as simple as hunger.
There is really nothing to be said about it.

Michelangelo 1474-1564

Beauty is the purgation of superfluities.

Milton John 1608-1674

Comus

Beauty is Nature's coin, must not be hoarded,
But must be current, and the good thereof
Consists in mutual and partaken bliss.

Milton John 1608-1674

Samson Agonistes

Yet beauty, though injurious, hath strange power,
After offence returning, to regain
Love once possessed.

Montaigne Michel de 1533-1592

The beauty of stature is the only beauty of men.

Moore Marianne 1887-1972

Beauty is everlasting
And dust is for a time.

Nashe Thomas 1567-1601

Summer's Last Will and Testament

Beauty is but a flower
Which wrinkles will devour;
Brightness falls from the air;
Dust hath closed Helen's eye.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord have mercy on us.

Ovid 43 BC-AD c. 17

Judgement of beauty can err, what with the wine and the dark.

Pasternak Boris 1890-1960

Doctor Zhivago

Art always serves beauty, and beauty is the joy of possessing form, and form is the key to organic life since no living thing can
exist without it.

Pasternak Boris 1890-1960

(to the woman who inspired „Lara" in Dr. Zhivago)

Let me lock your beauty
In the dark tower of a poem.

Philips Ambrose c. 1675-1749

The First Pastoral

The flowers anew, returning seasons bring;
But beauty faded has no second spring.

Pope Alexander 1688-1744

Epistles to Several Persons „To a Lady"

Still round and round the ghosts of Beauty glide,
And haunt the places where their honour died.
See how the world its veterans rewards!
A youth of frolics, and old age of cards.

Proust Marcel 1871-1922

Until I saw Chardin's painting, I never realized how much beauty lay around me in my parents' house, in the half-cleared table, in the corner of a tablecloth left awry, in the knife beside the empty oyster shell.

Rowland Helen 1875-1950

A Guide to Men

Somehow a bachelor never quite gets over the idea that he is a thing of beauty and a boy forever.

Ruskin John 1819-1900

The beauty of the animal form is in exact proportion to the amount of moral and intellectual virtue expressed by it.

Russell George W. 1867-1935

Our hearts were drunk with a beauty
Our eyes could never see.

Saki (Hector Hugh Monro) 1870-1916

Reginald

I always say beauty is only sin deep.

Shakespeare William 1564-1616

Henry VI, Part 2

Could I come near your beauty with my nails
I'd set my ten commandments in your face.

Shakespeare William 1564-1616

Romeo and Juliet

O!she doth teach the torches to burn bright.
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.

Shakespeare William 1564-1616

The Rape of Lucrece

Beauty itself doth of itself persuade
The eyes of men without an orator.

Shakespeare William 1564-1616

Sonnet 2

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field.

Shakespeare William 1564-1616

Sonnet 17

If I could write the beauty of your eyes
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say, „This poet lies."

Smart Christopher 1722-1771

Jubilate Agno

For in my nature I quested for beauty, but God,
God hath sent me to sea for pearls.

Steichen Edward 1879-1973

Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face; the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited; and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man.

Teasdale Sara 1884-1933

Beauty, more than bitterness
Makes the heart break.

Tolstoy Leo 1828-1910

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.

Traherne Thomas c. 1637-1674

Centuries of Meditations „Third Century"

The green trees when I saw them first ... transported and ravished me, their sweetness and unusual beauty made my
heart to leap and almost mad with ecstasy, they were such strange and wonderful things.

Voltaire 1694-1778

Ask a toad what is beauty?... a female with two great round eyes coming out of her little head, a large flat mouth, a yellow belly and a brown back.

Webster John c. 1580-c. 1625

The Duchess of Malfi

Why should only I...
Be cased up, like a holy relic? I have youth
And a little beauty.

Wilde Oscar 1854-1900

She is a peacock in everything but beauty.

Wollstonecraft Mary 1759-1797

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Taught from infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only
seeks to adorn its prison.