In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real. Elizabeth Gilbert, ‘Eat, Pray, Love’
To me Van Gogh is the finest painter of them all; certainly the most popular great painter of all time. The most beloved; his command of colour, the most magnificent. He transformed the pain of his tormented life into ecstatic beauty. Pain is easy to portray, but to use your passion and pain to portray the ecstasy and joy and magnificence of our world ... No-one had ever done it before. Perhaps no-one ever will again. To my mind that strange wild man who roamed the fields of Provence was not only the world’s greatest artist, but also one of the greatest men who ever lived. Richard Curtis, Dr Black in Vincent and the Doctor
I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful? One must speak of problems in painting! Pablo Picasso
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Mid-18th century proverb
Every day I discover more and more beautiful things. It’s enough to drive one mad. I have such a desire to do everything my head is bursting with it. Claude Monet
The pain passes, but the beauty remains. Pierre-Auguste Renoir
William Morris ... a complete homage to calligraphy ... The Iliad ... Astounding. All gold leaf ... Almost unbelievable ... It almost takes your breath away this detail – it’s all about beauty. Andrew Lloyd Webber, Perspectives, ITV 2011
Everything is beautiful, all that matters is to be able to interpret. Camille Pissarro
Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing. Camille Pissarro
Beauty moves me. Nothing else. Francis Bacon
There is nothing ugly; I never saw an ugly thing in my life; for let the form of an object be what it may – light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful. John Constable
Gentlemen, here’s to beauty. Star Trek s3e5: Is There In Truth No Beauty? Kirk’s toast
They insisted we call our members key-holders. And Peter casually looked around and said, ‘Humm, beauty is in the eye of the key-holder.’ Victor Lownes, executive Playboy Club New York, re Peter Cook
Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder. Kinky Friedman
Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance. John Ruskin, Stones of Venice
Whenever I look or travel in England or abroad, I see that men, wherever they can reach, destroy all beauty. John Ruskin, Modern Painters V
I always say beauty is only sin deep. Hector Hugh Munro, Reginald, 1904
The beauty is not, as fond men misdeem,
An outward show of things, that only seem. Edmund Spenser, An Hymn in Honour of Beauty, 1596
Fresh beauty opens one's eyes wherever it is really seen, but the very abundance and completeness of the common beauty that besets our steps prevents its being absorbed and appreciated. It is a good thing, therefore, to make short excursions now and then to the bottom of the sea among dulse and coral, or up among the clouds on mountain-tops, or in balloons, or even to creep like worms into dark holes and caverns underground, not only to learn something of what is going on in those out-of-the-way places, but to see better what the sun sees on our return to common every-day beauty. John Muir
Everybody needs beauty as well as bread. Places to play in and pray in. When Nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike. This natural beauty hunger is made manifest in our beautiful national parks. Nature’s sublime wonderlands. John Muir
But beauty vanishes; beauty passes;
However rare – rare it be; Walter de la Mare, Epitaph, 1912
Beauty whether moral or natural is felt more properly than perceived. David Hume
Accuracy is in every case advantageous to beauty. And just reasoning to delicate sentiment. In vain would we exalt the one by depreciating the other. David Hume
Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty. David Hume, Of the Standard of Taste and Other Essays
This shuddering before the beautiful, this incredible fact that a discovery motivated by a search after the beautiful in mathematics should find its exact replica in Nature persuades me to say that beauty is that to which the human mind responds at its deepest and most profound. Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, 1910-1995
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, 1958
The flowers anew, returning seasons bring;
But beauty faded has no second spring. Ambrose Philips, The First Pastoral, 1708
Beauty is but a flower
Which wrinkles will devour. Thomas Nashe, Summer’s Last Will and Testament, 1600
Beauty is momentary in the mind –
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.
The body dies; the body’s beauty lives. Wallace Stevens, Peter Quince at the Clavier, 1923
I longed to arrest all beauty that came before me. Julia Margaret Cameron
Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it. Confucius
Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Would you like to look younger, fresher and more radiant? Erase your wrinkles? Volumise and shine your hair? Professor Leslie Regan does. She has just turned fifty. And she wants a makeover with a difference: one based on cold hard scientific fact. Horizon: Professor Regan’s Beauty Parlour, BBC 2007
She’s beautiful and therefore to be wooed;
She is a woman, therefore to be won. William Shakespeare, I Henry VI V iii 78
’Tis beauty that doth oft make women proud –
But, God knows, thy share thereof is small;
’Tis virtue that doth make them most admired. William Shakespeare, Richard Duke of York I iv 129-131, Richard
And truth no agent; for beauty is a witch
Against whose charms faith melteth into blood. William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing II i 169-170, Claudio to Don John
Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold. William Shakespeare, As You Like It I iii 109, Rosalind to Celia
Make use of time; let not advantage slip,
Beauty within itself should not be used. William Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis 129-130
Beauty itself doth of itself persuade
The eyes of men without an orator. William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece l29
From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s rose might never die. William Shakespeare, Sonnet I
When forty winters shall besiege thy brow
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field. William Shakespeare, Sonnet 2
O! How much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give! William Shakespeare, Sonnet 54